Experience driven Consumption – Human Centered Design + Data x Machine Learning

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Every second CxO I met , talks about customer centricity , Hyper personalized experience , targeted marketing etc. etc.. but as soon as you land into consuming services , it’s all about what I am here to sell . This is a across industry experience be it Telecom, Financial Services, Retail Commerce, I am yet to experience a very personalised service offered to me for consumption. And this is what is missing experience in Digital world , where ideally with every purchase, service providers should have deeper insight about individuals.

This made me think to revisit old  physical days world, why do I used to have preferred shops, that one guy in the shop, who I felt always knew , what exactly I was looking for. Though he didn’t have my twitter handle, my income bracket, record of my previous purchase on his finger tips but still he was able to show me things according to my taste , my mood, sentiments on that day. Reason ” being in person, he was able to empathise with me better, I could explain him in human language what exactly I need, I might be a buyer in higher bracket , but I am looking for a low budget gift for someone, but still matching to my taste” . Interestingly while I used to exit the shop, he will always come tell me ” mam you don’t buy it’s ok, but here is some new stuff, which matches your taste .. and more often than not I will end up buying stuff”, this what I want call Experience driven Consumption.

Think of any service, it’s the experience which leads to higher consumption of services, but the question is , are you only giving me an experience which meets my immediate need or you will delight me to drive higher consumption.

I believe ,this becomes harder problem to solve when it comes to digital world. Today the whole on-line world is focused on selling product/services vs experience. Even if they think of experience, it’s led by product at the center  how can I sell better , how can I show my product features better “even though few of them might not have any relevance to me as buyer, I never read them”.

This is where now IBM is starting to engage with few enterprises, who want to drive sales through experience and working with us to redefine Digital experience coupled with back office business processes, keeping customer in the center and use IBM Design Thinking approach.

Are these customer journeys , experiences , back office transformation are technology dependent ?  To the large extend yes, because emerging technologies, open up new possibility, what was not doable previously, can happen now.

Let me explain how, today when I goto any ecomm site, all I do is go apply many filters and reach to the closets match of the product I am looking for. I wanted a black color party dress , I applied color, size , price filters and it showed me all sorts of black dresses , right from casual wear to party wear . It didn’t give me an option to say Party or Casual, day or night party, didn’t know anything about my previous taste , if I’m a jazzy cloth lover or elegant one… This leads to lot of browsing, multiple sites and more often than not no purchase, because I didn’t get what I was looking for and more over service provider didn’t even know what I needed.

Now with intervention of Cognitive technology, it’s possible to generate new experiences. Service providers can enable, conversations to help me with guided buying, assess my tone of conversation to offer me differentiated service, allow me to visually search my stuff and soon read my facial expressions to access my mood.

But off-course to recommend me what I need , DATA is still the key. Important is how are we using Data to know the DNA of Customers as well as products,match these two and use newer ways to persuade customers, drive higher consumption led by exceptional experience.

Stay connected in our next series, we will talk about Human centered design in more detail followed by available technologies ..(1/3)

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