Experience-driven businesses

The experience economy is driven by a need to compete in a global economy where products and services are rapidly being commoditised by shifting consumer attitudes, technology and the ease of access to competitors within the digital marketplace.  

In an experience economy, your competitive advantage comes from your ability to deliver a superior experience for your target audience. It relies on creating a personalised and memorable experience that connects with individual consumers on an emotional level.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that this is just another way of saying customer service; it’s not! 

Customer Service is the speed at which you answer a question. Customer Experience is how you deliver it and how you make the consumer feel while doing so. 

Customer Experience is also not derived from a single interaction or department but rather the accumulated experience from every touchpoint and channel the consumer has with the business and its marketing. 

Getting it right is hard, and the stakes are high, In fact, according to a recent study* consumers say that how a brand makes them feel is 1.5 times more important than any other factor in their buying decision.  

However, unlike delivering a good product or service, a good experience is highly subjective and ultimately very personal. 

To be successful organisations need the ability to deliver personalised experiences at scale and that requires an investment of time, energy and technology.

Like all big organisational change, embracing this new reality and making the shift toward an experience-driven business has its challenges.  

However, for those that do make the change, the dividends are clear.

In a recent Forrester survey**, they found that Experience-Driven businesses significantly outperform non-experience-driven businesses and achieve superior results across the entire customer life cycle.

Continued improvements and access to advanced analytics, attribution, AI and Machine learning allow businesses to process vast amounts of data and gain insights into customer’s personal preferences and needs. New technology has made it possible to capture, understand and engage with your target audience and customers in near realtime.

Harnessed properly these solutions can provide the capabilities to deliver personalised interactions across omnichannel campaigns. 

But there is no single solution to provide exceptional experiences and wining in an experience economy requires more than technology; it requires the entire organisation to embrace the experience mindset.  

There is, however, a single truth that exists for all experience-driven businesses. Everything starts with understanding your customer.

Sources 

* A Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper Commissioned By FocusVision June 2019 - How Customers Think, Feel, And Act: The Paradigm Of Business Outcomes Small Data Collection And Analysis 

**Source: Forrester Consulting on behalf of Adobe, February 2018