“You press the button, we do the rest.” These are the touching words of Kodak’s first advertising slogan. Coined by George Eastman, Kodak’s iconic founder in 1892, this tagline almost seems relevant 120 years later. Almost. There was a time in history where uttering those words evoked an emotional sense of nostalgia. Now, unfortunately, the Kodak moment represents that moment when executives fail to realize how consumers are changing and how markets will ultimately evolve in new directions without them….
Customer Experience Should Be Designed For And Measured By What Customer’s Actually Experience
Customer experience (CX) is the new black and it is, for all intents and purposes, the catalyst for accelerated and purposeful digital transformation. In my research however, I find that customer experience is not truly a customer-first initiative. It is in many cases relegated to enterprise-first approaches to improve customer flow from an infrastructure perspective. It’s not necessarily something I’m calling out as a problem. Optimizing customer journeys is indeed necessary. But, it is not a means to an end. It is…
The Definition of Digital Transformation
The definition of digital transformation is… 2019: Digital transformation is the evolving pursuit of innovative and agile business and operational models — fueled by evolving technologies, processes, analytics, and talent — to create new value and experiences for customers, employees, and stakeholders. 2014 – 2019: The realignment of, or new investment in, technology, business models, and processes to drive new value for customers and employees and more effectively compete in an ever-changing digital economy. This is how I define digital…
4 Keys to Designing New Customer Experiences
On a cold and rainy day in Minneapolis before year’s end, I joined my Prophet colleagues at Le Meridien Chambers where we hosted a breakfast of brand champions. It was the second time this year that I was invited to speak to some of the city’s (and the country’s) most prominent companies and this time I had even more new research and ideas to share. During the two hours that we were together, I presented findings from “The 6 Stages of Digital…
Human-Centered CX: Uniting Stakeholders Across the Enterprise to Deliver a Relevant and Holistic Customer Experience
Customer experience is said to be a top business priority for most companies around the world. Many experts agree that investing in CX establishes a competitive advantage against companies that prioritize the bottom line. While customer experience is a noble and important catalyst for business transformation, becoming truly customer-centric requires an introspective approach. This takes stepping back to define what customer experience really means from the customer perspective, what they truly value and also what’s primed, broken or missing to…
Digital Transformation is Still Largely Technology-First, People-Second
Digital transformation has officially become a ubiquitous term that describes any company’s investment in digital infrastructure regardless of ultimate vision and intention. But, unless digital transformation takes a technology-second and a customer/employee first approach, investments will be unaligned with market evolution and more importantly, human behaviors, preferences and expectations. Technology is just a means to power business transformation. But technology can only get part of the job done. You need people. And, like technology, people are changing. Each time I…
Culture is Either the the Roadblock or Gateway to Digital Transformation
Executives underestimate the importance of culture in an era of digital Darwinism.  Most cultures are risk averse at a time when taking risks is the most direct path to innovation… Digital Transformation is the act of investing in people, technology and systems and processes to upgrade how businesses work in this digital economy. Technology is disrupting everything. Beyond market shifts, people too are different because of technology. As a result, behaviors, expectations and preferences are evolving. Our business philosophies and practices though…
The Opposite of Change is Conformity: A framework for driving meaningful digital transformation
Digital transformation is a buzzword. On top of that, the term digital transformation causes debate amongst those working in or studying the field and confusion among everyone else. But at the same time, digital transformation is also one of the most promising and impactful trends in business (r)evolution today. Why? It carries with it the ability to modernize how businesses work, market and serve. And more so, digital transformation offers a unique glimpse into how disruptive technologies are affecting human behavior, expectations and values. It has…
Why Mobile First is No Longer Enough; It’s Time To Think About Mobile Only Design
For the last few years, “mobile first!” has become the mantra among savvy digital marketers. But a mobile first approach seems to be more of an ideology than it is a standard in digital design. Recent research shows that marketers still invest in mobile as an afterthought or as a bolt on to more mainstream digital programs. For some reason, executives still need more convincing to properly fund and support mobile initiatives that span the entire customer journey not just…
How To Unify Your Sales, Service and Marketing Departments Around Customer Experience
Guest post by Omar Akhtar (@obakhtar), Managing Editor, Altimeter Group, a Prophet company Imagine you’re getting ready to drive your car. But when you turn on the engine, you get a mobile notification telling you that your oil needs to be changed, and it gives you a link to the nearest dealership with a 10% discount coupon. You’re left surprised and delighted by the sheer, almost magical convenience of it all. But is that event classified as a sales, service…
