{"id":4236,"date":"2021-02-07T15:19:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-07T15:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/?p=4236"},"modified":"2021-02-23T11:35:31","modified_gmt":"2021-02-23T11:35:31","slug":"self-service-the-customer-experience-and-the-cio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/2021\/02\/07\/self-service-the-customer-experience-and-the-cio\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-service, the customer experience and the CIO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As the number of technology solutions has increased, so too has the ability for organisations to provide truly positive customer experience journeys. Jonathan Tam, VP – Marketing, Liferay, explains how the customer experience has changed and why companies should consider self-service tools.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s CIOs have a tough job. They must manage the immediate need for reliable technology infrastructure while simultaneously preparing their organizations for the future. At the same time, they must collaborate with numerous business partners to deliver a better customer experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jonathan Tam, VP – Marketing, Liferay<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, the sheer amount of technology now available means CIOs are better positioned than ever to drive Digital Transformation. And much of that technology is finally catching up with customer expectations. We\u2019re starting to see things like AI, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, begin to realise their incredible potential. In particular, businesses are using these technologies to deliver enhanced personalisation and self-service that takes the customer experience to the next level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI and Machine Learning may sound futuristic to some – to CIOs it might just sound costly! But something as \u2018simple\u2019 as a chatbot proves that effective self-service is both affordable and achievable for most businesses, if properly applied. You just have to look at the explosion in self-service over the last decade to realise these technologies are no longer just cutting edge; they\u2019re core to customer service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s important to not get carried away by technology. The customer always comes first. With that in mind, here are some key pointers to consider when rethinking your customer experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make it personal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Liferay, we always encourage our clients to start with their customers\u2019 needs. For instance, we may often recommend that organizations experiment with various types of AI\/ML. But technology on its own is not a magic bullet \u2013 everything must be well-integrated and serve a clear purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personalisation is key. You want to reduce friction and make customers feel like they’re getting an experience that\u2019s unique to them, even online. There\u2019s plenty of ways to achieve this using the technology available to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you opt for a login, you can use the information your customers provide, including their history, interests and the products they use, to provide a highly tailored experience. Even if you don\u2019t require a login, you can still use cookies or tracking. Ultimately, it\u2019s personalisation that\u2019s going to make your customers feel good and make it faster and easier for them to conduct business with you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t do everything at once<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

CIOs need to identify emerging customer experience trends and determine what impact they\u2019re going to have on their business. It can be easy to be swept away by promising new technologies and think you have to adopt everything as quickly as possible. Here\u2019s some advice I regularly give our clients:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • Slow down.<\/strong> Prioritise your objectives and pick a project that is manageable and measurable. Then adopt technology in a phased approach. Use your success with one project to broaden your initiatives and deliver more.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
    • Stop searching for unicorns.<\/strong> It\u2019s highly unlikely you will find one piece of technology that solves all your problems. Start small and integrate different pieces of technology that do individual tasks very well.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
      • Align your front end and back office priorities.<\/strong> Keep customer needs in mind at all times. But remember that while customer experience is the primary focus, you can\u2019t just forget security, business process goals, or GDPR in the name of serving the customer.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
        • Bring everyone onboard. <\/strong>CIOs are uniquely positioned to align key stakeholders and pool their collective knowledge and resources. You can use that position to bring teams together, working with colleagues to identify the challenges and opportunities in your personalisation and self-service strategies. By bringing stakeholders on the journey, you can apply technology effectively across your business to implement compelling yet practical solutions.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

          It\u2019s time to explore self-service<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Increasingly, customers expect you to provide the complete account experience online. Otherwise, frankly, they\u2019re going to go somewhere that does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Warning signs of inefficiency and a poor experience include high call volumes to customer support, long wait times, frustrated and unhappy support teams addressing repeated, mundane issues and, of course, customer complaints. Ideally, you want to proactively assess the opportunity for self-service before <\/em>you start losing customers. At the end of the day, one unsatisfactory experience is often enough to drive a customer to your competitors. We\u2019ve seen a huge increase in customers using our platform to create self-service portals for customers in order to deliver the experience the customer expects. This same logic applies also to self-service supplier and vendor portals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          What makes Liferay\u2019s offer special?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Liferay provides a digital experience platform (DXP) that allows organizations to create intranets, extranets, authenticated experiences and websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Gartner defines a DXP as an integrated and cohesive piece of technology designed to enable the composition, management, delivery and optimization of contextualized digital experiences across multi-experience customer journeys.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

          First and foremost, we practice what we preach. I\u2019ve stressed the need to put your customers\u2019 needs first \u2013 and that\u2019s what Liferay does as well. We partner with our clients to help them deliver on their business needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          That extends to the technology we provide. We customise and execute solutions based on our clients\u2019 unique requirements through our flexible solutions. CIOs really appreciate our open-source platform with open APIs that enable integrations with just about any technology they currently use or want to use. Everything is built with customisation in mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          We\u2019ve been highly rated by analysts for many years because of our ability to unify multiple systems and data sources and still deliver that all-important personalised user experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          CIOs have more to do than ever. They also have more tools and expertise to help them. If you\u2019re seeking to elevate the customer experience with the right technology, speak to us and we\u2019ll explore how we can meet your needs together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          As the number of technology solutions has increased, so too has the ability for organisations to provide truly positive customer experience journeys. Jonathan Tam, VP – Marketing, Liferay, explains how the customer experience has changed and why companies should consider self-service tools. Today\u2019s CIOs have a tough job. They must manage the immediate need for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,42,43],"tags":[226,355,464,962,1501,221,1502,1334,1193,959,158,403,1368],"class_list":["post-4236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-thought-leadership","category-top-stories","tag-ai","tag-cio","tag-cios","tag-customer-experience","tag-digital-experience-platform","tag-digital-transformation","tag-dxp","tag-gdpr","tag-jonathan-tam","tag-liferay","tag-machine-learning","tag-ml","tag-natural-language-processing"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4236"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4330,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4236\/revisions\/4330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}