Episode #57: DCFTS 3, A Look at Digital Transformation Capabilities

Part 3 of our deep dive into the Digital Customer-First Transformation System. Yesterday we looked at the “why” of digital transformation. Today we explore the “what.” It’s all about mapping the desired company outcomes to desired customer experiences in a way that’s human and real, creating experiences that show your customers that they’re recognized, appreciated, remembered, and loved.

Click here to view the Digital Customer-First Transformation System Capabilities Model (pdf, 270KB)

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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

All right, all right. All right. Here we are for the CXM Experience. And as usual, I am Grad Conn, your host CXO, chief experience officer at Sprinklr. And I’m actually super looking forward to today’s session, I think it’s gonna be super fun. Today, we’re continuing our series on digital transformation. And we’re talking through the Digital Customer-First Transformation system that we’ve had for many years at Sprinklr. Based on a lot of work that we’ve done with clients and customers and is a pretty cool way of thinking about how to optimize your organization. So we’re gonna talk about that. The stage today I’ll be reviewing will be the capabilities model. So the capabilities model, I’ll quickly review what we’re talking about here.

Overall, we’ve got a five stage process. Stage one is the value model, what value are you trying to drive? Revenue, cost, risk, how are you trying to optimize those? Stage two, what we’re going to talk about today is the capabilities model. Stage three, one of my favorites is the maturity model. It’s a really awesome way of really understanding how you rank on the maturity scale, great way to get alignment from your peers on where everyone sits and get everyone on the same page. Then there’s the ROI model. That’s, a fantastic one, because it really helps you understand how to drive value in the organization so people are able to appreciate the effort of the transformation. And then a whole bunch of stuff around what to do. So functional use case model, the operations model, and a reference architecture. So we’ll go through all of those.

But today, we are talking about the capabilities model. And the capabilities model, it’s pretty detailed, so I’m not gonna go through every single element of it. As usual, I will have this posted. So if you want to see this and read it, it will be on the Sprinklr blog, and on CopernicanShift.com, so you can find it there. But the capability model really talks about the outcomes and experiences that you want to drive. And then we basically outline those, and I’m going to go through those in some detail. Then what are the use cases that help deliver those outcomes and experiences? And then what are the people process and technology steps that are necessary to make that happen? People, process, and technology. It’s a great structure, many people use that structure to understand how to do things.

I would say that the challenge in a lot of cases with these digital transformation projects, is we start with the technology, then wind our way into a process. And then we start thinking about the people. And of course change is hard. And if you leave people to the last, it’s unlikely to succeed. I’ve used this stat before., but amazingly, when people are required to change their lifestyle, and their habits, typically say after a health event, like a heart attack, only two out of 10 cases do people actually make the changes that are required to help them live a long, healthy life. So when our lives are at stake, we still don’t like to make change. So certainly, making changes in the company are very hard to get people motivated behind.

The great thing about the Digital Customer-First Transformation system is it helps align everybody and get everyone on the same page, but also takes it out of the realm of we’re all about transformation and puts it more into the realm of we’re delivering results. And because people are measured and paid by results, easier way to get people aligned to it, and people tend to get more excited about it. People will tend to resist something, which is hey, this project is all about change. Even when you put up banners about change, and you talk about change, it’s better to change them to be irrelevant, all that kind of stuff. People will nod but they’ll still resist it. But if you say hey, we’ve got a way to add an extra 100 million to our bottom line next year. And your bonus is going to get bigger. People get that very quickly. So that’s why this is a great process to go through.

I want to talk a little bit about outcomes and experience, I’m going to start there first. And I’m going to tell a little story about comedians. And I’ve told this before, but it’s a great story. And it’s more and more relevant all the time. So I’m going to wind that into this as I go through it.

Let me just start with the way the outcomes and experiences are outlined. The way we’ve got it set up is that we’ve got a company outcome. Think of that as a business related outcome. And we’ve got a customer experience. So a desired company outcome and a desired customer experience. And they’re linked. I’ll give you a couple examples.

So desired company outcome: We know who’s talking and what they’re saying, and we can respond appropriately. Very good to have that. Desired customer experience: I am heard. I am heard. It’s really not as common as it needs to be in our society.

All right, next one. Desired company outcome: we know how well we’re doing today, and we can gauge our progress over time. That’s pretty straightforward kind of company objective. Desired customer experience: I enjoy interactions with this brand more, and they’re more meaningful to me. Think about these expressions, I enjoy interactions with this brand more, and they are more meaningful to me. Very personal. You can say that about your friends too.

Desired company outcome: We tell consistent stories that are personal and relevant. Desired customer experience: I am remembered, preferred, and loved. Remembered, preferred, and loved. Now we’re getting into some pretty deep stuff here. You know, the whole thing around customer experience, you can get buried in a silt layer of technology and acronyms and buzzwords, but… I’m remembered. That is deep. That is deep. That goes to the core of the terror that lives inside every human, which is to be forgotten. Our mortality is our weak spot. We believe we’re the only species that understands our timeline, understands our own mortality, and it sits there ticking. Will I be remembered? Will I have made a difference? Will people know that I was here. I think Apple does a great job in this. I’ve often said that Apple really is selling immortality. That’s really what they’re selling. And that’s why their focused on creative and their focus on creation is so brilliant. Because my creative will live on beyond me. It’s very powerful. I’m preferred. People prefer me, people like me, people want to be with me. That’s ticking at the heart of every insecure human out there. And then of course, I’m loved. I want to be appreciated. Again, everyone needs that, everyone needs to be loved.

So I’ll keep going. So desired company outcome: we immediately recognize every customer regardless of where they touch our brand. And I think the one thing I’m probably going to change as we evolve this is the word customer. And the difference between CRM and CXM is not just the X and the R. So, in CRM, its customer relationship management. But what that implies is that the person is known to us, right? The person is already a customer. In CXM it’s consumer experience management. So the consumer may not be a customer, the consumer may be someone that we are just interacting with or want to interact with or someone that we know. Someone that’s interested. That’s a big difference. And I would say that we immediately recognize every consumer, regardless of where they touch our brand, and then the desired customer experience is: I’m recognized and appreciated. Same thing.

Desired company outcome: we have an army of people who show support and respond to us. Desired customer experience: I’m proud to be a brand loyalist. I told the story last week of what Subaru is doing with their Subaru ambassador program. I said I put a tweet out there saying I’m looking for an SUV. An army of Subaru loyalists messaged me and said you should take a look at a Subaru. You’d be crazy not to after that. I’m proud to be a brand loyalist. We often underestimate this, we often underestimate how proud people are to buy our brands, and to be associated with our companies and how easily they’ll endorse us and give us the help we need to keep growing. For me, I know there’re a number of brands that I don’t want them to go out of business. So I’ll easily advertise for them and talk about them. I’m a big fan because I want them to be around and I love their business.

Desired company outcome: we can leverage social engagement intelligence to deliver better customer experiences. Desired customer experience: interactions with the brand help me and make me smarter. Make me smarter. If you can teach someone and someone feels like they’re learning from you, really deep loyalty, and something that people value very highly.

Two more, and then we’re gonna switch gears a little bit. We directly reach and engage more of the right people, that’s the desired company outcome. Desired customer experience: The ads and other stuff this brand sends me are for me and help me along my journey. More than 70% of people now expect and prefer personalized advertising. They want it to be targeted to them. They know that you know enough about them or that you should know enough about them that you don’t need to give them depersonalized advertising anymore.

Finally, our brand reputation and equity is safeguarded, and customer data is secure –risk management. The desired customer experience: I control how my data is used, identity is protected, and I am respected. So privacy is a benefit to if you do it correctly. People feel like they’re respected. And they’re valued if you do that the right way.

So let me talk a little bit about all these desired customer experiences, and tell a quick story about comedians. And we’ll come back to the capabilities model. I’ll talk a little bit about how the use cases support these outcomes. And I’ll spend a little bit of time on people, process, and technology in our next show. But on this one, I’m going to finish up with all this emotional stuff. So I am heard, they’re meaningful to me, I’m remembered, I’m preferred. I’m loved. I’m recognized, appreciated. I’m proud. I’m smarter. These are, these are what you want to go for in customer experience.

The tricky thing is that you can’t tell someone that you’re going to make them smarter. You can’t tell someone that you love them, just generically, you have to show it. I think it’s really hard for brands today, because brands have mostly grown up in the broadcast age. And in the broadcast age we got complacent with this idea that we could just tell people what to think about us. Got our message, got our core communication objective, I’m just gonna tell you what to think about me. It’s not gonna work because in the age we’re in now we’re in the conversation age, which quite frankly, is the age we were in before broadcast. We’ve always been in the conversation age. Humans for tens of thousands of years have preferred conversation to broadcast. Broadcast just introduced mass. Now we’ve got mass and conversation again.

So in a conversation age, you can’t just tell people stuff and expect them to believe it. You think about how you have a conversation with a friend and you draw a conclusion about that friend. Someone will say, how’s your friend doing? Did you have a good lunch with Rob today? Yeah, he seemed… he seemed good. Oh, just good? Yeah. And then the other person will start to talk about why this and that. You know, Rob may or may not said that. May not have communicated any of those things, but you pick it up. And so people pick up things from brands.

Let me give you this example. All comedians have the same communication objective. I just want you to think about it for one moment, actually, before I tell you. So all comedians have the same communication objective. Think about how a typical creative brief is written. The communication objective will be written something like: to convince people that… blank, right? So, if I’m Tide, I want to convince people that I get the tough dirt better than any other detergent. That’d be a good example of a real communication objective. So what is it for comedians? To convince people that I am funny. Every comedian has the exact same objective. Now, the other part of the creative brief, like the reason why, and the brand character, they’re different. Comedians approach the way they communicate that differently, and they all have different personalities. But they all have the same objective. They want people to think that they’re funny.

Alright. So if a marketer were to say, Hey, I’m going to be a comedian, they would take that creative brief and they walk up on the stage. And they’d say… well, I know how to do this. I know how to communicate a message. I’m going to go out and communicate the message. They stand in front of the microphone and go “I am funny.” That’s the message. “I am funny, I am funny, I am funny.” I know a frequency of around seven is when people start to really grok a message. “I’m funny, I’m funny.” Maybe I’ll hand out some flyers because they know multimedia works. “I am funny.” Maybe I’ll ask Randy down there in the front. Hey, Randy, can you give me a little testimonial? I know testimonials work. Tell everyone that I’m funny. Randy goes “yeah, Grad’s really funny.” Perfect. Thank you, Randy. “I am funny. I am funny. I am funny.”

Okay, what happens at the end of that performance? People leave, and someone goes up to them and says, hey, how was the show? It was interesting. Was the comedian funny? And, you’re like, Well, he said he was. You got the message, right? You got the message. He said he was funny, but I don’t know if I believe it. And it’s this idea of how people believe and especially how they believe around emotions. You cannot tell someone how to feel. They’ll pull that out themselves.

So what does the comedian do? Much smarter about this. The comedian goes on stage, they tell a joke. And the joke is a stimulus. It’s a stimulus that they send out. And you hear the joke. And hopefully you laugh. And while you’re laughing — think about this, you’ve done this yourself — while you’re laughing, you think to yourself, Wow, she is really funny. But you made that conclusion on your own. No one told you to think that way. You’ve made that conclusion on your own. Afterwards, someone will say, How was the show? And you’re like, Oh, my God, she was hilarious. I couldn’t stop laughing. She’s really funny. You love her. And have you ever had someone say, Well, what was she talking about? What were the jokes? And you never remember, right? Well, I don’t know. There’s like a mother in law and an octopus. And like, I can’t remember. I don’t remember the jokes. I remember how I felt. I remember what I concluded.

And this is the second part of experiences. People may not remember how they heard about your brand. People may not remember how they interacted with your brand. They’ll remember how you made them feel. No one ever forgets how you made them feel? That’s a famous Maya Angelou quote.

So as you think about your outcomes and experiences that you want to drive, think about it in terms of the comedian model, which is, what do I need to do to get people to feel a certain way? I can’t tell people to feel that way. I have to get them to go there on their own. People love Zappos. Does Zappos ever tell people to love them? No. What Zappos does is they behave in a way that makes people fall in love with them. You’re gonna make people fall in love with you. It’s not that easy.

So, it was a deep show today, wow! Who would think that the capabilities model in the digital transformation, we would get so personal. That’s what it’s all about. So today, we’re gonna finish and we’ll pick it up later. For the CXM Experience, I’m Grad Conn, and I will see you next time.