UK is now mobile first

Smartphones have now taken over as the preferred device for going online in the UK.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33777168

Yes, for the first time the phone has become the device of choice, overtaking the laptop as the primary means of connecting to. Meaning that the UK has joined a select list of countries that are mobile first.

Once regarded as the 'second screen', mobile is now the main screen for a lot of users. They don't use a desktop or laptop as their principle device and sometimes use their smartphone... they consume content and use online functionality on their phone by default. Your customer now expects to connect to whatever they want, wherever and whenever they want.

And yet still so many companies are catching up. They have either got no mobile compatible presence or have a very poor one. And some have just mobile optimised their campaign landing pages, but not the rest of the customer experience (perhaps hoping that the user will be so surprised that the landing page worked correctly on their phone, they would forgive the company for a poor subsequent experience).

Is this as a result of a lack of foresight, poor investment, slow development or just plain ignorance? 

Build a Digital Platform not a website

I still hear a lot of businesses talk about “building a new website” or “creating an online presence”. Now by itself this is not a bad thing and these organisations will no doubt join the ranks of those that regularly move pixels about to create more impact or sell more.

But your web presence should be only one part of an entire toolbox that larger organisations should be using to influence more, engage more, sell more and retain more. But in my experience, a lot of them don’t understand that to have a joined up online customer experience and you need to have a joined up collection of tools that all work well together.

In other words you need a Digital Platform not a website.

So what can a Digital Platform do for you?

Provide ubiquitous online access
It should give as many users as possible easy access regardless of: device, connection speed and ability.

Improve the Customer Experience
It should create a relevant & consistent digital interface for each user segment, allowing all interactions to be as efficient & intuitive as possible, allowing your business to understand customers better.

Improve revenue
It should maximise any online revenue opportunities through better marketing campaigns, improved conversion and opportunities for additional revenue optimisation

Improve insight
It should allow you to understand digital visitor behaviour with the intention of informing and optimising future digital activity.

Provide consistent content
It should allow the central management of content (text, imagery, etc.) across all online devices and interfaces.

The first 90 days of the Chief Digital Officer

The first ninety days in any job are important. But in such a new and exciting industry as online & digital, the first 3 months in the role of Chief Digital Officer are key.

Here are my thoughts on what should be the main areas to focus of the CDO during this period:

1. Understand the overall business strategy
   Any digital strategy created must be completely aligned to what the business is planning (Commercial aims,  new products, marketing, etc.)
2. Learn the culture
   Every organisation has a "way of doing things" and seeing itself. This doesn't have to perpetuate, but it is good to know what sort of people your peers and team around you do and think. Most important is the appetite for change... which can either be a critical success factor or a big nail in the coffin of a lot of the most forward-thinking digital plans.
3. Set a benchmark
   Recognize which of your competitors (if any) are doing innovative things, or just doing the same stuff but better! 
4. Identify your stakeholders and make friends
   From marketing and customer insight through to IT and Operations... if you are going to be an agent for inevitable change, you will need to build allies first.
5. Research your customers
   It's no good setting yourself up to digitize everything if that's not the correct way forward. And it's no good rolling out smartphone apps if all your potential business is using tablets. You don't have to know everything about every one of them, but being able to classify and segment them into target audiences will help you create the most relevant products and experience for them.
6. Build your vision
   Create an idea of what success looks like. What is the end game of all this change and how does it help the user and company? (Tip: Then give this vision to your strongest critic and ask them for feedback - this will iron out a lot of the wrinkles)
7. Create the roadmap
   Draw up and digital roadmap of short and longer-term projects & tactical changes that move the organisation forward towards your vision. 
8. Justify investment
   Where necessary develop businesses cases that explore the investment required to realise the roadmap.
9. Deliver something quickly
   Nobody is realistically going to wait for you to see out your initial 3 months without some business improvement. This shouldn't be too difficult for any CDO new to the role, as there are always quick wins to be had
10. Have fun

Have I missed anything?

Make Customer Experience Management easy for real people

It seems like the world has suddenly woken up to the concept of "the customer journey", the idea that users have specific processes and tasks that they go through to achieve their goals via multiple touch-points & channels.
I must have heard the phrase more in the last few months than I have in the preceding 10 years. It's like every middle manager thinks they have only just invented the term... But that's OK, these people can catch-up with the online industry. We've been using: personas, customer process flows and transactional funnels for over a decade, with great success.

But now things have changed in that time. The idea that the user follows a linear journey is a simplistic model that takes no account for the multiple user types, needs, loyalty, etc. There's also a lot more data available via analytics now can be interpreted, analysed and even processed in real-time to create a dynamic site experience (e.g. product recommendations and multivariate testing) and automate various marketing processes (retargeting, etc.).

However, for all the fancy integration and mathematics behind the scenes, these complex systems still need a non-technical person to manage the experience day-to-day. Normal humans (not rocket scientists) are needed to change assets, conduct conversion experiments and approve content updates. In short, the very person who has now got excited about the improved user experience, now needs a simple way to manage the data-driven customer experience.

The user experience of user experience

Those who know me, know that I'm passionate about the optimisation of online and multi-channel customer journeys. Right from the early days of my work with the web, I noticed how the digital user experience broke when 'real' people tried to use it.

Over a decade later, everyone has got a lot more savvy about the use of user experience techniques to maximize customer acquisition, engagement, conversion and retention.

However, with all the terms that now exist around this subject, it's no wonder that even the people who are the customers of UX work (e.g. clients) can get a bit confused.

Customer experience, process flows, user stories, user journeys, user-centred design, usability improvement, swim-lanes, conversion rate optimisation, etc. are all terms that a seasoned industry person should be more than familiar with and some are pretty interchangeable. But can we honestly expect the actual users of our services to keep up with whatever the latest name for something is? Furthermore, if we don't actually have sensible, understandable and consistent names for things... how will those who want to purchase these services explain it to their bosses, purchasing terms or even to themselves?

Perhaps the user experience of user experience needs a bit of improving?

Corporate structure and the customer

I've wrote previously about how your company structure is not necessarily your customer's view of your company, so it comes as no suprise that Steve Hurst, editor at Customer Strategy feels that the silo'd structure of companies are to blame. He's just attended the Technology for Marketing & Advertising show in London and has blogged about:

"..the underlying ‘command and control’ corporate structures that are making it nigh on impossible for organisations to give their customers what they want and when they want it in a consistent manner.... Come on guys this is the 21st century not the 19th."

Strong words?

Well, not really, given that very few companies show a high degree of customer experience maturity, despite customer service making a difference in a recession.

As this economic downturn bites deeper, at what point is it that companies realise that their structure may be the difference between success and failure (and its not the fault of the customer)? Perhaps only the ones that live to tell the tale in the end!

Customer Experience Maturity

Having previously menioned how customer experience (e.g. a bad multi-channel experience) can make the difference between financial success and failure, I'm amazed to see some companies making obvious mistakes that affect have a business impact.
Note:
For those that want proof of this, you should really read Forrester's report from 24th March last year - incidentally my wedding date - that shows how a better Customer Experience can "Generate Significant Revenue"

Bruce Temkin, who produced this report ,also recently presented further work on this theme at the Net Promoter Conference in San Francisco. As well as covering additional customer experience research, Bruce covered the essential question:

"Why is it that firms let customers down?"

He also walked-through his 5 levels of corporate customer experience maturity. In essence, how tuned-in are companies to the needs/wants/thoughts/perspective of their customers, rather than just the 'how do we sell more stuff to them?' mentality? Here's his scale along with the percentage of companies he believes are at that point:

1. Interested
   customer experience is important, but funding and upper-level support is minimal.
2. Invested
   customer experience is important and initial programs are being put in place -- but the effort is still not connected with profitability for the organization.
3. Committed
   customer experience is critical to the company and executives understand how it's connected to fundamental results: It's not customer experience for customer experience's sake.
4. Engaged
   customer experience is a core part of the company's strategy and objectives.
5. Embedded
   it's in the company's DNA, the essence of everything and anything the company does.

I'll leave it to Jessica Tsai Assistant Editor at CRM magazine to give you the full low-down on the presentation:
http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/CRM-News/Daily-News/The-5-Levels-of-Customer-Experience-Maturity-52417.aspx

So where does your organisation rank?