The concept of the consumer wits (CX) has risen in popularity in the media, academia and wideness a variety of industries in recent times, with some companies plane waffly departments’ names to include the term. This is expected because, as we’ve seen over the last few years, the worthiness to provide products and services based virtually the wordage of a quality CX has wilt key to organizations’ unfurled success and growth.
Understanding consumer needs is of the utmost importance when it comes to establishing innovative CXs that create unforgettable memories when purchasing a product or experiencing a brand. Companies must observe and unriddle the ‘customer journey’ from whence to end so that they can understand what those needs are, including those that customers may not plane be enlightened of by themselves, as well as in the context of when and why a particular product or solution is utilized.
While in-depth interviews, surveys and monitoring of consumer behavior, both in-store and at home, are all valuable tools in this endeavor, such activities fall short when it comes to identifying ‘unvoiced’ consumer needs. Also, the results derived from these methods may lack verism as they can hands be distorted by the subjectivity of the researcher. Likewise, the depth of insight may moreover vary depending on the capabilities of the researcher.
This is the point where a data-based tideway of working increasingly powerfully is recommended. In wing to providing greater objectivity, it can help to prevent those unvoiced needs from staying hidden, leading to the realization of a better, increasingly well-constructed CX. From an internal perspective, the use of data-based insight – not one that depends on the subjectivity and competency of the person in tuition – moreover provides us with increasingly persuasive arguments for choosing a particular direction for a product or service over another.
Due to most products and services stuff unfluctuating to wired or wireless communications networks nowadays, collecting consumer usage data has wilt a much simpler matter. Moreover, people of all generations are urgently offering their opinions on the products and services they have used or tried out on social media, presenting companies with flipside valuable source of data that can be analyzed to pinpoint and understand consumer needs.
‘Upgradable’ home appliances are constantly updated with new functions and services designed to meet users’ waffly lifestyles and tastes. These appliances can moreover self-diagnose or solve unrepealable operational problems on their own, providing an expanded, increasingly user-friendly experience.
Establishing CXs based on insight gained from data utilization allows companies to diamond increasingly personalized products and services. LG’s newly launched ‘upgradable’ home appliances are a good example of this tideway in action, offering upgrades that the individual user can select and wield to tailor the wits to their own personal preferences and the unique demands of their lifestyle. LG is currently working on several projects that leverage a full and detailed wringer of customers’ device usage to provide new and personalized experiences.
However, many companies goof to maximize the usefulness of such data due to the pursuit reasons.
First, many employees lack competence in data utilization, or haven’t yet recognized the benefits it can provide, and are stuck in function-oriented thinking with regards to the minutiae of new products and services. To create a solid foundation for optimized CX delivery, both visitor leaders and practitioners should learn how to unriddle and interpret all relevant consumer data. Unfortunately, many marketers and product planners still find it nonflexible to make good use of the data they have, relying instead on increasingly traditional consumer research methodologies.
Second, data hodgepodge and wringer are conducted without a well-spoken definition of CX once in place. There are many companies that collect consumer data without a specific purpose – or logical connection to a particular speciality of the CX they want to provide – in mind. This unfocused hodgepodge of data is unseat to have its limitations, with any insight derived likely to establish little increasingly than the usability of a given product or service. The deeper, increasingly meaningful questions concerning the ‘when and why’ will remain frustratingly unanswered. Accordingly, it becomes plane increasingly difficult to proceeds the perspective needed to properly diamond the CX.
Third, there is a lack of collaboration between a company’s data analysts and the personnel tasked with understanding customers and designing the CX. Presented with the same data, variegated analysts may come to variegated conclusions well-nigh what that data unquestionably reveals. Furthermore, if the reviewer evaluating the data doesn’t have a good understanding of the industry concerned, any insight provided may prove difficult, or plane impossible, to utilize. This is why it is essential to have a tropical collaboration between field experts and analysts, and that the latter play an zippy role in wits diamond and customer-insight delivery.
Once companies can resolve any issues of poor data utilization and use the data in conjunction with other research methods, they will have a valuable resource that will enable them to diamond new, upgraded experiences. Under this perspective, LG defines the three roles of data in the age of CX, suggesting specific implementations for each.
First, data can function as a trigger to initiate CX design. Therefore, without defining the CX they want to provide, companies should try to maximize their understanding of customers by considering what data is needed and how to obtain it. This can midpoint utilizing data placid by other teams within the company, or by securing data partnerships with external providers. Only when an organization combines creativity and innovation with a concerted effort to understand the consumer can a high-quality CX be designed.
Second, data can act as an enabler, ensuring the intended CX is implemented properly. The creation, interconnection and processing of various data informs the overall CX design, as do ‘digital element’ technologies such as AI and extended reality (XR). Ultimately, in today’s environment, companies need to reinforce their worthiness to make sense of and wield data faster than their competitors, as doing so will reduce the lead time of any future CX releases.
Third, data serves as a valuable tracer for validating and monitoring the CX. Therefore, without the CX is designed and released, a data feedback loop can be used to verify whether the CX is stuff delivered as intended. This allows companies to modernize existing experiences or seize the opportunity to create an entirely new kind of CX, or plane expand into new businesses. As such, establishing a virtuous trundling encompassing data-based CX diamond and feedback-loop utilization is key to the worthiness to provide new experiences unceasingly and sustainably.
In order to truly understand customers and unhook meaningful CX innovation, companies should consider integrating robust, targeted data-utilization into their CX expansion plans from the very start. For most, success or failure in the current market environment will be unswayable by whether or not they can create the whilom virtuous cycle, and how much faster they can run that trundling compared to their competitors.
With its ongoing, company-wide digital transformation (DX), LG is leading the way in CX innovation, creating dynamic, new ways of doing things as a merchantry and delivering unmatched value and convenience to its global customers.
This story was edited from an editorial full-length vendible published in The Electronic Times.
By Lee Sam-soo, CDO at LG Electronics
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