CX – an opportunity for every industry

Most of the sessions at Oracle’s Industry Connect event in Boston this week were organized in vertical tracks. One  of the few cross-industry sessions in the Grand Ballroom was a panel on Customer Experiences, hosted by Mike Webster, SVP at Oracle, that I was invited to be part of. The diversity of executives on the panel was a good reminder how every industry is working with rapidly changing customer bases and their expectations.

As the weatherman forecast snow outside the hotel, Penni McLean Conner, Chief Customer Officer of Northeast Utilities calmly announced the number of  homes which were out of power that morning in their service area. It is a closely watched metric in this never ending winter and has taught the utility how to better keep its customers informed of outages and related resolutions. Beyond that, the utility customer experience has to be viewed against a rapidly evolving environment of smart meters, Nest thermostats, EV charging at home, even consumers selling solar and wind generated power back to the grid.

Gwen O'Keefe, Chief Medical Informatics Officer at Group Health Cooperative described the healthcare consumer who (at least in the US) will have unprecedented choice in providers and insurance options. It is a market where the line between payers and providers is rapidly blurring. It is also a sector which will go through many bumps in the road as the Healthcare.gov experience has shown and as growing number of consumers use their FitBits and other “self-quantification” technology.

Steve Hunter, CIO of Stage Stores, described the diversity of customer experiences and expectations across the company’s 5 brands and 900 stores. Retailers are adjusting to customer expectations on growing ecommerce units and under huge pressure to homogenize omni-channel experiences.

Chris Hall, CIO of 2Degrees provided the point of view of a privately held mobile operator in relatively small market, New Zealand in a world of global competitors like Vodafone. 2Degrees targets small businesses like itself and differentiates itself from the majors on customer service.

My role was to provide perspectives from other industries. Some of my points:

a) we would to remiss as we think about CX to not leverage design thinking which has revolutionized architecture, electronics, furniture in the last couple of decades. Jony Ive of Apple, design firms like IDEO, newer designers of wearable technology like Hadi Amit and many others are showing even inanimate objects can inspire all kinds of human emotion, and customer touching processes should do the same.

b) Mark Hurd, President of Oracle, in his keynote had highlighted that consumer spending on technology now matches that of enterprises. This tech- and design-savvy customer expects similar in aesthetics, ergonomics and experiences at companies he/she deals with. And is prepared to reward companies when they deliver. The ever busy Apple store, the long lines to tour the Burj-Khalifa in Dubai are examples of that.

c) My interviews of several German companies for last book showed increased focus on mass customization of products as the antidote to commoditization, and that includes personalization of the customer interface.

d) Rich mobile apps are helping strengthen the brand connection for many companies. I cited how Home Depot’s app with specific location data on where items are has offset some customer complaints about the difficulty of finding available associates in its stores. Starbucks mobile app with its configurator has allowed its consumers to understand its products in rich detail and nutritional value on their own – something which makes the connection with the barista in the store even stronger.

e) Omni-channel CX harmonization is an opportunity not just for retail but for banking, telecommunications, government agencies and many other sectors

f) Too many UI designers are locked into a mouse and keyboard mindset. We should be inspired by auto designers who are experimenting with a variety of audio, haptic, eye tracking, heads up display and other other ways of communicating with the driver and passengers.

CX design is an exciting, challenging opportunity for every profit and non-profit entity. Kudos to Oracle for bringing together a panel which allowed for sharing a diverse range of CX opportunities and challenges.