The document outlines strategies for businesses to thrive in the digital age by focusing on customer experience and engagement. It emphasizes the necessity of transforming marketing efforts to align with customer expectations, leveraging data insights, and embracing a culture of customer obsession. Key recommendations include understanding mobile interactions and reducing friction in customer journeys to drive better engagement and satisfaction.

1. 2016 Imperatives to Help You Win in
the Age of the Customer
Sheryl Pattek, VP Principal Analyst serving CMOS
@sherylpattek

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Products are digital Markets are digital
Operations are digital Customers are digital
We live and operate in a digital world

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Empowered customers now choose their
route to you
Information scarcity
Attention abundance
Attention fatigue
Information overload

4. Your customers new reality
Perpetually
connected
Pressed
Overrun with
choices
Seeking context
Expecting consistency of
engagement across all channels

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• 18% of consumers expect to get any
information or service immediately
and in context
• 30% more will demand this by the
end of 2016

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These behaviors give rise to a new era in
business

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Led by technology-empowered customers
Institutions
Customers
Information
Price Location
Technology

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Age of
the
customer
3. Accelerate
becoming a
digital business
We’ve entered the age of the customer
1. Transform
the customer
experience
Build value around the customer,
not the channel or product
4. Turn data
into insights
2. Embrace
the mobile
mind shift

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Source: Forrester’s “Seven Steps To Successful Customer Experience Measurement Programs” report.
Customer experience is the new
competitive advantage

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1. Align the brand and customer
experience
Our view: The brand experience
and the customer experience
must tell the same story.

11. © Microsoft
“Middle Seat Mondays”
Delta exploits digital technology to transform
the flying experience

12. The mobile mind shift
The expectation that any
desired information or service is
available, on any appropriate
device, in context, at your
moment of need
At the same time, customers expect new
levels of mobile engagement

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Mobile is changing how customers
interact with your brand
Source: Farhan Siddiqi of Bank of America’s presentation at Forrester’s Forum for eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals, October 26, 2014
For Bank of America to reach 20% customer adoption
12 years – online banking
5 years – mobile banking
2 years – mobile check deposit

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Flight
Event
Anticipate and then serve customer’s
mobile moments along their journey
Airline Example — Mobile Moments
You need to understand and then win your mobile moments.
-2
days
• Change
seat
• Request
upgrade
-2
weeks
• Book ticket
• Change
reservation
-2
hours
• Check in
• Check gate
• Departure
time
• Lounge
access
• Arrival time
• Food order
• Movies
• Wi-Fi
• Duty Free
+2
weeks
+2
days
+2
hours
• Ground
transport
• Lost
luggage
• Navigation
• Mileage
points
earned
• Customer
service
survey
• Mileage
status
• Reward
travel
• Upcoming
reservations

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3. Turn data into business insights
Mine the insights that drive business success
Our view:
Data can unlock
the value that
companies need
to prosper and
enhance
customer
engagement and
drive growth.
Starbucks digs deep into
customer behavior to increase
customer wallet share.

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Every day, we create 2.5
quintillion bytes of data — so
much that 90% of the data in the
world today has been created in
the last two years alone.

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And, the available data to harness will
continue to grow
2X every 24 months
By 2020, 2X every 73 days
1100 terabytes of data = 300 books
Your challenge: develop deep insight into
customer needs; enhance digital engagement;
build anticipatory insights and delivery

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Digital Transformation – now a
necessity for business prosperity

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Digital disruption will
overhaul products,
invert category
economics, and
redefine customer
relationships
Digital disruption is better, stronger, and faster
Source: Forrester report “The Disruptor’s Handbook” October 2011

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And, they adapt to the new realities of
digital based business
Source: Forrester/Russell Reynolds 2014 Digital Business Online Survey
Bolt on
Digitally enhanced
products and services
Functional efficiency
Cross-functional
agility
Safety and cost
reduction
Speed and
innovation
Digital
touchpoints
Organizational
alignment
Technology
attitude
Digital businessTraditional business

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Digital businesses work differently
Source: Forrester/Russell Reynolds 2014 Digital Business Online Survey
Continuously exploit technology
1. Create new sources of
value for customers
2. Increase operational
agility in service of
customers

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What it means

23. Expanded
remit
of
marke0ng
Fragmenta0on
of
marke0ng
channels
Drama0c
changes
in
customer
behavior
We
are
in
the
midst
of
a
revolu0on
in
the
prac0ce
of
marke0ng…

24. 24
Customer obsession is now
your only competitive
advantage.

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What does it mean to become customer
obsessed?
A customer-obsessed enterprise focuses its strategy,
its energy, and its budget on processes that
enhance knowledge of and engagement with
customers and prioritizes these over maintaining
traditional competitive barriers.

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Customer obsession is inherently a
digital problem
Base: 58,583 US online adults (18+)
Source: Forrester's North American Consumer Technographics® Online Benchmark Survey, 2014

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Marketing must be accountable across
all customer experiences

28. Customers reach out
to get service or help
with a purchase.
Customers go through the
purchase process and
complete the transaction.
Customers research
your brand and
product — and their
other options.
Customers take possession
of their purchase, which
includes initial and ongoing
impressions of it.
Customers connect with
brands for nonservice
reasons across multiple
channels.
Customers are exposed to
the initial trigger that will
lead them to a new need or
repeat purchase of an
existing need.
…as customer needs get defined throughout the
customer life cycle

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Marketing must build valuable interactions
around the lifecycle in the right context
insights interactions
open
opportunities
for
ge
nerate data for

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What this feels like operationally:
BEFORE CONTEXT: AFTER CONTEXT:
• Campaigns
• Targeting
• Customer segmentation
• Media schedules
• Messages
• Transactions
• Interactions
• Engaging
• Customer recognition
• Customer moments
• Utility
• Value exchanges

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A simple application of context today
• Conversion rates by 375%
• Bookings by 60%
• Share of voice by 650%
…with no incremental investment

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Help people choose you

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Invest to be an anchor brand.
T
R
U
E
rue
emarkable
nmistakable
ssential

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Southwest demonstrates its brand promise

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Reduce friction

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Curate options

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Instill confidence

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Facilitate important decisions.

39. Where do
you start?

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Take actions in your planning process
› Develop your marketing plans to reduce stress, not just
coerce a transaction
• Understand your customer’s emotions and desires
› Align your brand strategy to your customer experience
› Integrate customer engagement touchpoints across the full
customer lifecycle
› Measure end-to-end engagement

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Think beyond just digital execution
Culture
Organization
Technology
Foster a customer first innovative culture
Organize to deliver immersive digital
experiences
Enable with technology
Build customer-centric integrated
processes and end-to-end metrics
Process and
Metrics

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Re-think innovation investment strategy
COCA-COLA FOLLOWS THE 70:20:10 STRATEGY TO DELIVER ON CONTINUOUS
INNOVATION

43. Back at your desk…

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Five things you can start doing today
1. Adjust your mindset to customer obsession
2. Seize the opportunity to ask your customers what they
think as often as you can
3. Put yourself in your customer’s seat and ask yourself if
you would find each engagement compelling
4. Be appropriately accurate, not perfect
5. Speak in customer focused language

45. Clear and concise, not
overly dense
Benefits & value, not
features & functions
Customer in, not
product out
Speak in customer focused language
Use second person,
not first

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Its time to raise your game
Our view: You represent the customer view of the
company. This is the time to lead the organization, not
follow it.
Start now to:
• Align your organization to the customer
• Recognize the impact of digital on the fundamentals of your
customers, your business and the way you do your work
• Take charge of the strategies that embrace these changes to
become customer obsessed

47. forrester.com
Thank you
Sheryl Pattek
+1 212.857.0707
spattek@forrester.com
@sherylpattek