What do you think? Let me know your thoughts.

By: Venkat Nanduri[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The post Thinking about Customer Experience? Then think IoT appeared first on Phoenix Business Consulting.

Try to remember the ‘why’ behind that buying decision…

• Was it because you trusted the seller?
• Was it because you saw value?
• Was it because you had a sense of fulfillment?

There could be ten other reasons why you decide to buy whatever it was you bought.

Add to that the knowledge that, more than anything else, humans are rational beings. We want to make sure we get value from every dollar we spend.

Despite this, all buying behaviours stems from how we “FEEL” about a product or service- or even the seller for that matter. So even if you trust the seller, it’s still the FEELING of trust that dominates your behavior.

What does this mean?

This means that your customers buy your products or services because they FEEL good about you and your organization as they interact or engage with you.[/rb_sc_text][rb_sc_image customize_align=”1″ custom_styles=”.vc_custom_1602947311449{padding-top: 25px !important;padding-bottom: 25px !important;}” image=”2729″][rb_sc_button title=”Video: The Future of Business Has Feelings” customize_align=”1″ aligning=”center” btn_size=”medium” btn_font_color=”#ffffff” btn_font_color_hover=”#ffffff” btn_bg_color=”#3b7eff” btn_bg_color_hover=”#3b7eff” btn_border_color=”#3b7eff” btn_border_color_hover=”#3b7eff” url=”https://forms.zohopublic.com/phoenixbusinessconsulting/form/VideoTheFutureofBusinessHasFeelings/formperma/fFIKBUlhMu2OqPbMG70lpHJPFoqLe2NYeRS3KMmreh4″ custom_styles=”.vc_custom_1602947234517{margin-top: 25px !important;margin-bottom: 25px !important;}”][rb_sc_text show_divider=”1″]Understanding how your customers and employees are feeling is the key to delivering better and more personalized experiences that, in turn, make them happy and you more profitable. And that’s why we have to get on the bandwagon that the future of business has feelings.

That’s the Nirvana.

With cutting-edge technologies, like IoT, AI, Block Chain and ML, understanding the customer’s ‘feelings’ is going to be easier than ever before.

Simply put, by collecting experience data at every meaningful touchpoint, you can analyze and understand experience gaps – and determine what to do about them. Your company can then automate actions across business functions to drive improvement in customer, employee, product, and brand experiences.

But the starting point is to know where you stand today so that you know how much time and effort is required to get there.

Want to know how Phoenix Business Consulting can help? Please drop me an email. Together, we can walk through some stellar case studies of how we helped transform other organizations into intelligent enterprises.

After all, it’s the experience we all want to create.

By: Venkat Nanduri[/rb_sc_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The post The Future of Business Has Feelings appeared first on Phoenix Business Consulting.

Instead of every Tuesday bringing you the Tuesday Thoughts blog, I will now share Tuesday Watch — a quick video on technology trends, innovation, cutting-edge solutions, and any other subjects we think might be beneficial to you. And if you have suggestions, please feel free to send them to me. And now, on to our first Tuesday Watch…

Did you know humans experience 27 different types of feelings, and any one of them can make or break entire industries?

All the feelings we experience, whether good or bad, boil down to what we call “moments” that tend to be more memorable than goods. However, there’s often a huge disconnect between our emotional expectations and life’s reality.

These ‘moments,’ and the emotional highs and lows that accompany them, are even present in perceived customer experience which leads to the experience economy. When your customers enter into an experience with your people, products or services they anticipate will be great and it turns out otherwise, the impact on your business can be severe.

Welcome to the world of Experience Management

There’s often an astounding disparity between how you think customers feel about your people, products, and services and how they feel. There is almost always a gap. Understanding that gap – however wide or narrow – determines business winners and losers. Why? Because at the end of the day, the future of your enterprise is determined by the customer experiences you provide.

With over 20 years of experience working with hundreds of companies on SAP projects. Phoenix Business Consulting can help you overcome the experience gap your customers and prospects may be going through by showing you how to build positive customer experiences that meet or exceed their perceived expectations.

Let me know if you have any questions about the experience gap. I look forward to hearing from you.

By: Venkat Nanduri

The post Are You Ready for the Experience Economy? appeared first on Phoenix Business Consulting.

Apply this scenario to your business: What kinds of experiences do you think your customers are having with your people, products and services?

Reviewing the Ratings
Before you answer that, let’s examine this simple straight line of customer experience scores (where 1 is the lowest possible score and 10 is the highest) and see if we can establish a common set of beliefs about what these scores mean.

For the purposes of this discussion, here is the way I want us to interpret what these scores mean:

• Any score from 1 to 5 is a bad score. Really, there is no other way to interpret this.
• Any score between 6 and 8 should be considered just okay. It’s a satisfactory score, and we can live with it- but we understand there is much room for improvement and moving beyond 8 is going to be a challenge.
• Any score of either 9 or 10 is the target we aim for, the magic numbers that likely mean your customer found his or her experience to be memorable for all the right reasons.
  Since I can’t see you nodding your heads, I’m going to assume you agree with my interpretation. If you don’t agree right now, keep reading and perhaps you will.

Let’s realize that the battle here is not just about finding new and innovative ways to deliver exemplary customer service or outstanding product performance; It’s also about changing the perceptions of those customers who give low scores by finding the resources, ideas, technologies, people and attitudes capable of turning negatives into positives.

The Staggering Gap
Sadly, while most businesses think their products/services rate a 9 or 10, the stark reality is that most customer experience scores fall way below 8! Don’t believe me? According to SAP’s Capital Markets Day 2019 report, “80 percent of CEOs believe their company offers a superior experience, but only eight percent of customers agree. That’s a staggering gap.”

A 2018 report by New Voice Media stated that 67 percent of customers in the US are ‘serial switchers’, flipping from one brand to the next because of what they perceive as poor customer experience – an astounding 37 percent increase in just two years. In the experience economy, not having a deep, accurate picture of the entire experience – customer, employee, product and brand – can be fatal to a business.

[/rb_sc_text][rb_sc_button title=”Download the Report: The New Economy” customize_align=”1″ aligning=”center” btn_size=”medium” btn_font_color=”#ffffff” btn_font_color_hover=”#ffffff” btn_bg_color=”#3b7eff” btn_bg_color_hover=”#3b7eff” btn_border_color=”#3b7eff” btn_border_color_hover=”#3b7eff” url=”https://forms.zohopublic.com/phoenixbusinessconsulting/form/DownloadtheStudyTheNewEconomy/formperma/gbdY3FfgQTQVodmKExVMf-OOP4r8Py4X-GCLEvCS0dU” custom_styles=”.vc_custom_1602941739078{margin-top: 25px !important;margin-bottom: 25px !important;}”][rb_sc_text show_divider=”1″]Bridging the Staggering Gap
So how does one win the battle to change perceptions? The key lies in using the help of advanced technologies to gain unbiased insights into the customer psyche and behaviour, and then using those same insights to bridge the gap. This includes technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Predictive Analytics and the Internet of Things which, when implemented into a cohesive integrated whole, transform any company into an Intelligent Enterprise.

Bumble Bee Foods: A Case Study
Helen Dwight, Global VP of Marketing at SAP, in an article on “The New Economy,” cites an interesting case study involving Bumble Bee Foods, the largest branded shelf-stable seafood company in North America. She narrates how Bumble Bee wanted to proactively address consumer concerns around food safety and sustainable sourcing. “Through the use of blockchain technology, the company now tracks the fish it sells from the moment it’s caught to its placement on store shelves. Critically, customers can easily access the complete origin and history of the product on a smartphone via a QR code for complete transparency in food sourcing and safety,” she elaborates.

Further, she says, “To meet customer expectations and live up to Bumble Bee’s long history of sustainable tuna production, the company implemented an innovation sea change across its operations and throughout the supply chain. The results were wide-ranging, positively impacting ecosystems and the lives of stakeholders.”

Here is my point: Your ability to apply intelligent technologies across applications and processes holds the key to providing an enhanced customer experience. In a way, this boils down to twin factors: speed and personalization. Only technology can help identify and improve these experiences.

Let me know what you think. If you’d like information on how SAP can help improve your customer experience rating beyond 8, please feel free to write to me. I am more than happy to share additional case studies like that of Bumble Bee.

I look forward to hearing from you.

By: Venkat Nanduri[/rb_sc_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The post How to Bridge the Experience Gap appeared first on Phoenix Business Consulting.

Today, the 64-person company is one of the fastest growing small-and-medium size firms in Germany delivering up to 16 million wax candle combinations that can accurately meet the surging demand.

Leveraging the intelligent technologies like AI, IoT and ML, Heliotron lowered the customer acquisition costs, by automatically delivering marketing campaigns, optimizing customer experience, and enabling real-time visualization of sales margins.

The ultimate result: Sales efficiency increased by 8X and inventory turnover improved by 5X.[/rb_sc_text][rb_sc_text show_divider=”1″ icon_color=”#3b7eff” icon_background=”#ffeeed” subtitle_color=”#3b7eff” subtitle_background=”#ffeeed” title_color=”#000000″ font_color=”rgba(0,0,0,0.75)” font_color_hover=”#3b7eff” font_list_markers=”#3b7eff” divider_color=”#3b7eff” btn_font_color=”#ffffff” btn_font_color_hover=”#ffffff” btn_bg_color=”#3b7eff” btn_bg_color_hover=”#3b7eff” btn_border_color=”#3b7eff” btn_border_color_hover=”#3b7eff” custom_styles=”.vc_custom_1602940887695{padding-top: 25px !important;}”]Want to see Heliotron – An Intelligent Enterprise in action? Watch the video:

Heliotron delivers a level of customer experience far greater than its size would suggest.

So, my question to you – when small-to-mid-sized businesses like Heliotron are fast becoming global companies, making competition seem insignificant, what lessons can you learn from Heliotron that will put your company on the growth path?

Let me know your views on what stops you today from making a decision to become an intelligent enterprise.

If you wish to know more about how you can take the first leap, let me know and we can quickly set up a jumpstart session absolutely free of cost.

I look forward to hearing from you.

By: Venkat Nanduri[/rb_sc_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The post What Stops You Today From Becoming An Intelligent Enterprise appeared first on Phoenix Business Consulting.

Countries witnessing this sweeping trend include China, India, Germany and the UK. Everywhere you look, customers are switching for better experiences. On Wall Street, most big stocks get plundered and often see this same downward spiral- at least until customers start experiencing better product performance. It seems that the road to prosperity is paved with customer experience!

So how do you know that your enterprise is really providing the experience your customers yearn for? Can we derive a mathematical formula or an equation that helps us understand the complexity of customer experience in moderately simple terms?

Interestingly, SAP has come up with an equation that is easy to understand:

X Data + O Data = Winning in the Experience Economy

This equation helps put to rest some of the grave customer experience issues enterprises have been grappling with for a very long time. Let’s define the terms ‘X’ and ‘O’.

X – stands for experience data;
O – stands for Operational data

According to the study, if you look at customer experience, it’s all about connecting the dots between the operational data and the experience data. How do you know which is operational data and which is experience data? Determining the difference isn’t that complex but does require a deeper understanding, which we will discuss later. For now, it is enough to know that experience data is all about ‘the why’ while operational data is all about ‘the what.’ I promise we will discuss this in more detail next time!

Looking at the information above, we can write a formula for not only keeping existing customers but also attracting new customers: X Data + O Data = Winning in the Experience Economy Intelligent Technology.

Intelligent Technology: Answering for X + O

The SAP study says that, “Listening, understanding, and acting on your X + O data requires intelligent technologies. Developing technologies make it possible to gain a complete, accurate, secure picture of your customers. The Internet of Things provides a wealth of customer data, blockchain technology helps you securely store it, while machine learning and artificial intelligence enable smarter and faster analysis to make the data useful.”[/rb_sc_text][rb_sc_button title=”Download: Intelligent Enterprise” customize_align=”1″ aligning=”center” btn_size=”medium” btn_font_color=”#ffffff” btn_font_color_hover=”#ffffff” btn_bg_color=”#3b7eff” btn_bg_color_hover=”#3b7eff” btn_border_color=”#3b7eff” btn_border_color_hover=”#3b7eff” url=”https://forms.zohopublic.com/phoenixbusinessconsulting/form/DownloadIntelligentEnterprise/formperma/gw0fFJO08nSCLFH4hRxRsMTBZhlVHy_Fx3Kib1aCjJw” custom_styles=”.vc_custom_1602934488077{margin-top: 25px !important;margin-bottom: 25px !important;}”][rb_sc_text show_divider=”1″]So, what does the intelligent technology do? It powers the five essential areas of your business — digital core, network and spend management, digital supply chain, customer experience, and people engagement – resulting in breaking down silos, closing the gap between operations and experiences and transforming your business into an ‘Intelligent Enterprise.’ As an Intelligent Enterprise, your business becomes more agile, while driving new value and growth. And isn’t this why you are in business in the first place?

Let me know what you think.

By: Venkat Nanduri[/rb_sc_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The post This Equation Will Solve Your Customer Experience Issues appeared first on Phoenix Business Consulting.