The global pandemic has clearly changed customer behaviours—perhaps permanently. Brands must quickly evolve their approach to address those changes if they haven’t already. Organisations can drive growth as they bridge their digital and customer experience (CX) strategy, but only if they understand and execute on the following:

1. Agility is the key to success: Reaching customers with personalised content at the right time, and in the right context, is critical for survival.
2. Connecting digital and physical experiences: Orchestrating brand experiences across digital and physical experiences fuels customer delight.
3. Use data to drive decisions: The pandemic highlighted how quickly customer behaviours can change and made clear that brands must use data-driven insights to inform strategic decision-making.

Achieving Agility in CX

It’s well-documented that the events of the 2020 global pandemic accelerated digital transformation—from facilitating remote work, to delivering products and services via contactless experiences, organisations across every industry have been challenged in new ways. Despite unprecedented disruption, the No. 1 digital transformation goal remains the same in 2021—improving the customer experience. Where brands may struggle is in adapting their strategy in a paradigm where customers are demonstrating unusual buying behaviour. The 2021 Digital Trends Experience Index, from Adobe, indicates customers across all sectors are behaving in ways that are completely unpredictable. Fortunately, there is a roadmap for organisations to better understand the new buyer journey and improve the overall customer experience.

Organisations are consumed with improving agility and increasing speed to market of products and services. Typically, agile transformation is directed toward development. To achieve true agility, you must consider it holistically. This approach helps brands overcome one of the biggest obstacles to improving their agility—an aversion to a true minimum viable product (MVP).

Organisations may embrace the concept of an MVP but often fall victim to the short-sighted view that the MVP is “not enough.” Organisational blockades frequently slow or stop an MVP from going to market. Organisations invest a lot of money and resources into agile transformation efforts, and an MVP may not look sufficient in the short term. Pressure may come from the C-suite, which needs to justify those investments to make an impact, so they try and stretch the MVP and bloat it with features to make a big splash. This approach inevitably fails because the organisation hasn’t prioritised what’s most important. The MVP should be laser-focused on specific functions or users. Then, once feedback and data on what works and what doesn’t is gathered, the product can be recalibrated.

Too often, there are silos or a perception that the product is owned by a single function. The product owner then pursues a consultation-type model with other groups as they work to get the product to market. It’s essential to have the right stakeholders seated at the table from the beginning. Your team must include expertise from functions such as marketing, product, IT, design and line-of-business from day one. Then, you can create a relatively level playing field where each member contributes to the definition, design and delivery of the product based on their area of expertise.

Sometimes, you have to slow down to be better and faster. In many cases, speed to market is paramount and being first is an imperative. But not always. Organisations should always question whether being first is really the best strategy and examine the motives for pursuing that strategy. It can be a question of relative scale. If a competitor goes to market with a new product in April, but you deliver your product in June, has that put you at a significant competitive disadvantage? Apple wasn’t first to market with a smartphone. They did, however, learn from what competitor BlackBerry delivered, and then improved upon that with a better customer experience. Sometimes, the key is to be better—not faster.

Digital vs. Analog

Today’s savvy consumer expects a frictionless brand experience, regardless of how or where that interaction takes place. Delivering a personalised experience, orchestrated across digital and physical domains, is quickly becoming table stakes. Consider this example: Your customer receives a relevant email promotion based on a previous purchase. They make the decision to purchase. Your mobile app, fueled by data-driven personalisation, guides them through the order process, making recommendations and identifying the closest location to fulfill the order via curbside pickup. The experience thus far is seamless. But when they arrive, their positive feelings about a great brand experience evaporate. Poor or confusing signage outside the store leaves them confused. The customer doesn’t know how to alert the store they’ve arrived. Almost instantly, what had been a great customer experience has turned into a frustrating one. And the brand might not get a second chance.

For all the herculean efforts organisations put forth during the pandemic, examples like this prove there’s more to accomplish. Companies quickly stood up new services and delivery models to maintain business continuity and reach customers in new ways, and consumers were willing to allow for growing pains as everyone adjusted to the unprecedented circumstances. Now, however, brands must go back to the drawing board. They must evaluate the products and services created during the pandemic and decide what should be maintained, fine-tuned or retired. Then, armed with experience and data, they can thoughtfully and deliberately construct an end-to-end digital customer experience journey. Most organisations start with the better-understood elements of personalisation, such as demographics, interests or order history. The next evolution of customer experience includes the notion of personalisation according to context sensitivity.

Organisations are recognising that they cannot make assumptions the way they may have in the past, in part due to shifting buyer behaviours during the pandemic. Leading organisations are asking deeper questions about the context of customer behaviors, taking into consideration how and where the customer is interacting with the brand. Are they on a mobile device? Is the customer physically in the store? Are they outside? Are they at home or at work? Based on this additional context, brands can create a better overall experience for their customers.