8: Accompanying Digital Resources to Support New Experiences

Raising the effectiveness, capacity and sophistication of the customer experience is the most common goal for implementing digital technologies in ways that accompany existing physical resources. This digital edge relies on the use of digital technologies to provide information, automation, analytics and integration support across the organization’s channels, products and services.

Digital technology accompanies human resources to facilitate integrating channels and physical operations, giving an organization a level of customer service integrity. This is critical for customer-facing roles required to know just the right things about customers at the right time to deliver superior service. The alternative is to require customers to navigate and re-initiate their experience every time the company transfers a call or a customer navigates across channels. Capabilities of this type, where digital resources accompany physical activities, generally concentrate on improving the customer experience and performance within the outline of the existing business model, described in Figure 8.1.

Figure 8.1. The Accompany Model of a Digital Edge

Digital technology plays a central role in creating a customer experience edge. With more than 90% of U.S. consumers online, many now access the Internet through mobile devices, social media, online chat and other real-time communication channels, according to a report by J.D. Power and Associates.1 Digital technology has increased customer expectations about their experience, according to this report, as more customers demand real-time response and one-contact issue resolution.

CIOs and business executives recognize the role of technology in the customer experience — they ranked it as the greatest area of opportunity for technology innovation.2 Technologies such as social media, big data analytics, digital marketing and mobility represent digital resources that frequently accompany and integrate company channels.

Digital Technologies Accompany CDW’s Account Managers and Channels to Offer a High-Touch Experience Rather Than Commodity Services

CDW uses digital technology to accompany the abilities of its account managers and provide a high-touch experience to smaller businesses, giving them the same level of service, relationship and selection expected by large corporate companies, at a profitable price.

CDW is a leading provider of technology products and services to business, government, education and healthcare. Founded in 1984 and headquartered in Vernon Hills, Illinois, the company is ranked No. 32 on the 2011 Forbes list of America’s Largest Private Companies and No. 270 on the FORTUNE 500. CDW offers in excess of 100,000 products from more than 1,000 technology brands.3 At the close of 2011, the company had more than 6,700 employees and sales of $9.6 billion.

Conventional thinking was that it isn’t practical to offer high-touch service, as the cost would require higher profits and larger volumes that were only available by serving large corporate customers. The small and midsize market is diverse and hard to aggregate and individual customers place modest-sized orders. CDW’s competitors’ approach to the midsize market was to match the cost of the channel with its presumed revenue and earn the profitability best suited for first-generation Web portals, online catalogues, digital ordering and customer service oriented toward resolving errors.

CDW addressed the market differently. It realized that midsized and smaller companies value high-touch service more than their large corporate counterparts, which often have expansive IT departments to manage technology. The market was there if CDW could find a way to resolve the contradictions required to bring high-touch service to the middle market.

The company found an answer by unifying the customer experience and building it around knowledgeable account executives across 15 different communications channels. Unified communications route every customer-initiated interaction to the same named account manager. This gives customers contextual consistency in their interactions and provides account executives with the ability to form deeper relationships with their customers. Web services provide each customer with a customized view of the product catalog, presenting information according to their individual profile and integrated with procurement systems and operations.

CDW went a step further by integrating the supply chain with customer-facing technologies to provide order transparency, including serial numbers, product configurations, software imaging and registration for product warranties in the shipping process. The digitalized supply chain optimizes fulfillment for the company in the 35 million units it ships annually. The supply chain is part of the customer experience, as shipping optimization provides its more than 250,000 active customers with full visibility to their individual orders.

“We apply digitalization throughout our processes and operations to connect with customers, demonstrate our performance and inspire customer confidence in that performance,” explained Jon Stevens, senior vice president of operations and CIO. For CDW, digitization is more than moving information around an organization; it means integrating information, processes, facilities and customers in new ways.

CDW demonstrates how digital technologies can deliver a different experience by supplementing the role of account managers and the supply chain to meet the substantial customer service, coordination and synchronization demands required to keep costs under control for customers, suppliers and the company.

Accompanying Technology Expands the Customer Experience

“Tiffany service at a Target price”4 is one way of summarizing the potential of a digital edge built on the Accompany model. That requires being easy and effective to do business with by removing internal complexity from the customer interface to generate more accessible customer value. The value of that experience translates into revenue in ways one would expect, such as increased customer loyalty, rising average order sizes and increased order frequency.

In addition, the digital technologies that accompany the customer experience generate new sources of revenue when data captured in customer interactions provides content of interest to multiple parties across the value chain. United Stationers, for example, uses aggregated customer search, selection and purchase data with its manufacturers. The information creates a source of value as it drives digital marketing and merchandising services.

What’s important to note is that when digital technologies accompany physical activities and resources, they evolve the customer experience from one based on compliance with predefined standards to one anchored in digital customization and human adaptability. Furthermore, digital technology broadens the customer experience, encompassing the entire value chain. Digital technology enables an extended definition of the customer experience. Extensions include delivering on the customer’s definition and expectation of value, encouraging their ability to express themselves throughout the experience, recognizing customers in their context and ability, and supporting their ways of working.

Digital technology facilitates this evolution by making activities simpler through process integration, using channel unification to keep back-office issues out of sight, data contextualization to treat each customer as if they are the only customer at that moment in time and, finally, to eliminate arbitrary rules, policies and deadlines not consistent with a company’s brand, features, functions or promises. These factors are not new, but were lower priority when customers were forced to transact business via the company’s interface and on company terms. Digital technology has given customers choice and voice. Because of this, companies should assess how digital technology can accompany existing operations to create and sustain a new customer experience.