It’s the world of instant gratification. The world where the customer isn’t just right, they’re monitoring your responses, tweeting their outrage and costing the inattentive business money. The ‘2020 South African Digital Customer Experience Report’, by marketing agency Rogerwilco, underscored the power of the customer with percentages that should give any brand pause for thought. Negative experiences are shared with friends and family by 56% of customers, but 39% simply never use the brand again and more than 30% report their experience on social media. When these statistics are held up against the cost of acquiring new customers (high) versus the profits earned from retaining existing ones (up to 140% more, according to Deloitte’s ‘The true value of customer experiences’), it’s clear that the customer has the power. And that power can be used to advocate for a brand, or seriously impact on its reputation.

This means that the customer must become the central pillar around which the organisation turns. The loyal customer fed and nurtured, given positive experiences and taken on journeys through the brand that feel rewarding and relevant. According to Forrester, achieving superior customer experiences ‘lies in a new customer insights paradigm: the next best experience (NBX)’. This is a combination of ensuring that your organisation is aligned throughout and that customer behaviour is contextualised to deliver optimal experiences in real-time. However, the problem is that the insights gleaned from customer data and analytics are being used disparately across multiple silos, which means that there’s no one cohesive customer view. Each department looks at t he information from a different perspective, skewing it in directions that fit the KPIs.