The customer experience has never been more important than it is today. Why is that? Because consumers and enterprises are no longer just evaluating their needs based solely on a product’s pros and cons. Instead every purchase decision is being thought through on multiple levels, including whether or not a product is the right fit for personal and professional needs, and looking into the deeper value of a product as it relates to the bigger picture of a company. Simply put, if you are not placing an emphasis on delivering the best possible customer experience to make those decisions easier and more seamless, you’re fighting an uphill battle from day one.
“From a competitive perspective, everyone’s upping their game. Everyone’s wanting to provide that latest, greatest experience and capability for our customers. As the technologies have evolved, particularly around things you can do in platforms, the opportunity for a digital experience is much more customer-driven now than ever before.”
Mark Arnold is the Vice President of Digital Customer Experience at HPE Pointnext Service, a support and services arm of Hewlett Packard Enterprises. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Mark dives into the changing needs and expectations of customers and why the experience you give them has to rise to new levels. Plus he explains why IT support centers such as call centers are having a harder time meeting consumers’ needs.
Main Takeaways
- The One True King: The only way for companies to build a true digital customer experience is for those experiences to be completely tailored to the client or the person they are serving. This may sound simple in today’s day and age, but IT support centers, such as call centers, still struggle being able to tailor their customer service to the person they are speaking with.
- So Lonely, I’m So Lonely: One of the key reasons that IT support centers struggle with being able to personalize information is because the system is not constructed in a way that allows for the easy transfer of information. Removing the silos that are currently constructing this process is the only way to make it better.
- A New Driver for Success: From a customer perspective, the level of competition within the marketplace has risen to a point where the product by itself is no longer the reason that a customer makes decisions. Now, those decisions are being made in conjunction with how the buyer perceives the service experience and the offerings you are able to make them.
For a more in-depth look at this episode, check out the article below.
The customer experience has never been more important than it is today. Why is that? d Because consumers and enterprises are no longer just evaluating their needs based solely on a product’s pros and cons. Instead every purchase decision is being thought through on multiple levels, including whether or not a product is the right fit for personal and professional needs, and looking into the deeper value of a product as it relates to the bigger picture of a company. Simply put, if you are not placing an emphasis on delivering the best possible customer experience to make those decisions easier and more seamless, you’re fighting an uphill battle from day one.
“From a competitive perspective, everyone’s upping their game. Everyone’s wanting to provide that latest, greatest experience and capability for our customers. As the technologies have evolved, particularly around things you can do in platforms, the opportunity for a digital experience is much more customer-driven now than ever before.”
Mark Arnold is the Vice President of Digital Customer Experience at HPE Pointnext Service, a support and services arm of Hewlett Packard Enterprises. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Mark dives into the changing needs and expectations of customers and why the experience you give them has to rise to new levels. Plus he explains why IT support centers such as call centers are having a harder time meeting consumers’ needs.
Pointnext Services works with enterprises of all sizes, from SMBs to Fortune 100 companies. Its mission is a simple one: to transform the way customers engage with a business, which is traditionally through support.
“The landscape is changing,” Arnold said. “Our customers really just want that digital capability to self-solve, to self-serve, and to own their own future. So what we’re doing on the digital experience side is looking at our portal environment, our social forums, and even looking into mobile applications, where we can create a true digital environment where our customers can operate an end-to-end platform that’s integrated and has elements of A.I. layered through it.”
Arnold shared that with this reimagined digital experience, customers will have an opportunity to choose when they want to engage with HPE and when they don’t. And either way, the goal is to streamline the process and eliminate the headaches and complications that come with IT support centers, such as dysfunctional call centers.
“Historically when companies set up their support models, a lot of this was done in silos,” Arnold said. “You would have a remote delivery organization, or a call center organization, that would have a telephony stack that was a traditional landline environment. And then you might have a portal development team that was creating a portal. You would have your case management infrastructure, where you’re trying to manage all of the customer’s cases. And you might even have part of your team that works on chat, but none of that holistically is connected together. They were all built in silos. What we’ve done is more of a top-down approach in terms of looking at our environment and what technologies and pieces we’re able to put together in a way that allows end-to-end visibility and tracking.”
But to get to that point, a client has to recognize the growing need for a complete end-to-end overhaul of their service and support centers, which can not only be a time-consuming process, but a pricey one as well.
“I think [digital experiences] are not an easy investment to make,” Arnold said. “It’s one that requires a true commitment to delivering a customer experience that allows that customer to have a sense of loyalty and trust in you. And it’s about a customer-first mindset. I think some companies that struggle with this decision on the investment — and how do you look at an ROI and a payback period, and all of those elements — sometimes miss the point that without having that compelling digital experience, you’re going to lose your competitiveness in the marketplace because there’s only so many times you’re going to go through a bad support experience before you say it’s not worth it.”
To head more about how Mark Arnold and HPE Pointnext are redefining the digital experience, check out the full episode of IT Visionaries!
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To hear the entire discussion, tune into IT Visionaries here.
