You may have heard a time or two the adage that time is money. At the rate expectations change and businesses evolve, each minute is getting pricier and pricier. Marketing technology itself is not cheap, but the real price burden comes in not being able to utilize your platforms, data, and messaging properly to capitalize on its power.
Inefficient platforms and strategies lead to unhappy customers. And we’ve seen that all it takes is one bad experience for customers to go elsewhere. Which leads us to another well-used adage: it’s cheaper to retain customers than it is to acquire new ones.
All of this is to say that now is the time to get a clear handle on your approach to customer experiences and enhance your experiences to resonate both now and in the future. Because if you’re standing still, you’re falling behind (OK, that was the last one, I promise). Here’s how you can make it happen.
When it comes to finding the right solution(s) for your business, it can be tempting to force a square peg (problem) into a round hole (a predetermined piece of technology). We’ve seen it happen time and again, and for good reason. With so many technologies and “solutions” offered today, all making the same promises, it can be hard to know where to start and what’s best for your company’s unique needs.
Before you even start to think about a technological solution, take a step back and ask yourself this: Do you truly have a holistic view of your company and how it’s perceived by your employees and your customers? We have worked with Salesforce for decades and have seen first-hand how its suite of platforms – from CRM to commerce and service – create a centralized and cohesive hub for your data and interactions. But even the best technology is only as good as your ability to leverage it. You still need a plan to activate an impactful experience.
That’s where our new Experience Lab comes in.
Experience Lab is a process we developed to provide a holistic solution to our client’s specific business needs. Over the course of one to two hours, our team of customer experience experts will work with you to uncover opportunities you may not even know existed. We start with questions that provide insight into how the business operates, from how you meet a customer to how you sell to one. What channels are you engaging in? Once you have a sales order, how do you know your inventory availability? How do you cross-sell? The questions go on as we truly take a full look under the hood.
As we gain more insight, we organize this information into one source of truth using our innovative white-board analysis. This contains different swimlanes and will include notes about the various technologies being used and what your perception of use is. This information, among other data, is shared with our team, which works backward from the business requirements to find the right overarching solution(s).
Our focus with the Experience Lab is two-fold. After the consultation, our clients receive both better alignment across their executive team and actionable next steps. We provide an executive vision that explains what the organization can achieve using technologies within your existing processes, and paint a picture of the brand’s tomorrow (ie. here’s how your customers will perceive you and interact with you in the future).
Then we provide mockups, actionable insights, and personalized recommendations on how to move forward with critical next steps. This can include specific products to leverage, what an implementation could look like, and how we would phase and run the projects to successfully launch.
In one case, as the result of our Experience Lab workshop, we’re now helping a national consumer goods brand develop a future-stake roadmap, with customer and stakeholder research, and create a prototype for a new B2B commerce site, using Salesforce for its national dealer network portal.
While this process can be accomplished with any technology platform, we’ve found specific success with companies using Salesforce to power its data and marketing. By working with an experience-led partner to dive deep into not just the what, but also the why of your organization, you are able to identify a clearer view of how your customers behave with you, view you, and expect you to deliver to meet their needs, as well as what you need from a structure and process standpoint to empower these engagements.
There are a multitude of benefits associated with our Experience Lab – it’s why we created it, after all. These include:
This is the one case where time is not money as the Experience Lab is a free workshop. Take advantage of the opportunity to run through our process design with experts to understand when and where you can make meaningful changes through technology or process design. What you choose to do with that insight at the end of the consultation is up to you.
If you’re ready to transform the vision for your brand, website, or mobile app, into a well-architected, people-centered digital experience that enhances how you interact with your customers, we’d love to talk. Reach out to us today to learn more or set up your free Experience Lab consultation.
