20 November 2024
What a week! I had a busy time talking to CX professionals across North America, with my whistle-stop tour concluding at the Digital Customer Experience Summit in Toronto.
Relative Insight’s Ben Hookway (CEO), Rauri Hadlington (Business Development Director) and Zac Dhanoo (Senior Account Manager) joined me at the event to share how our software helps CX teams inform operational decision making and improve customer journey maps.
It was great to chat to key decision makers in Toronto. These conversations helped crystalize in my mind the key focus areas for CX teams moving into 2025, which I’d like to share with you. Here are my key takeaways from the Digital Customer Experience Summit.
Empowering regional CX teams
Lots of attendees I spoke to led regional Canadian customer or operations teams. Many raised the age-old business dilemma of centralization versus localization within CX.
Their point was clear: an effective customer journey map or CX process for someone based in Chicago doesn’t necessarily transfer to someone in Toronto. There are regional differences that organizations need to account for.
CX teams are moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach in their processes generally. It’s clear that this will extend to regional and local differences in customer experience.
We’ve seen how this can work effectively within the restaurant sector. A franchisee running one or several restaurants in San Francisco isn’t interested in receiving reports with data from their Boston equivalent.
Therefore, the key decision organizations need to make is not whether to operate a one-size-fits-all CX program — that should be consigned to history. The choice is how to tailor your plan to account for regional differences. One solution to this is to grant local CX teams autonomy within their region.
However, there’s another solution which I believe is a rising tide within the industry: personalized delivery. I heard repeated discussions about delivery at the Digital Customer Experience Summit and the other events I’ve attended the past few months.
Death of the dashboard, rise of delivery
As someone who looks at and receives reports every single day, I’m not surprised dashboards are on the decline. A key theme in my panel discussion at Reuters’ customer event in Miami – as highlighted by Rachel in her review – this trend among senior leaders will only gather pace in 2025 and beyond.
For years, dashboards have been the go-to tool for tracking metrics and reporting. But as organizations grapple with data overload, leaders are tiring of them.
I know from experience that leaders don’t have time to access multiple dashboards to piece together a plan of action. We want convenience, we want speed and we want certainty. That’s why there’s a lazer focus on delivery of insights within CX.
Without wanting to sound like I’m stuck in 1995, this is where the power of email emerges. If I can get an email landing in my inbox at an anticipated time, telling me everything I need to know, I’m going to pay attention to it.
Leaders don’t want to hunt for insights, they want the insights to find them. Even though it’s not glamorous or sparkly, email is the best way to get the right information to the right people.
Dashboards still have a place, but as organizations generate even more data, this form of consumption is becoming overwhelming. Regular, targeted email reporting ensures a shift from information overload to insight on demand.
Digital Customer Experience Summit caps great industry meetings
Over one very busy week, Relative Insight met customer experience professionals at events in Amsterdam, Miami and Toronto. While each event had its own unique flavor, a common thread underpinning all three gatherings was the need to extract more value from customer data.
Whether it’s using insights to make operational changes that enhance customer experience, or applying them to improve your CX program or customer journey maps, my conversations with CX professionals suggests businesses still aren’t fully utilizing customer feedback to achieve these goals.
Are you ready to tap into that potential? Speak to me or another member of the team using the banner below. We’ll show you how to analyze your customer data and deliver it to decision makers in a way that effects change.
