Customer experience is arguably the ultimate marketing tool, and companies are getting increasingly sophisticated in using customer data and situational information (e.g., context) to curate that experience online. Several years ago, Gartner Inc. projected that, by this time, more than 80% of organizations would be competing primarily on the basis of customer experience, and research by Forrester estimates that these organizations will have greater brand recognition, higher order value and better customer retention.

Right now, as an extremely difficult situation unfolds across the globe, the online customer experience is fast becoming the customers only option. So the aspiration for brands to deliver automated services is more relevant than ever. Whether through relevant and helpful recommendations, on-point engagement, lightning-fast responsiveness or other tactics, brand leaders are setting the bar for other companies to meet.

As brand ambassadors, marketing is often at the forefront of creating this joined-up customer experience to ensure the right offers are made at the right time. Yet, delivering a highly curated and contextualized customer experience is a monumental task. Companies must be able to combine past customer interactions, secondary data sources, current context and desired outcomes, pulling data from both outside and across the organization from customer service and sales to product and legal teams. Pair these challenges with clunky, legacy systems that are difficult to flex to meet business needs, and the results are siloed systems that are hard to integrate and customer information that is trapped partway between legacy systems and new IT infrastructure.

According to the Adobe "2019 Digital Trends" report, based on a survey of 12,500 professionals in marketing and IT, customer-focused organizations are "four-and-a-half times more likely than other companies to have a highly integrated, cloud-based technology stack (32% vs. 7%)." Given that, how do marketing teams pull from modern and legacy systems to get that joined-up customer experience without a wholesale (and IT-dependent) digital transformation?

As a chief marketing officer myself, I've found automation to be the key to achieving this level of customer experience. And at Bizagi, we help our clients bridge various systems and data sources through our digital process automation platform to give them the access needed to deliver enhanced customer experiences.

How Automation Can Improve Customer Engagement

We often see insurance companies working with a technology stack that has evolved over the years by stitching different components together, and not necessarily in a cohesive manner. Through automation, insurers can map their customer journey across departments including IT, claims and product to better understand how customers behave and identify pain points that inform their marketing decisions. Not only is this approach more efficient, but it also provides a more responsive and personalized experience. In fact, while it might seem counterintuitive, automation can actually introduce a perceived "human touch" to processes by eliminating delays or miscommunication while simultaneously offering relevant and helpful messages at just the right time all critical factors to ensuring a valued customer experience.

Similarly, banks are turning to automation to keep pace with increasing customer expectations for service and responsiveness. The biggest challenges financial service providers face in customer experience efforts are with data analytics, technology and getting a complete customer view, as reported by The Financial Brand. This is unsurprising considering the complex IT infrastructure and inflexible legacy systems of most banking and financial businesses. By simplifying technology and streamlining customer engagement processes with automation, banks can leverage customer insights and data analytics to provide more relevant products and services to customers, or they can deliver communication through the customer's choice of media, such as email or text message (SMS).

Five Tips For Getting Started

It's no surprise that companies from all industries are looking for ways to digitally transform in hopes that they can better understand and engage customers. Here are some practical tips for businesses looking to start digitizing customer experience today:

1. Remember your people. Today's customers aren't easily satisfied, and they won't wait around; responses need to be relevant and instantaneous. While the joined-up view helps achieve this objective, it's also important to consider how you make these customer insights available to your people. If technology enables great customer experiences, it's often people who deliver them. Digital platforms must, therefore, be intuitive and accessible so that colleagues and partners can turn information into action.

2. Capitalize on critical moments. What are the main customer engagement points for your business? Quoting? Onboarding? Renewal? Focus appropriately, as poor experiences in these moments can be determinative in customer longevity or, conversely, have an outsized impact on order value.

3. Don't leave your legacy; take it with you. You don't need to rip and replace your current IT infrastructure (for example, a legacy customer relationship management or support ticket system). Your data doesn't have to be in one place, as long as you can wrap it in an agile process platform.

4. Start small and scale quickly. Change doesn't have to be disruptive; the most effective change often comes in small shifts that customers pick up on instinctively. Similarly, the iterative approach allows you to see what works best before fully committing (this is also effective for showing success to justify funding).

5. Add some intelligence. You can use technology to do more than aggregate and surface data; it can learn from that data, applying behavioral analysis or predictive analytics to not only automate but also control and improve customer engagement. For example, automated processes can make a next-best offer based on current context or interaction, or speed approvals and recommendations based on past or just-like transactions.

When it comes to enhancing customer experiences, there are endless methods and digital tools for better understanding, attracting, engaging and maintaining customers. Yet, all of these approaches become much more effective with access to a joined-up view of the customer. By leveraging process automation, you can consolidate customer data and unify it across systems and departments, personalizing customer interactions at a time when their expectations are higher than ever before.

More:
How To Turbocharge Customer Experience With Automation - Forbes