Accelerate to Become CX-Driven

The fastest way to establish competitive differentiation is through remarkable customer experience (CX).

Media companies must embrace an accelerated inside-out strategy for change in regard to culture—and an outside-in approach with regard to direction and strategy.

Forrester and Adobe recently reported that only 34 percent of enterprise media companies can be considered truly experience-driven. Inspired by this report, we’ll provide our insights on three key areas required for CX-centricity. These areas include: human-centricity, impact insights, and CX-centric technology.

Be human-centric (inside-out)

In our whitepaper on value-stream thinking, we address how being value-driven in DevOps leads to increased efficiency and elimination of waste, simplified processes, and assurance of interoperability. The same value-driven approach must be applied to deliver optimal personalization, transparency, and ease of use.

Accomplishing human-centricity begins with viewing audiences as human beings, not as data. If audience members are viewed as mere statistics or personas, then internal stakeholders—and public-facing employees—will inevitably treat media consumers as numbers.

Personalization is only a word unless a media company is willing to work hard to know the individual and deliver genuinely personal experiences. Active listening (social, reviews, inquiries) leads to timely and relevant responses—while providing direct feedback from engaged consumers on what’s most important to them. This process is core to ongoing optimization efforts.

Consolidated data for a singular customer view provides greater clarity for experiential customization and recommendations. And CX-centric leadership—as well as investment in the right artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technology—empowers teams to focus more time on gaining consumer trust and earning brand advocacy. With this additional human engagement, CX organically becomes more human-centric.

Learn the “why?” (outside-in)

Customer experience requires data-driven insights. Media companies are very good at identifying data such as: demographic/geographic segmentation, historical purchase decisions, and time spent with media. What tends to be lacking, however, are insights as to why an audience member behaves, consumes, and likes what he/she does. What impact does media have on the lives of audience members?

Presenting positive impact (social, environmental, etc.) is a significant step towards differentiation in an industry under scrutiny as a whole, due to the (in)actions of a few. This requires brands to actively commit to optimizing first party data insights in order to transparently share the difference a company may be making in the lives of those served.

For example: if insights indicate that a core audience cares most about serving the local community, then it makes sense for a media company to contribute time, dollars, and cause marketing to regional food banks—to be in alignment with the cause. In an industry tainted by fake news, instigators of social division, and impersonal advertising noise, this level of positively responsible engagement is, by definition, a competitive differentiation.

Embrace CX-centric technology

More than ever before, today’s customer experience comes down to personal choice. Internal cultural changes and paradigm shifts are a start, and CX-centric technology is required to listen, respond, and pivot at the pace—and with the personalization—that digital consumers demand.

Accelerated, CX media transformation includes:

• AI/ML—automation, personalization, chatbots to improve efficiency, customer engagement, and support
• Experience design—UX, dashboards, mapping created through design-thinking to customize interface and insights for customer optimization
• Hybrid recommendation engine—supervised and reinforced ML + O.C.E.A.N. psychographic-based tonality in messaging for hyper-personalized recommendations that go beyond curation

Act now, not later

The road to experience optimization is a long one, but standing still is no longer an option for media companies. Brands must start the CX optimization process now to ensure a sustainably successful future in a personal choice-driven marketplace.

SoftServe has over 25 years of expertise in the AI/ML, data, and experience design required for CX transformation. Read more in our latest whitepaper, “OPTIMAL CX BY DESIGN”