Customers want better buying experiences and that will make or break profits in 2017, according to Forrester, who recently released their report, 2017 Predictions: Dynamics That Will Shape The Future In The Age Of The Customer.
Forrester is an influential research advisory firm who specializes in business and technology. Their studies are the result of annual surveys of more than 500,000 consumers and business leaders around the globe.
Here are some highlights that we found particularly interesting:
1. Business and Leadership: Business Restructuring
The report hypothesizes that more than one-third of businesses will restructure to shift to customer-obsessed operations.
With Powertrak CPQ, you can can restructure your process through customer-centric technology that makes it easier than ever for your customers to buy what you’re selling.
2. Business and Leadership: The CMO and CIO Evolution
The Forrester report predicts that 30% of CMOs will be let go for not mustering the blended skill set of design and analytics. Those who remain and who will be deemed a success will be those who leverage both the right and left sides of their brains.
Meanwhile, IT leaders are expected to connect with the customer, and invest more heavily in customer-centric technologies, including customer-experience based technologies. The more success CIOs and their teams have in these areas, the greater their prospects to be true business leaders.
Powertrak software ensures forward-thinking CMOs and CIOs are able to bridge the expectation gap.
3. Business and Leadership: Changing Leadership
Forrester notes three critical leadership aspects:
- Understanding and personalizing engagement with customers.
- Running a digital business.
- Knowing what’s needed to win in a customer-led, digital-centric market.
Axonom can help you effectively address all three by enabling customers to use breakthrough technology to build and design make-to-order products.
4. Business and Leadership: Trust Is Now Business Currency
Your customers are more aware of, wary of, and frustrated with security and privacy risk, and you will increasingly gain or lose affinity based on how much they trust your company.
Enhance trust by allowing customers the tools they need to ensure yours perfectly fits what they’re looking for before before they buy.
5. Customers Are Driving Up Revenue Risk
Today’s customers reward or punish companies based on a single experience - a single moment in time. To a greater extent than in the past, customers are willing to shift spending based on this experience with a brand; 40% of customers are this way already with another 25% are changing to this mindset.
Leverage Axonom's quoting and ordering automation technology to ensure more positive brand experiences.
6. Customer Experience: Operationalizing Emotion
Forrester notes that customers who experience disgust, anger, or a feeling of neglect during a brand interaction are about eight times more likely not to forgive that company.
Mitigate this issue by providing an interactive buying experience that ensures the highest satisfaction.
7. Customer Experience: The Next Phase Of CX
The next phase of customer experience monitoring is to be more fine-tuned. A recommendation is to focus on:
- Critical steps in journeys where customers are paying the most attention, are most anxious, or appreciate value the most.
- Distinct opportunities to deliver the best and most authentic part of your brand so a single moment can easily extend to the larger brand.
Place yourself ahead of the marketplace by giving them an immersive buying experience that allows them to integrate all aspects of your product.
8. Technology: The Next Technology Revolution
Forrester notes that three technologies will lead the way in 2017:
- Engagement technologies that will create profoundly different virtual, physical, and digital experiences that are harmonized across journeys.
- Insights technologies that will convert the promise of personalization and predictive analytics into reality and be able to operate at the micro level at scale.
- Supporting technologies that will drive new levels of speed and efficiency and underpin this next technology revolution.
Axonom delivers visual configuration and ordering tools for a more intimate, stronger engagement with your target audience. We will help you be on the forefront of this technological revolution.
9. Technology: Augmented and Virtual Reality
As computer power and the general economics of augmented reality and virtual reality improve, and as the toolsets grow and the developers become more sophisticated in using them, opportunities derived from these technologies will grow. The winning technologies and processes will not shake out in the near-term, so there will be many false starts and stops. Forrester notes that 2017 will be a period of experimentation for most companies, as a result, but some leaders will start to derive real value from them.
CPQ software is uniquely positioned to address many of the customer experience trends that Forrester laid out in their report. The speed and accuracy of CPQ software ensures that companies can bridge the expectation gap with their customers.
If you want to exceed customer expectations in 2017, turn to Axonom. We provide the technology that will help you give your customers the personalized, engaging buying experience that they demand. We will give you the tools you need to be on the forefront of this technological revolution.
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Sources
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhigh/2016/11/14/forresters-15-dynamics-that-will-shape-the-future-in-the-age-of-the-customer/3/#491cc86a5fac