There’s no better time to be a Chicagoan than when the summer season rears its pretty head. Planning trips to the beach and deciding which festivals to hit up, make me realize the mid-year mark is fast approaching. This time of year always has me reflecting back on annual forecast lists to check in on whether or not they’re coming true.
Thinking back on some 2016 predictions, one comes to mind that focuses on the world of digital marketing. The 2016 Digital Trends report is part of the Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing series that Econsultancy publishes in partnership with Adobe. I encourage you to check out the FULL REPORT, and not only for its beautiful graphic design! All-in-all the report tells the customer experience story. And by story, I mean utter and complete domination.
The initiative for marketers to focus on customer experience has been around for years. What’s new in 2016 is the realization of the caliber of collaboration needed to do it right. A powerful customer experience depends on consistency throughout a wide array of capabilities, tools, teams and systems – with many elements competing for attention. All parts of the system must work together for the good of the customer.
Pulled from the REPORT which surveyed 7,000 professionals in the field, you will find how client-side marketers rated various elements that make up the customer experience:
When looking at how all of the elements of customer experience rated, I find it interesting that collaboration got the lowest rating in terms of what’s needed to succeed. In our book at ODEA, it’s paramount. A strategy loses its power if it dies in the trenches. And tactics are haphazard if not unified.
Without teams working together, customer experience becomes disjointed as the customer flows through the different parts of the journey, invariably interacting with different teams with potentially no idea of previous activity.
For example, although marketers recognize that design is integral to growth and retention, we haven’t all connected the dots to understand that design is dependent on collaboration. In today’s world, content is rarely the product of one team, let alone one person. And so with content for a project coming from many different directions, it’s imperative that the creators are all on the same page – the page called Customer Experience.
When applying the findings in this report to how 2016 has been shaping up at the ODEA office, I’m happy to say their predictions were right on! Our strong belief in the “no silos” approach puts collaboration first as far as we’re concerned. Non-stop communication between departments is the buzz that makes the day go round, and we like it that way. Innovation in customer experience is certainly central. Just get us talking about primarily designing web for mobile experience and how it impacts how we all support our clients along that path.