EXPERIENCE²
Creating a user experience as an integrated whole, seamlessly covering the perspectives of customers, employees, and partners, enabled by all available variants of UX technology
What if we raise user experience to the power of 2? As we come to rely more on the various ways of online interaction, our expectations are rapidly evolving. Organizations need to enable virtual, mobile, and touchless interactions to engage, stimulate, and retain customer and employee attention. Consumers constantly seek that golden touch, where their personal believes are supported. Fail, and their loyalty may be at risk. Employees want to feel a sense of purpose, empowerment, and enablement. Fail, and they might easily change employer. These are rapidly changing psychographic trends. Addressed through a holistic, emotion-sensitive approach – across disciplines, channels, and business units – the net effect is differentiating and competitive. Do the math, combine it with the latest in “no friction” UX technology, and create an Experience Squared. You could have it all if it mattered so much.
Charlton Monsanto Expert in Residence
WHAT
- Virtual, mobile, distributed user experiences have become the norm for interactions involving customers, employees, and partners. With the pandemic as an accelerator, expectations in terms of ease of use and effectiveness have only been rising.
- Also, with customers, employees, and even partners becoming much more aware – and critical – of an organization’s positioning on key societal themes (such as sustainability), the user experience must echo beliefs and purposes.
- This requires a unified experience strategy that connects and shares user interaction design holistically across customers and employees. It must combine this with experience journey mapping, UX/UI technology and integration architecture built in.
- Designing an experience across the silos of customers and employee experiences requires a deep understanding of the end-to-end journey, involving the feelings, emotions and associations that determine signature moments along on the way.
- An increasingly diverse mix of UX/UI options supports all sorts of alternative ways to create intent-driven, conversational, and low/no touch digital interactions. This adds to the different dimensions to consider when creating a unified experience.
- And more is on the way, especially in the world of connected “things” (such as delivery drones and robots, self-driving cars, and autonomous stores) and the Metaverse (extending VR and AR) that will shape the future “Experience Squared.”
USE
- FILA partnered with Capgemini to launch a unified design system and streamlined its digital commerce experience, creating a seamless, API-led architecture that engages customers in the brand and drives scalable growth.
- In the cosmetics industry, Belcorp integrated Perfect Corp’s AI and AR powered virtual try-on technology to provide a personalized online shopping experience for every customer to find their perfect makeup shade.
- Continente opened Continente Labs, an autonomous retail store, powered by Sensei’s autonomous retail technology solutions to create a frictionless and seamless shopping experience.
- Ibotta, a rewards platform in the United States, enables shoppers to feel the rush of rewarded shopping simply by putting on a VR headset, selecting from one of Ibotta's 1,500 retail partners, and stepping into the virtual world of grocery shopping.
- IKEA launched a new AR design app called “IKEA Place,” which allows its users to design and customize the whole room with furniture and decorative pieces from IKEA. All products in the app are 3D and true to scale.
IMPACT
- Increased loyalty with clients, who will return for personalized, compelling, and satisfactory user experiences matching their personal interests and search for purposeful brands, products, and services that underpin their beliefs and values.
- Dealing with the limited availability of retail personnel, by creating touchless and self-service shopping experiences, both in terms of finding and selecting products, but also in terms of checking out and payments.
- Increased employee productivity as they benefit from frictionless user experiences, allowing them to achieve higher quality results without being forced into overly repetitive, boring, or error-prone activities.
- Improved retainment of employees – even in a time of obvious scarcity – by providing satisfactory and inspiring daily user experiences and acknowledging their need for a working environment that supports their societal values.
- A highly optimized supply chain performance – from consumer-initiated activities, through production, to delivery – all via a unified user experience for everyone (including partners) and a virtually “touchless” processes.
TECH
- Customer experience management: Usermind, Highspot, Coveo, Qmatic
- Real-time journey management tools: Kitewheel, Alterian, Pointillist
- Customer platform technologies: Adobe Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Service Cloud, SAP C/4 Hana, Pega, Usermind, Cemantica, Acoustic, Oracle Cloud CX Platform, Creatio, Hubspot, Salesforce Pardot, Threekit
- Virtual and augmented reality: PTC, Unity, Facebook Oculus, Microsoft Hololens
- Customer data technologies: Salesforce Customer 360, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Adobe Experience Platform, SAP C/4Hana Customer Data Cloud, Oracle Unity Customer Data Platform, Netwise, SAS Customer Intelligence 360
- Customer process management: Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce, Pega
- Mobile marketing platforms: Moengage, Adobe Experience Cloud, Vibes Mobile Engagement Platform, Salesforce Mobile Studio, Airship Mobile Engagement Platform