Chief Data Officer, Issue 1

THE

LEADING

VOICE

IN

DIGITAL

CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER

INNOVATION

JULY 2016 | #1

IS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IMPOSSIBLE FOR BANKS? / 10

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How Important Is UX For Publishers?

How Sustainable Is Digital?

UX has become increasingly important for digital publishers of all sizes.

If content is king, UX is coming for its crown / 6

It is generally accepted that digital is an environmentally friendly business decision - does the truism hold up to scrutiny? / 12

Digital fest la_ Content Strategy Innovation Summit

September 15 & 16 Los Angeles

Plan. Develop. Merge

Speakers include:

+1 415-604-3798

yazmin@theiegroup.com

www.theinnovationenterprise.com

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ISSUE 1

EDITOR’S LETTER Welcome to the 1st Edition of the Chief Digital Officer Magazine

Anyone involved in digital will be so accustomed to the notion of ‘going digital’ that it’ll probably bore them even reading it. The necessity of digital transformation will by now have been impressed on even the most stubborn of boardrooms, with businesses making oftentimes clunky steps toward digital proficiency, and any company that neglects that shift will be left to gather dust.

And changes within business reflect developments in the wider world.

Over 46% of the world’s population now have access to the internet, compared with just 25% as recently as 2009. Digital technology is sweeping into emerging markets, and the companies furthest down the road of digital transformation will almost invariably find themselves agile enough to outmanoeuvre the competition.

As digital’s importance has become recognized - or, in many cases, accepted - so has the importance of the CDO within an organization.

This year has seen many major incumbents appointing CDOs for the first time, however belatedly, and the role is pushing its way into the boardroom as CEOs realize just how intimately tied corporate strategy and digital now must be.

Naturally, the shift to mobile has made the job of the CDO even more multifaceted. Data consumed on mobile recently overtook that of desktop, video content is now the primary medium for customer engagement, and companies have had to either respond to the changing habits of their customers or risk being left behind. The job of the CDO is not one of revolution - particularly within larger organizations for which change is more taxing - rather it is one

of steering the ship, ensuring the company sticks to its vision, and overseeing the proper use of data and analytics to drive decision making.

In this issue, we look at the importance of UX to digital publishers, whether large banks can properly achieve digital transformation and the CDOs role in achieving permanent transformation.

We also assess the sustainability of the digital revolution and the veracity of the generally accepted idea that ‘going digital’ is an environmentally friendly move.

Charlie Sammonds managing editor

As always, if you have any comment on the magazine or you want to submit an article, please contact me at csammonds@theiegroup.com.

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Digital fest la_ Digital Marketing Innovation Summit

Refining your Marketing Strategy to Enhance Customer Engagement

September 15 & 16 Los Angeles

Speakers include:

+1 415-604-3798

yazmin@theiegroup.com

www.theinnovationenterprise.com

contents 6 | HOW IMPORTANT IS UX FOR PUBLISHERS?

14 | HOW THE CDO CAN ENABLE PERMANENT TRANSFORMATION

UX has become increasingly important for digital publishers of all sizes. If content is king, UX is coming for its crown

Digital technology moves quickly and is constantly evolving; a CDO’s work is never finished, they must simply keep the company moving in the right direction.

8 | SHOULD MARKETERS STOP GENDER SPECIFIC MARKETING?

In the modern business environment targeting marketing by gender is - on top of being morally problematic - a dated and simplistic method 10 | IS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IMPOSSIBLE FOR BANKS?

The bigger the financial institution, the more lumbering the digital transformation tends to be. Is true digitization at the major incumbents impossible?

12 | HOW SUSTAINABLE IS DIGITAL?

It is generally accepted that digital is an environmentally friendly business decision does the truism hold up to scrutiny?

managing editor charlie sammonds creative director charlotte weyer

17 | WHAT ARE THE RULES FOR BUILDING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IN A DIGITAL WORLD?

The tactics for attracting and retaining new customers have changed. By focusing on the desired outcome, Nick Ayton lays out the new rulebook.

22 | WHY MANY MAJOR COMPANIES ARE APPOINTING CDOS

As digital transformation becomes a necessity rather than a choice for all companies, the role of the CDO has never been more important.

WRITE FOR US

Do you want to contribute to our next issue? Contact: csammonds@theiegroup.com for details

| assistant editor james ovenden | | contributors sam geapin, rose johnstone, nick ayton, stuart

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How Important Is UX For Publishers?

Sam Geapin, Marketing Expert

IT’S BEEN OVER 20 YEARS since Bill Gates wrote that ‘content is king’, and, although now cliched, it still holds true. Creating engaging, quality content has proven the holy grail for publishers looking to not only build but maintain their reader engagement.

However, as they look for new streams of revenue in the digital age, publishers are struggling to strike a balance between monetization and user experience, with ads often existing to the detriment of the page and putting readers off.

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Engagement is based on three key metrics - unique visitor count, length of time spent on site, and number of satisfied, returning visitors. Performing well in all three allows publishers to charge more for ad space, and in turn create more quality content. And this quality content is still arguably the most important factor in a site’s performance - hence why companies will employ editorial teams to drive traffic to their site by creating it - but user experience (UX) is finally getting due recognition. With UX affected by everything from advertising placement to loading time, online publishers have been forced to reassess their monetization schemes.

The rise of adblocking software has emphatically reinforced the perhaps obvious notion that users are not happy being bombarded by pop-ups, banner ads, video ads and other such content-spoiling techniques. According to estimates

by PageFair, 200 million people now use ad blocking software, a number that has more than doubled in the past two years. Many sites will only allow a user to access their content once this software is disabled, but risk turning a visitor off with content that is then not up to expected standard, or with poorly integrated advertising.

Native advertising is growing but, as long as there is still a place for display

ads, UX is key in the difficult tradeoff between providing engaging content and expecting the user to accept advertising.

And not only publishers themselves, but publishing platforms, are catching up with the heightened focus on UX. Facebook’s ‘Instant Articles’ render content 10 times faster than mobile web articles and allow the publisher to design its own sleek, ordinarily fairly minimalist style. Facebook claim that 20% more Instant Articles are read on average, and a huge 70% are less likely to abandon the article having visited it. This is UX’s trump card. It can, perhaps more so than the quality of the content, keep visitors on the page. Facebook aren’t stopping at improved speed, either. The social media giants are working on ways to make the content more interactive, allowing for greater multimedia capability, and they are also offering very flexible monetization options.

Creating engaging, quality content has proven the holy grail for publishers

Apple News is similar; the native app offers iPhone and iPad users a compiled list of the news that interests them, with its own common yet adaptable formatting options. The loading speed is very similar to that of Facebook’s offering, and the tech behemoths are encouraging more publishers to sign up on the format.

Both Facebook and Apple are offering their sophisticated metrics on how readers engage with the content. The services raise new and potentially complex issues regarding unique site visitor count and sold ad space, and their applicability to publishers that use a paywall is questionable - in UX alone, though, the two are unparalleled.

It is, then, no surprise that UX research is on the rise. ‘Tree testing’ has users given the task of finding a particular piece on content within the site; publishers are then able to assess how easy it is for visitors to find the content that will interest them. ‘Card sorting’ takes perhaps the opposite approach, asking a user to both sort and label categories, placing content as it makes sense to them. The publisher can then build a picture of how intuitive their site is and make changes accordingly. That this research takes place is evidence enough of the increasing consideration given to UX, and user reaction to a well designed site vindicates its necessity.

UX will not replace content as the key factor in user engagement, rather it will continue to supplement it. When the term ‘user experience’ is boiled down to its most basic, it is simply what being on your site *feels* like.

UX is an integral part of how a user is consuming your content, and the current pace of change will see any underdeveloped UX feel not only dated but irksome; ensure yours is slick.

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Should Marketers Stop Gender Specific Marketing?

Rose Johnstone - Digital Evangelist

A RECENT SURVEY of 8,000 adults conducted by the Fawcett Society has found that people do not want to be ‘boxed in’ on gender issues by retailers, and called for an end to the marketing of products specifically towards males or females. They argued that such marketing enforced gender stereotypes, and almost half of respondents expressed the belief that gender was more fluid than simply being confined to men and women.

This has long been in an issue in children’s toys, and a number of companies ended gender-biased marketing in their toy departments some time ago. Toys R Us pledged to stop marketing toys as exclusively for boys or girls back in 2013, while WalMart, Amazon, Tesco, and many others, have done the same. Towards the end of last year, Target decided to join them, albeit arriving slightly late to the gender-neutral party. This has brought the issue to the fore once again, and raised the heckles of conservatives who believe that in doing so, Target is helping to erode family values.

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A statement by Target set out its reasoning simply, saying: ‘Historically, guests have told us that sometimes — for example, when shopping for someone they don’t know well — signs that sort by brand, age or gender help them get ideas and find things faster. But we know that shopping preferences and needs change and, as guests have pointed out, in some departments like Toys, Home or Entertainment, suggesting products by gender is unnecessary.’

How toys are labelled and displayed affects consumers’ buying habits, with many parents uncomfortable buying a pink toy for their son, or their daughters one labelled as ‘for boys’.

The impact of color is dramatic, and can taint whether or not a child will play with a toy they may otherwise play with if it was marketed differently.

This was reinforced by a 2014 paper co-authored by Dinella, which argued that color can be used to manipulate children’s perceptions of what toys they should play with, and found girls far more likely to opt for traditionally male toys if they were pink. This is not a preference that we are born with.

Most cognitive research suggests that all babies actually prefer blue, and any preference girls may have for pink is conditioned, usually arising around the age of 2 years of age, and becoming more pronounced through early life.

Forcing gender roles has many problems, and can hinder child development in ways that have long term implications for society as a whole. Dr Elizabeth Sweet, a sociologist studying children and gender inequality at the University of Californian, noted that: ‘Studies have found that gendered toys do shape children’s play preferences and styles.

Because gendered toys limit the range of skills and attributes that both boys and girls can explore through play, they may prevent children from developing their full range of interests, preferences, and talents.’

This has tremendous implications, and correlates directly with inequalities seen later in adult life. Research shows that by late primary school age, children have already assigned job roles that boys do, and job roles that girls do. These sort of ideas do not leave you easily. Social scientists further argue that toys designed to encourage spatial awareness, which are traditionally targeted at boys, encourage children to go into careers in math, science or engineering. The negative impact of this is already seen in STEM, where women make up as little as 20% of the IT industry and just 13% of all STEM occupations compared with approximately 40% of the total global workforce.

It is not just from a scientific sense that gender neutral toys make sense, though. Walmart and Target are not, after all, charitable organizations whose primary duty it is to enforce or get rid of gender roles. They want to make money. As Target noted in its statement, customer habits have changed. Consumer surveys have shown that when it comes to twoincome households, it is fathers who are increasingly buying the toys over mothers, meaning a bigger push towards construction toys and the like, as they evoke strong feelings and emotions in men. Across marketing, we are also seeing a push to give more power to consumers, and Tom Meyvis, a professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, notes that removing gender labels from toys hands more control to the customer, allowing them to ‘decide for themselves what is the ideal product for their son or daughter, rather than being told this is the category your child falls into.’

This is a controversial and emotive topic. The comments section of various conservative publications, such as the Daily Telegraph, are filled with people who believe that a genderneutral shopping experiences is part of some Marxist conspiracy to erode traditional family values. However, if undertaken for business growth reasons, then perhaps it has less to do with family values and more to do with common sense.

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IS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IMPOSSIBLE FOR BANKS? James Ovenden - Assistant Editor THE BANKING INDUSTRY generates in excess of $1 trillion profit per year the kind of profit that tech startups would obviously love to get a piece of. It is, however, possibly the industry most resistant to technological disruption. Since the first mortgage was provided in the UK back in the 11th century, walls and systems have been built up to help protect them from anything that would shake things up too dramatically. The last period of real technological upheaval - the DotCom boom at the turn of the millennium - brought little change for banks.

During the eight-year period between the Netscape IPO and the acquisition of PayPal by eBay, over 450 companies attempted to enter the market with new financial services innovations. Less than five of these survive today.

It appears that the situation is changing, though. Technological advances and evolving consumer behaviors are providing tech companies with cracks to exploit while banks - slow to adapt because of their outdated structures and the increase in regulations since the financial crisis - fall behind. According to the best estimates, Asia currently has approximately 2,500 FinTech startups operating, while the UK and the US have 4,000 combined. According to Citigroup and consulting firm CB

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Insights, investment in private FinTech companies increased 60% to $19 billion during 2015 alone.

This is, of course, a good thing.

FinTech startups have created business models far better suited to the digital age, providing the necessary agility and innovative culture to best serve customer needs efficiently. According to Julian Skan, managing director in financial services at Accenture, ‘Digital disruption has the potential to shrink the role and

Traditional retail banks are like oil tankers with aspirations of becoming yachts relevance of today’s banks, and simultaneously help them create better, faster, cheaper services that make them an even more essential part of everyday life for institutions and individuals. To make the impact positive, banks are acknowledging that they need to shake themselves out of institutional complacency and recognize that merely navigating waves of regulation and waiting for interest rates to rise won’t protect them from obsolescence.’

The most pressing issue confronting banks is how to deal with disruption.

Banks are more constrained by legacy systems than FinTech firms, which greatly stifles innovation and the ability to be agile. Attempting digital transformation is necessary, but is it achievable for such unwieldy institutions to do it? At the moment, many banks seem to be flailing about desperately, starting as many open innovation programs and accelerators as possible, but they lack any real direction. HSBC, for example, hired 2 former Google employees, which looks great in the press, but hasn’t really changed anything fundamental enough for you to say they’re anywhere approaching digital maturity.

Increasingly, banks are finding that it’s easier just to acquire or partner with FinTechs and bring them in house, BBVA’s acquisition of 30% of Atom is a prime example.

Ultimately, however, the culture and the conventional operating model at the banks remain the same, and this prevents real digital transformation.

They’ve invested heavily on the front end - attracting millennials, developing point-of-sale capabilities but the back end is still years behind because they lack the infrastructure, staff and management. Traditional retail banks are like oil tankers with aspirations of becoming yachts.

What they need to do is take themselves apart, rebuild, and throw away all the waste. What they are doing is sticking a few sails on top and calling themselves yachts in the hope that people will believe it.

The ramifications of this could be severe for innovation in banking and destroy the potential of FinTech.

FinTech firms, particularly in the UK, have a tendency to sell early, and the danger is that banks, because of their inability to really do digital, will actually hamper their growth. FinTech startups dazzled by the big money being offered to them should be wary of the consequences of selling out too soon and think hard about whether it is really the best option, as ultimately it will be the customer who loses out.

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HOW SUSTAINABLE IS DIGITAL? It has been sold as a boon for the environment, but this may not be true Rose Johnstone - Digital Evangelist THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION arguably advanced humanity more significantly than any societal development that preceded it. Without it, the rapid technological developments of the 21st century wouldn’t have been possible; mass production, automation - the Industrial Revolution laid the foundations.

The vast urban centers it birthed are the focus of today’s world - 66% of people will live in them by 2050 - and the very foundations of modern economic and social models were (for better or worse) laid in those formative decades.

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The environmental impact of the Revolution has been disastrous, though. As a society we are now wellaware of the potential impact of global warming on our planet - much of which is a by-product of mass industry - and any emerging industry or technology is (rightfully) under pressure to be ‘green’ from the off. Knowing what we now know, the Digital Revolution has actually been greatly concerned with the eradication or mitigation of some of the Industrial Revolution’s most environmentally impactful aspects, and sustainable products are big business.

Importantly, sustainability is no longer a virtuous add-on for a company to cite at the end of an advert, it is now a vital competitive tool - the case for sustainability in business is not even a green one, it has become financial.

Fortune picked out a number of examples, from a variety of industries, in which sustainability has been as ‘good for business from the bottomline up’ as it has for the environment, only with more tangible results. Indeed, sustainability has a place in all sectors, and a 2014 study by McKinsey found a strong - and not entirely surprising correlation between resource efficiency and financial performance. Those with a more advanced sustainability program outperform their competition in more than just public opinion.

Companies are still slow to implement proper sustainability programs, though.

Fortune point to the fact that only one in five companies in the S&P 500 ‘had explicit, long-term sustainability goals, even though more than a third (36%) said sustainability was a topthree priority.’ This disconnect can be attributed, in part, to the general public acceptance of the importance of sustainability and the general public inaction to personally work to achieve it. But, also, the carbon footprint of a digital-first company is far more difficult to quantify than that of a traditional service-provider or a supplier of a tangible product.

More generally, the sustainability of digital enterprise is yet to have been properly assessed, and its possible to argue that the Internet raises yet more environmental issues, rather than solutions. For everyone that points out the reduction in paper use as digital’s great success, there are others to highlight the fact that even the benefits of this are disputed. ‘Going paperless’ and ‘saving trees’ are often put in the same sentence by companies looking to encourage a (cheaper) paperless system, but according to Mark Pitts, executive director of printing-writing, at the American Forest And Paper Association (AFANDPA), ‘What people often don't realize is that the papermaking process is sustainable, and claims to the contrary are misleading to the consumer.’ More than 65% of paper was recycled in the US in 2012, according to the Guardian, and forest coverage is actually up as much as 28% in northern USA, though, one could argue, this must have something to do with the drop in paper usage.

The digital ecosystem contributes significantly to global emissions - 2%, or as much as the emissions from global aviation - and its contribution is only set to grow exponentially.

The intangibility of digital information means that its carbon footprint is often an under-considered factor.

Data centers are far from the world’s greenest things - powering and cooling them costs more than the equipment itself and they number in the millions in the US alone. They are incredible power guzzlers. According to Andrew Ellis, professor of optical communications at Aston University, At least 8% of UK energy is currently used by the Internet and, by 2035, it could consume the nation’s entire power supply.

One has to bear in mind when discussing these figures that only around 43% of the world currently has access to the internet. Couple this with predictions around the Internet of Things - Gartner estimate 21 billion connected devices will be live by 2020 - and the potential amount of data being produced is astronomical. This will require yet more data centers. Smartphones and tablets use dramatically less energy than traditional consumer electronics - games consoles, TVs, etc. - but the energy required to support them is huge. Initiatives are in place aimed at improving the energy efficiency of these centers but, when their sheer number is considered, the data boom becomes a very different phenomenon. For all its incredible potential and lifechanging applications, until data storage can be made more efficient or the digital revolution solves some key environmental concerns, ‘going digital’ may actually be doing more harm than good.

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HOW THE CDO CAN ENABLE PERMANENT TRANSFORMATION digital transformation is never ‘finished’, and neither is the work of a cdo Stuart Found - Digital Commentator Where the CDO was once responsible for introducing basic digital capabilities to an otherwise ‘analogue’ business, the role has morphed into something of far greater importance in recent years. Many are of the opinion that, in some ways, the CDO’s job is to make themselves redundant. Some would argue that a fully functioning, well-oiled digital company no longer has a need for an officer driving further digital transformation.

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As the CDO performs their task and spreads digital responsibility throughout the company, their handson workload will inevitably decrease.

The role develops from top-down digitization initially, to more of a guiding role once digital capability has been properly implemented. Generally, though, companies fall into one of two camps; either they see the merits of bringing in an outsider to assess and revamp their digital processes, or are averse to the role because they believe it to be everyone’s responsibility from the off.

In terms of the expectations of a good CDO, the initial task is one of getting up to speed. The fear of being left behind currently pervades business, and a survey by Progress found that 59% of companies are worried that they may already be too late in terms of making digital inroads, and that they stand to suffer financial loss as a result. 96% of companies surveyed

by Progress see digital transformation as important or critical, too, but this transformation is not something that should ever be considered ‘finished’.

Digital is not an end in itself.

But the ‘anti’ camp should consider the long-term benefits of bringing in an expert to oversee transformation.

In very few jobs is obsolescence the goal, and a good CDO will be able to position themselves as an invaluable member of the boardroom over time.

Phrases like ‘go digital’ and ‘disrupt or be disrupted’ are overused to the point of meaninglessness, but you’d be hard pressed to find a successful company that haven’t given adequate attention to the former, and companies need to be working closely with their CDO to influence every major strategic decision made.

Rather companies should aim to achieve a state of permanent transformation, of constant adaptation with the CDO at the helm. Basic transformation is only the beginning.

If a CDO’s initial role is to successfully change the mindset of the company to one of digital focus, the ongoing task is in ensuring that wholesale transformation isn’t necessary again in the future. The industry moves, and change is only becoming more rapid; companies need to be in a position to respond to these changes. A CDO, then, can become less a revolutionary figure than a guiding force once digital focus has been properly assumed company-wide. With a good CDO, a company can be abreast of the continual changes that occur within the digital landscape, changes that can threaten a company’s position without the personnel in place to navigate them.

Essentially, the CDO steps on the toes of every other C-suite member, assuming parts of their roles under the umbrella of ‘digital transformation’ and working to improve all areas of a business with a digital focus. This is where the personality of a good CDO can be the difference between smooth transformation and friction; they must work alongside the other members of the C-suite transparently, spreading the message that they are there to make others’ work easier, rather than to strip responsibility or to complicate roles unnecessarily.

A CDO should acknowledge that the market waits for no one, and that their company must be proactive in their decision making, their changes and their execution. The role is, in many ways, one of strategy, hence the need for the CDO to work closely with the CEO, and for their goals to be aligned.

Internally, the CDO can champion a digitally focused mentality, ensuring that staff and stakeholders are fully onboard. Once this is instilled, the job of the CDO is by no means done. Rather, it takes on a new level of importance.

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Digital fest la_ Digital Strategy Innovation Summit Create a Leading Strategy to Drive your ROI

September 15 & 16 Los Angeles

Speakers include:

+1 415-604-3798

yazmin@theiegroup.com

www.theinnovationenterprise.com

WHAT ARE THE RULES FOR BUILDING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES IN A DIGITAL WORLD? Nick Ayton - Digital Disruptor

WITH THE ACCELERATION of digital business models around platforms that offer new options and experiences for the customer, the rules of engagement for attracting and retaining customers has changed. With the millennial generation looking to surpass the baby boomers in the next few years, 40% of the world population over 65 and the impact of technology as it both miniaturises and becomes more adaptable, there are new rules that apply for reaching and engaging with customers.

More than at any time before, it is easy to collect, analyze and make informed decisions about customers; create strategies for how to reach them, tactics to interact with them and build experiences to make them happy.

There are no more excuses.

So let's do this in reverse, starting with the end in mind, 'Out to In, to Out'.

RULE #1 - FOCUS ON OUTCOMES The objective from the first contact to last contact across all sales channels is to make sure the outcome - the promise your brand offers - is managed and delivered. To make sure the customer transaction/order (revenue is secured) is completed and where the organization offers support along the way to make sure the conversion happens. The design goal should be to minimize touch, eliminate delays, waiting time and reduce overall handling time that engages the customer. At the same time bring about marginal cost advantages (cost to acquire, cost to serve/service) as volumes build with the same fixed costs.

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Outcome(s) are about building and ensuring reputation is maintained, about the promises and ethos behind the brand and making sure the organization (staff and supply chain) focus on the same goal, the desired outcome = a happy returning customer. Forget conventional ROI as this is the only thing that now matters in today's economy. It is our Customers that define the success of our organization.

Competing in today's global economy is about fine margins. It is about listening, about measuring and optimizing the little things that make the difference between converting an interested browsing party into a customer that returns to buy, time and again. It is about attracting and starting the journey for those that don't yet know they want or need what you have...

Was it good for you? Were you drawn in and intoxicated? Were you delighted or disappointed? Did you give up? Was it hard to get what you wanted when you wanted it?

The User Experience (UX), the Interface, the GUI, the mobile apps.

These are the new frontiers and battlegrounds for all organizations that want to focus on delivering the right outcomes and experience for customers. A mix of gamification and visualization, a sensory journey of unlocking what customers are looking for?

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RULE #2 - BE EASY TO DO BUSINESS WITH Todays customers have choices, are better informed and want things (the process of buying) on their terms.

They don't allow excuses and mistakes that are in a digital context magnified and shared a thousand times. They expect to get and consume what the organisation has to offer at any time via any channel and using any device. It is they (the customer) that confirm/define the 'rules of engagement' and it is they who will give your organization a single chance, a view, a look, a touch, an opportunity not to be squandered.

The customer wants to and will brush against your organization sometimes softly and sometimes hard. Looking for a reason to engage, to seek answers, maybe to buy and transact or to see how your organization responds, a recognition that your organization was aware. And so the conditions to spot, to sense and respond to each 'customer brush' across all channels have to encourage participation and customer feedback.

The UX has to be simple and logical and the organization must sense not only the subtle brush of a first time first contact,but recognize interaction by offering help and support. A joined-up awareness of all customer interactions across all channels in a single view across the organization.

In my last digital business that offered Self Service Pensions & Savings, we called this aspect of sensing the right time to help customers - Onboarding.

A specialist trained team that move in when it was spotted or predicted the customer would/may need help.

These members of staff are always aware of the customer journey and interactions via each channel. All staff see all interactions and touch points with all customers, partners and intermediaries as the platform makes them aware. The Onboarding team are empowered and have the information to support, to assist and convert the opportunity, based on insight where the customer was in the specific journey, their journey.

The onboarding team were part of defining and refining the channel strategies, designing and making adjustments to each customer journey, for each community right down to individual customers, as it is they who have the responsibility to bring customers into the tent and keep them there. In a Self Service model this is called an Assisted Support Model offering a visualized journey, tools and help for the customer to serve themselves.

The systems monitor everything (flag/ alarm the issue) and the team are ready to step in at a personal level to help the conversion.

RULE #3 - DO NOT FORGET, VALUE ALWAYS HAS TO BE DELIVERED With all the tech, smart front ends, web services, portals and platforms offering the pull, the attraction, the enticement; the entire organization has to get the basics right so that it can start to focus on cost to acquire a cost to serve metrics. At the top of the list is making sure the products and services are readily available at a price quality that delivers the value (part of the outcome equation).

If the product doesn't work or is not available then the hard work to manage the touch and conversion to win the customer over will be wasted.

If the product arrives faulty, is difficult to use or doesn't deliver the promise offered then your are busted anyway.

The Product has to work, be reliable, the Service has to be well designed and of high-quality offering innovation and visual appeal that can fit with, and be consistent in, the way they are presented across all sales channels and capture devices (e.g. smart phones).

The supporting operations has to deliver the basics and do it well, do it fast and minimize mistakes and errors. The fulfilment and delivery process becomes part of the User defined experience and has options the customer sees as relevant to the outcome. Think Amazon. The supply chain, whether in-house or external, has to be in tune with the rest of the business and know and see all customer interactions. Everyone should consider themselves part of sales and marketing, including operations and vendor partners. If you don't manage them and get them into the tent with you, your organization will never completely control the Outcome or the quality of the customer experience.

RULE #4 - CONTEXTUALIZE THE JOURNEY How aware is your organization of the customer to begin with, via any channel whether it be a light or strong brush, browse or buy mode interaction? As soon as an organization starts to understand the importance and value of context it can start to design a relevant customer journey using the next level of contextual information such as location, device and social setting.

The organization starts to develop a sixth sense to manage the customer touch on each channel and starts to second guess and predict how things will happen. The key is to start the interaction and learn from it (listen and watch, monitor and record) and then use the data as insight from each channel (shared with other channels) as the picture of each customer and how they interact with the world around them starts to emerge. All staff in the organization see all customer interactions, in a single view and are empowered to make a difference.

Once the organizational level of awareness reaches a certain point, starts to feel the extent of the customer touch 'light brush' or 'hard brush' allows the organization and more important automated systems to provide the appropriate response.

Monitoring and listening, offering help or nudge the customer into the right journey (path) for them. Although this does rely on 'real time' useful and timely customer context information.

Patterns emerge and sensing the level of customer brush can be formulated as predictive algorithms. The context for attracting, converting/onboarding and retaining customers.

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RULE #5 - TREAT ALL CUSTOMERS AS INDIVIDUALS

RULE #6 - KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT CUSTOMERS

The digital world is about mass personalization in a sense peer-topeer. This is where organizations pay attention and learn about lifestyle and behaviours of individuals. It is no longer about B2B or B2C in a sense of reaching communities and grouping experiences with predefined outcomes. Everyone wants to be treated as a special customer and wants to believe the entire organization is interested in only them (at that moment) and delivering the best outcome for that individual.

We are programmed to want to be treated fairly and most of us crave that attention as a paying customer.

So who is your organization targeting and why? What are the demographics telling you? How much data do you have on your current customers, their preferences and how to reach them?

Is your data historic transactional information only? Are your customers tech savvy and through which channel(s) would they prefer to interact? How will the organisation extract value from the customer and monetize the relationship over time?

Our preferences matter, our likes, dislikes and preferred channel, payment type, flavour, colour, temperature, seat/table, device, all provides context to define the type of personalized support for each customer at each stage of the journey.

Once there is broader context, this opens up the opportunity for predictive analysis in an effort to get one step ahead of the customer, this is an organizational state of know before the customer realizes, moving things along with the offer of help and support at the right time, to sense what they need and when.

Digital is really about the segmentation of markets down to individuals so that your can get to recommendations, something we are already comfortable with from our interactions with Amazon, and one of these most sophisticated algorithms ever designed. Staff should know and see all and are trained and allowed to step in when they sense the need to help, divert or save a customer journey that is drifting or not working. The organization maintains a high level of sensory awareness about customers and through sophisticated platform designs able to predict the customer is now commonplace.

The User Interface should demonstrate how much you know, care and want to help your current and target customers.

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What do you mean you don't know?

How does the organization intend to 'brush' the customer? Has the organization defined customer maps, journeys and path(s)...? Is the organization able to sell products and services all paths through all channels and get a single view? How does the organization go about getting customer attention, to pull them in to start the dialogue, manage the first contact, to start them on the journey, a journey designed for them?

Welcome to KeaYC (Know everything about Your Customer). A consolidated view of all customers and touch points, interactions and history. This is about data analysis on a large scale. It is about dumping the past and starting afresh with new sources of information about customers and committing old tech to the junk heap.

This goes beyond Big Data, CRM, Enterprise Marketing and will involve creating your own set of insights around algorithms that are designed to deliver your organisations UX and CX. Welcome to the world of user experience and customer experience design, the new frontier in competitive advantage...

Digital fest la_ Digital Design & Web Innovation Summit Putting Your Customer Experience First

September 15 & 16 Los Angeles

Speakers include:

+1 415-604-3798

yazmin@theiegroup.com

www.theinnovationenterprise.com

Why Many Major Companies Are Appointing CDOs Sam Geapin - Digital Marketing Expert

THE CONCEPT OF ‘DIGITIZATION’ within business should not be new to anyone, but a surprising number of companies have been slow to update their processes. In a world evolving at a never before seen pace, the notion of ‘going digital’ is more than a buzzword for management consultants to throw around, it is a matter of urgency. And companies are beginning to understand the necessity for a Chief Digital Officer. The CDO is, in a sense, today’s Chief Technology Officer; a vital cog in the machine that so many companies have up until now, neglected.

Earlier this year, IBM appointed a CDO for the first time, in what is something of a declaration that they are a company - perhaps naturally given their product - that are committed to moving to digital. Former AOL president and former CEO of web advertising company Razorfish, Bob Lord, has been appointed by the computing giants to run its digital sales and marketing, its developer ecosystem and its digital platform. In a statement circulated to employees at the New York-based multinational, the company said the appointment will

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‘accelerate and scale all aspects of IBM’s digital presence, operations and ecosystem.’

IBM’s appointment follows a wider trend of some major companies appointing CDOs - often for the first time. The likes of Nike, Samsung and the New York Public Library have all appointed CDOs in the first half of this year. Since January 1st, we can include companies of the scale of Voya Financial - an $11 billion giant - and GE Oil & Gas - a company with over 15,000 employees. So, clearly, the

role’s importance is becoming properly recognized. Starbucks has a CDO, as do Luis Vuitton and Cisco, and you should too.

The likes of Nike, Samsung and the New York Public Library have all appointed CDOs in the first half of this year.

Put simply, the CDO’s role is to take remaining ‘analog’ areas of a business to digital, which will not only streamline business processes but will open up new areas of opportunity. In order not to be left behind by trend-setting and up-to-date competitors, all companies should be conscious of their transformation to digital - not just as a matter of getting ahead or keeping up, but one of survival. And a dedicated CDO is the most effective way of ensuring the change is efficient and smooth. In 2012, Gartner VP David Willis said: ‘the Chief Digital Officer will prove to be the most exciting strategic role in the decade ahead,’ and his prediction was not as hyperbolic as it may have first seemed. As ‘every budget [is] becoming an IT budget’, allocating funds for a dedicated officer is now more vital than ever.

Below, we look at four key reasons why a CDO is such an important thing.

Customer demand Unparalleled by any advancement in recent decades, mobile technology and online technology is shaping how consumers behave, and the industry is moving far too quickly for some companies to keep up. Services that combine both social media and local searches are becoming the norm, and if your business doesn’t in some way react to the move toward mobile internet access over desktop, you risk missing a huge portion of the market.

Your customers and their habits are changing, and you should be too.

Building a clear vision A digital strategy is at its strongest when the company creating it has a clear vision. The idea of ‘going digital’ only works when there is a clear strategy in place, and the role of the CDO is to bring everyone together, utilize their cross-channel experience and lead the company towards the same goal. The CDO is now the ‘transformer in chief’, and they are expected to manage and coordinate wholesale changes to a company’s processes. Without one, digital strategy risks being designed too much by committee.

Data and analytics The necessity for using data and analytics in your day-to-day tasks is nothing new, but a qualified CDO will have the tools and expertise to ensure that you are using them properly. Many companies boast about their use of data, but without an expert they risk going in blind. Data analysis can help you identify customer behaviour and how to best exploit it, but the majority of data use is ‘dumb’. Determining behaviour is all very well, but analyzing the motives behind that behaviour is where the true value lies; a CDO should have the tools to do so.

Don’t be left behind And most importantly, in the world of business, sitting on one’s hands is by no means a safeguarding measure; it is potentially disastrous. Almost every area of business can or already has been digitized, and many argue that the CDO will become so important as to warrant a space at the boardroom table. The CDOs job is not simply to fit in with the current digital trends or to get a company up to speed - though that may be the initial job description - it is to recognize the now permanent importance of digital and to find new ways to exploit the changing landscape. Whether you are looking to digitize, or to open up new areas of influence through a clever digital strategy, appointing a CDO may well be the best course of action.

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