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Increasing Customer Engagement
1. I D C A N A L Y S T C O N N E C T I O N
Michael Fauscette
Group Vice President, Software Business Solutions
Increasing Customer Engagement
December 2012
The Internet, enabled by the proliferation of mobile devices, offers new ways of sharing and
communicating in real time through social networks and social media. New technology is creating
tech-savvy, "social" customers that expect brands to engage, interact, and provide a complete,
positive customer experience at every touch point. To engage and service these new prospects and
customers, companies need to build a comprehensive customer experience strategy. A key part of
that strategy is providing and facilitating a community where customers can share and interact with
the brand and with each other. Community management software to enable these communities is
increasingly important as a part of the brands' customer experience strategy. Companies can provide
information about products and services, facilitate peer-to-peer interaction and support, nurture
influencers to encourage word-of-mouth marketing, and even get feedback about the kinds of
products and services that customers are really looking for. In this context, companies need to
formulate a high-level customer experience strategy that includes branded communities that
encourage customers to join and to interact and engage with the brand and with each other.
The following questions were posed by Get Satisfaction to Michael Fauscette, group vice president of
IDC's Software Business Solutions, on behalf of Get Satisfaction's customers.
Q. What are the top trends in customer experience, and how do you distinguish between
customer experience as a business strategy and the technology that helps support it?
A. Refocusing businesses on building a comprehensive customer experience strategy is
growing out of a need to change the way companies engage with customers and deal with
the new expectations of tech-savvy, "social" customers. It's important to understand the kind
of change that's happened to the way people want to interact with each other and with
companies, brought about by the ubiquitous hyperconnectivity created by the Internet and the
subsequent growth of the social Web. With the consumerization of IT and the rise of the
social Web, the way people interact online has changed dramatically, and we see this trend
creating customers that want to interact with companies in a more personal, conversational
way. Given this reality, companies are recognizing the need to formulate a high-level
business strategy that provides a positive experience at every touch point in the customer life
cycle and encourages customers to join, interact, and engage with the brand.
Strategy has to be actionable, however, and processes and systems must be changed to
meet those customer experience goals. A customer experience strategy involves all
employees and every business process, but several obvious customer and prospect touch
points are very high priority as a company builds out systems and processes to meet the
customer experience strategic objectives. Sales, marketing, and customer service processes
in particular are critical in providing a comprehensive customer experience. There are a
number of different opportunities for improving the customer experience, such as tying your
IDC 1429