It’s now or never: thinking one step ahead

As CSPs attempt to create a fluid cross-channel customer experience, the market continues to evolve, but the game has already changed: though only 14 percent of global CSPs currently have an advanced customer-experience program in place, the industry as a whole is expected to broaden technology spending in this area by 18 percent in the next two years.²

But smart CSPs won’t use future investments just to catch up to the status quo — they’ll focus on moving one step ahead. That’s because the next phase of customer experience is really about anticipating customers’ needs and wants.

How? By harnessing data collected at the various levels of the customer life cycle to help make predictions about behavior, and offering brand advocates and potential new customers promotions and services based on their current behavior and services they already use. This type of analytics technology can even monitor customers’ questions on social networks and respond with direct, compelling answers.

To do all this, however, CSPs require a coordination layer that can communicate across all channels to deliver tactical analysis and knowledge about various interactions based on a business-rules engine that actually drives the behavior of the channels from a centralized location. This means there is no need for CSPs to recreate customer interactions or republish customer information in individualized channels; instead a service provider can coordinate the interactions of a particular customer with a brand throughout various channels, streamlining and enhancing customer experience and putting the provider a step ahead of its competition. CSPs that wait for customers to say what they want risk having them look elsewhere.

When executed correctly an integrated cross-channel customer experience enables a provider to better engage existing customers, decrease churn and expand its customer base by presenting targeted offers and promotions to a wider audience. Exceeding customers’ expectations while leveraging their knowledge and feedback to improve business processes will simultaneously win CSPs friends and enable growth — and that is simply good for business.

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