Three Ways DXP Helps Improve Customer Experience
Digitalization has ignited a new level of expectations amongst today’s customers. And, it’s not going to stop. Customers expect an interaction that engages them on a personal level with assistance at every step of the purchasing journey. Everywhere and every time, they seek experience and buy experience, not mere products. Engaging customers with personalized customer experiences (CX) is no longer a choice but a necessity.
There are several ways in which organizations can respond to today’s evolving customer expectations. From personalizing existing engagements across omnichannel platforms, implementing a simplified customer journey to delivering augmented experiences with smarter technologies, possibilities are limitless. This is where Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) come into the picture. Based on the fundamental concept of unifying different functions (sales, marketing, IT, and others), DXP creates a cohesive ecosystem to deliver consistent customer experiences for the smallest of audience segments.
One Platform for All Your Data
DXP makes it possible to cover several digital touchpoints for engaging a broad array of customer segments through a seamless integration of existing and new platforms. It is a prism through which a spectrum of different datasets easily passes and is then processed into useful information. The data sources can be suppliers, customers, partners, retailers, ERP, CRM, HR portals, or any other third-party entity. Ensuring experiences that are consistent and unified across every touchpoint, DXP can radically reengineer application integration to centralize several functionalities and legacy platforms.
It allows you to build your business on a single platform and easily host multiple systems to create a unified customer experience. You can integrate data, content, and services to create a true one-to-one personalized experience for each customer by merging all (siloed) platforms like PIM, MDM, DAM, WCM, and eCommerce. The consolidated view of customer data and interactions ensures holistic anticipation of customer expectations and provides recommendations on a personal level, all the while improving loyalty and increasing conversions. The ideal DXP can also help in effective implementation of your content localization and globalization plans.
How is DXP Changing the Customer Experience Game?
DXP acts as a full package deal for companies transforming digitally to deliver better CX — it provides an architecture to digitize operations, gather valuable customer insights, and ultimately deliver the best engagement possible. Taking content management systems (CMS) and commerce platforms to an entirely new level, it uses cutting-edge technologies to meet customer expectations.
1. Multi/Cross Channel Applicability
The number of customer interaction points companies need to manage has rapidly increased and will continue to grow in the coming years. Consequently, ensuring an omnichannel digital presence requires data flow design with a flexible backend to support different capabilities and workflows of every app in use. It is not just about being omnipresent but also maintaining consistency in your interactions while adhering to specific channel requirements. Since users do not always use the same device and often switch from one device to another, the backend must offer a continuous experience.
DXP ensures you contextualized digital experiences by integrating technologies that support real-time optimization and management. It entails a high degree of emphasis on interoperability and cross-channel continuity across the entire customer journey. The DXP platform supports multiple channels through its ability to render and produce (web + mobile) views and its exposed APIs to integrate with various UIs/applications. The architecture connects internal operational systems with all digital channels - not just web, mobile, and social media, but also in-store digital assistants, kiosks, billboards, customer portals, and e-commerce. This creates cross-channel consistency in content while allowing each channel to style and render the content as required.
Using DXP capabilities to provide content or functionality to a purpose-built mobile application, and then using those same capabilities to provide the same customer-specific content to a customer service application that uses exposed functional APIs, helps maintain a connected experience.
2. Ensures a Personalized Experience
From collecting customer data to understanding profiles and creating unique content for specific audience sets, DXP is present at every step of the personalization journey. It can help deliver the best content in real-time with the right offering details. Furthermore, it is built for quick responses and flexibility so the design can be easily molded for (pro)-action against demand fluctuations in experience management.
DXP enables a connected CX by identifying user needs with data profiling and prediction. Personalizing the customer experience is possible by targeting content via an integrated commerce engine or by promotions based on customer attributes in defined customer segments; for example, conducting personalized marketing campaigns or promotional engagements based on timing or limits. This provides the ability to personalize experiences in different aspects — channel-based personalization, location or geography, behavior-based, and real-time personalization.
Enterprises are also able to manage and move segments to different scopes and classify users based on profile and organization criteria. This includes, but is not limited to, content and product recommendations. To add onto that, DXP relies on a unified customer profile that links customer accounts between the customer support application and the commerce shopping ID. By integrating DXP with traditional applications, you can utilize its content personalization capabilities and integrated commerce capabilities for improved customer engagements. Also, by connecting DXP with internal systems, you can track customer journeys and identify crucial bottlenecks.
3. Allows Integration with Existing Traditional Systems
Companies can easily integrate DXP with applications and data stores that reside within the large CRM/CX application ecosystem. These typically integrate via APIs and through existing organizational integration tooling and processes. Enabled by exposed APIs and services, it becomes possible to facilitate connected data and functional flows between the DXP’s core and other applications, thus integrating the otherwise disparate UIs.
Consolidating any type and amount of digital information across several systems — DXP solves enterprise data issues such as scattered, siloed, and messy data. It enables operational efficiency, faster go-to-market, and unmatched connectivity to external software. To top it off, a single interface eliminates re-work, increases the efficiency of processes throughout the company, and bridges gaps between data silos, media, and systems for superior consistency.
Plunge into DXP Platform Faster Than Ever Before
As businesses embrace complete digital transformation for connected customer experience, it becomes vital to armor up with right decision-making tools, relevant information discovery systems, and automated business processes. A Digital Experience Platform provides your organization with a set of centralized capabilities to produce and maintain consistent digital CX across multiple web, mobile, and IoT devices. With such centralization, you can empower your business to create, configure, monitor, and improve your CX efficiently and effectively.
DXP can help you weave a seamless customer journey, consolidate and share context across the organization, and enable team members to share knowledge to construct compelling CX across channels and touchpoints. It can allow you to connect people, data, and technology seamlessly in the fabric of digital and unleash new possibilities!
However, it is essential to investigate all DXP solutions and vendors with a sharp eye before you decide. Dive deeply into how a vendor has integrated individual applications to create DXP because tightly coupled applications that share code libraries can create scaling and support issues over time. So, aim for a DXP solution that follows the core principles of a modular, service-oriented solution. That is, applications and components that are independently deployable, scalable and maintainable, and are backed by cloud infrastructure. Over to you now.
Dietmar Rietsch
As CEO and co-founder of Pimcore, Dietmar Rietsch deals with new technologies and the digital transformation of companies daily. Dietmar is a passionate entrepreneur who has been designing and realizing exciting digital projects for more than 20 years.