An important investment a digital leader will make is the right digital content, commerce and experience platform to invest in to deliver on business growth ambitions.
Previously, we discussed the benefits of taking a headless approach to content management for businesses who operate in unpredictable markets where customer channel preference frequently changes and for those struggling to attract and retain talent due to outdated and legacy technologies.
The digital experience platform (DXP) has an important role to play in delivering a consistent experience across your customer’s entire digital journey. This month, I discuss the merits of all-in-one solutions to meet the needs of your current and future business.
First, let’s explore what we mean by a DXP.
A DXP is a platform to manage digital assets across a wide range of digital channels, platforms and devices such as websites, mobile apps and customer portals. It enables a business to manage every single touch point they have with a customer across the entire customer journey.
DXPs have rich functionality ranging from content and ecommerce management to in-built personalisation, automation, CRM, CDP, call centre software and experimentation.
Through consolidating data from across multiple channels and devices into a single solution, businesses are able to gain a single customer view and deliver a more consistent and personalised experience across every interaction their business has with that customer.
So what are some of the key challenges a DXP can help enterprises overcome?
“Siloed data across multiple platforms is preventing us from truly understanding what our customers are doing”
It’s the classic conundrum of being data rich but insight poor – especially when businesses hold more data about their customers than ever before. And with the demise of third party cookies in 2024, first party data will only increase in importance to marketers.
Siloed data results in a disjointed and unfulfilling experience across both digital and physical channels for customers – and leaves businesses scratching their heads as to exactly what their customers are trying to do, or indeed, who their customers are.
Certain DXPs such as Optimizely have a CDP (customer data platform) fully integrated into their platform. The CDP aggregates data from across all customer channels, enabling businesses to gain a consolidated, or single view, of their customer, and allow for data to become accessible to everyone in the organisation.
Furthermore, the deep in-built analytics of a DXP enables businesses to determine the effectiveness of individual channels and make data-driven decisions (often in real time) as to the channels, products and customers that are top revenue drivers and are therefore of greatest value to the business.
“Our experience across digital and physical channels is disjointed and not personalised”
As we’ve heard for the best part of a decade, customer experience is the new battleground for brands, yet the customer experience gap remains vast. In certain sectors such as airlines, healthcare, retail and banking, the gap in expectation between the importance of customer experience versus the experience they receive is huge.
For instance, in a customer experience survey by PwC, nearly 80 percent of respondents said that experience was important when looking to make a healthcare-related purchase, but just over 50 percent were satisfied with the experience they received.
A DXP can enable you to orchestrate more human and personalised experiences to deliver experiences that not only meet the needs of your customers but anticipate their needs and get them there faster.
A recent report from Deloitte Digital states that in a world where price and features no longer provide a competitive edge, experience is the primary differentiator and driver of growth for brands. Indeed, 56 percent of UK consumers said they would be willing to pay a premium price for outstanding customer service. This figure rose to 65 percent in the US.
“Decisions made are based on guesswork rather than informed by data”
Brands need to evaluate what personalised customer experience should look like.
At a recent Candyspace event, Gianfranco Cuzziol, Group Head of CRM and Personalisation at Natura & Co Group (Avon, Natura, The Body Shop, Aesop), stated that brands need to ask their customers, “What do you mean by personalisation? What do you want from us?” With the expanse of technology at our fingertips, it’s important to not oversee the human element in digital experience design.
Through both qualitative and quantitative data, we can build a clearer picture of what customers really want from their interactions with a brand. Conducting customer interviews enables us to collect feedback and validate ideas with consumers, and then combine these insights with behavioural data gleaned from digital interactions.
The most advanced DXPs have intelligent components such as content and product recommendations, that automatically show customers the next best piece of content to further their customer journey. These tools base recommendations on not only historic data – show people who purchased item X, item Y – but through capabilities such as customer sentiment intelligence, customer journey mapping, multivariate testing and customer-specific pricing.
“I can’t justify the cost of multiple technologies to the business”
‘Best of breed’ technology is a great concept, however, managing multiple technologies often increases the total cost of ownership and involves an overhead of managing a number of contracts with different suppliers.
Furthermore, a DXP has rich out-of-the-box functionality from advanced personalisation to CRM, allowing businesses to deliver a unified customer experience across channels without the need to build costly and time-consuming integrations. Many DXPs also offer API interfaces through which to ‘open up’ the platform to connect with other microservices, for example specialist ERP systems.
A DXP is a smart and future-ready investment for high-growth businesses who will benefit from its powerful capabilities in the short to mid-term, rather than outgrow a digital platform and require a costly further re-platform in the near future.
“The cost of new customer acquisition is too high and we need to increase customer loyalty”
With complex personas, multiple buying segments and an expanse of products with varying lifecycles, it can be a challenge for businesses to acquire new customers at the rate they need to and at the lowest cost possible.
DXP analytics can highlight the channels delivering the greatest ROI and the customers of highest value to your business to maximise your customer acquisition budget.
But to truly understand the impact of your marketing efforts, it’s important to adopt a ‘test and learn’ mindset. Creating a culture of experimentation, democratising data across teams and then leveraging a DXP to run A/B and multivariate testing across channels at scale, enables businesses to fine tune their campaigns and roll out new product features that drive conversion, lower customer acquisition costs and increase loyalty.
Connected experiences at scale
Businesses who deliver a unified customer experience are better equipped than their competition. The ability to manage the entire digital experience lifecycle to create seamless, personalised customer experiences fuelled by deep customer insights and predictive recommendations, is a key benefit of a DXP over other content management platforms.
Investing in a DXP is beneficial for businesses who have multiple digital touch points with their customers: businesses with large, complex audiences who need to create connected, one-to-one engagements with their customers and do this at scale. And for those looking to simplify and lower the total cost of ownership of their digital ecosystem.
If you’re still unsure as to the best digital experience technology for your business, book a free technology enablement workshop with our team of experts to understand the best technologies to deliver on your objectives.
