IFS Digitalization CollABorative – Think Tank: Customer Centricity in the Digital Age

Date of Meeting: 22 January 2024 11:00 AM US Eastern Time 

Sarah’s Research:  

When we have asked for feedback at different points on topics that you all would like to see covered, one of the things that came up quite a bit was customer experience, customer centricity and things related to that realm. So I thought we could have a bit of a conversation on that today. I will share my screen just quickly to get us started, but again, I'm going to be relying on you guys to contribute to the conversation. So just think about that.

Slide: Customer Centricity in the Digital Age

• OK, so some of the things I thought it would be interesting to talk about as a group today are, what are the most challenging customer pressures that you guys are thinking about through the lens of digitalization? Where are you in an Omni channel approach, and what preferences do you see from your customer base. How are you balancing the incorporation of more automation and AI with maintaining whatever level of human touch your customers value and expect? And how are you using digital to track customer behaviors, trends and preferences and using that information to drive business decisions? So those were some of the points I thought it might be interesting to discuss. There are aspects of this discussion that hopefully you guys could find value in getting a sense of what others are focused on or what others are doing. Also, there could be things that come up that inform some of our future sessions, so when we have an R&D session coming up, there may be things that you all are wondering or want to see that we can focus and on. So, I'm going to go through the content I have, I think just at a high level. And then I'm going to open it up for discussion. And if we want to come back to any of that content, we can do so, and no one judged me for the appearance of these slides. OK, these are not a presentation. This is just a way to take the notes I have and make them visible to you all for the conversation.

Slide: Take e-commerce tech giants like Amazon and Alibaba, for example. What are they doing better than their competitors that make them so successful?

• So this is from a resource called IMD. And so it's talking about companies that are known for their customer experience and what makes them successful. So I like these points. They focus on solving headaches, not necessarily asking customers what do you want but asking customers about their headaches, their challenges and then focusing on solving those. I like this as well. They innovate in every dimension, while for most people innovation means product innovation. These companies also innovate in terms of process and business model. Think when we talk about customer experience, this idea of broadening the lens from just what do our customers want from what we provide to them as a product or service, but also what do they expect from the experience and what opportunities exist to refine our processes that would impact that and business model, right? Is there a way that would, in their mind, make it easier for them to purchase, consume our products or services. They make it easy for customers to have experiences with them. I think that ease and simplicity is a huge theme.

Slide: Five Focus Areas

• They talk about these five focus areas. I don't think any of these are really new to anyone. But certainly they give us some areas to potentially discuss.

Slide: IMD’s H.A.V.E model

• And then I liked this. They talk about the importance of agility in customer experience, customer satisfaction, and they break it down into this H.A.V.E acronym. Humility, Adaptation, Vision and Engagement. And they talk about how these play into understanding your customer base and focusing on improving their overall experience.

Slide: Predictive analytics fuels customer engagement

• The next piece is from McKinsey and I thought this was interesting because they talk about how the dependency organizations have on surveys specifically. Is starting to become more and more risky because as a whole we're seeing response rates decline and customers less willing to participate in those things. And so how can we as organizations leverage different sources of information to sort of infer some of our customer sentiment. Not to replace the need to also ask, but to maybe make the opportunities where we do ask less transactional like a survey would be. I think this is a very important point.

Slide: Personalization promotes customer loyalty

• Personalization. This is something that comes up quite a bit and I think it's interesting how this comes up in different aspects of the conversation. I think it's also interesting to consider when we look at the overall customer journey and we look at scalability, how can we offer what feels like a personalized experience that is perhaps working off of a set of standards. Because obviously we can't customize or personalize every single experience. That's just not realistic, but how do we incorporate that feel of personalization into our customers experiences.

Slide: Customer-Centric Digital Transformation

• And then there was a piece from LinkedIn on customer centric digital transformation. Again, these are more reminder points, I think, than anything, seamlessness, Omni, channel, personalization, how all are we using data to make better decisions, how are we automating tasks that can be automated to free up our employees to focus on more value added work and then, here's some kind of starting points. Understanding pain points, mapping out the customer journey, how we use data to make decisions, how we automate. And then again, the point about agility. So I don't think there's anything in here that's going to be anything more than a reminder for anyone. But I just wanted to share just a bit to hopefully get you thinking about some of the points you might want to discuss in today's session. So that's what I have. We can go back to any of that if you want. Also, obviously we can send out all of the sources for those things after the session as well, but is anyone willing to start in terms of any of these four questions?

Questions / Answers / Feedback / Responses:

• Q: I'm in a business where we are security company, we are heavily involved in lots of security issues. From airplanes to things that are blowing up, so to say and we are we are heavily affected of the current situation in the world today. We have a secure security demand on our business that is heavy. In our business, we are not able to use IFS standard business to business communication, and that is kind of a drawback today because we need guaranteed communication with either the supplier or our customer. And we feel that today's solution, we have challenges to using IFS business to business Portal today, if I may say so. And this is mainly regarding to our network and all other data security issues. And my question here is, does anybody else has the same demands or have some experience to share?
• F: In my previous role, we didn't. For a defense company, we really didn't have a lot of business to business. There was more kind of supplier interaction rather than customer interaction and maybe that's what you have, but we also did not use the standards we had to build this bespoke supplier portal to manage those things and we control that very tightly outside of IFS now and integrate that back into IFS. But I think to your point, we couldn't use the standard conventions that exist.
• R: Where in the same situation. We have tried to build one in the civil production. we have an airplane and the civilian part that we have an installation outside, connected to Internet, but the connection in inside to our network is kind of heavy restricted so it's middle tier there between the business IFS business and business portal and our internal IFS business platform.
• Q: Can you use the EDI connections?
• A: Yes, EDI connections we probably can use but there is also heavily restricted and it is a demand when you want to attach things that are not able to be in attached in the EDI flow.
• R: We are using both IFS, but you're also using EDI for the largest and most strategic customers, but that is on standard. On standard documents, on standard flows. Of course, if you have very special one then you need to rebuild the eye and that is complex.
• Q: And for that EDI that you have, do you send the transactions directly to the part of the company or do you use an intermediary?
• A: Intermediary
• R: Yeah. OK. That makes sense. So I think that's easiest to secure that because you have a singular tunnel, you have a singular end point for the EDI transmissions back and forth.
• F: I just saw that that requires development and we are transferring information and secure information that we are letting out to a company to design a certain part, then that should not be public so to say.
• R: You could also there is an IFS partner called Pagero. They are a Swedish company I think.
• F: Yeah. For EDI, we are using Pagero also, but in the engineering part where we are providing a purchase order including some design drawings and so on, the EDI is not the way to go I think.
• R: And that's exactly what we built with that custom portal that we had, and we hosted that and provided a web front end to that. But it meant any documentation always resided within our network.
• Q: Any insights or thoughts around sort of preferences you're seeing challenges you're having? Maybe that point about how you are assessing customer preference, customer satisfaction, are you still relying a lot on surveys? Or are you using some of the other data to gain some intelligence?
• A: Yeah. Sorry to say it, we are not using either the CRM or we are not using IFS for that kind of data so I don't have much input there.
• Q: As I mentioned before, our company, which is an agricultural landscaping business, corporate commercial type things. So, we don't do a lot of this. Obviously, everybody's customer focused, but it's really all about, work orders, quotations, that kind of thing, service oriented activities. One of the things that we're looking to do is to have a better feedback loop with the customers that we have. And at this point we're looking to use Qualtrics or some similar to again, comes back to the survey type approach. I don't see and maybe I'm just missing it, but I don't see an ability within IFS to have kind of a portal that users can go to complain or give a thumbs up, right? I think we have to send the thing we have to use the third party like the Qualtrics is of the world to get that information and then provide it back to us. Is it something that IFS has and I've just not seen it? Some kind of end user response function.
• A: Yes. To the degree it would be applicable for your needs, I don't know. So, we can look into that, but IFS acquired a company, I think it was the year before last called Customerville that specializes in customer feedback and surveys et cetera. So, what I am unsure of is where they're at with the integration, what products set it's available to leverage into, how that feedback would fit into your workflow and then how the data would be visible to you, etcetera. But I would certainly say before you go off and weave been something else, it's certainly worth us getting you connected to see if it's something that would serve the purpose that you have.
• A: Yeah, that would be good. I mean we are already moving ahead with that initiative because it's important to us as a business, but we're multifaceted business and this is one area right now. So, if there is an alternative, the sooner the better. We can leverage that for the rest of the business and such. But from my perspective, for the rest of the things, we don't have Omni channel type presences and things like that and it's just not in the nature of our business. And again, AI and things like that. Not very applicable to us. There's things we could potentially use there around some design efficiencies and things like that, but most of those are handled by third party apps anyway, today around how we structure things, for example, so that's about it.
• R: I would think the biggest opportunity for you based on what you've said is the idea of seamlessness. Just making sure that from the customer perspective everything flows seamlessly, right? Like they are getting their service without a hitch. There's no silos and fragmentation in the process, so it's more so making sure that the information flow is strong. But that feedback piece is an interesting aspect. So, we'll certainly follow up with you on that.
• Q: Yeah, I'll elaborate a bit about your current workflow engines. We are trying to use the business process model that you're just supplying the cloud model here and it's kind of in the beginning of the development phase. I see a lots of potential in that part and in your presentation you bring in the AI buzzword and my question to all of you are you thinking about the same issue that I am, how do we most effectively used of workflows and the workflow engine and make use of them and make intelligent business decisions. Is that a bit too far when we're talking what workflows? Because right now it's a kind of mechanical program programmable interface, so to say. If you do that, please do that also for me, but I thinking on letting the machine learning thing do things for you, so to say, not programmatically in in that strict manner.
• A: We are in the still in the early phases of part of the cloud implementation we are working on to you to utilizing investigating to the BPL calls and to which extent AI should be. Our first step will be to look into the utilize is the AI automation engine. Next step will probably be done to look into, to which extent we can use machine learning. Then to make that schedule is to utilize the tool even better. I have not seen anything from IFS yet where you actually are using AI straight into the BPA. Maybe I’ve not been following everything but I have not seen it yet.
• R: That's a good question. I know we do have a session, I don't remember what month it is, but we have Bob De Caux, our Chief AI officer coming back. And so that will be a good opportunity to dig into a lot more of this. For me in my background with IFS technology, the example of AI that I'm most familiar with is on the service side. So, the planning and scheduling optimization tool. And I think what's interesting and compelling to that and if you just consider it in the context of the workflows as well, when companies use PSO most effectively, they are open to letting that machine learning work. What I mean by that is you can always adopt the technology, but still really keep a hand on it. And when it comes to AI, what that does is really limit the potential of allowing it to learn and make the best recommendations. So, I think one of the things that could be compelling from a workflow perspective is being open to understanding the scenarios in which your intervening, that it might be best to try something different, right? There's a need for openness to allowing that engine to really do its job. There is a company in London that is a longer time PSO customer and they've had incredible outcomes. But the gentleman there will speak a lot about giving it an opportunity to do what it's intended to do. And I have a feeling that when this piece gets to the same point, you have to fight that urge to manually intervene and give it the time it needs to do that self learning and really make those recommendations. But that's certainly an area that we can have Bob speak to when he comes back to the group and where that's at, what it might look like. We had our sales kickoff last week in London and we did get some sneak peeks into some of the things that R&D is working on that are really taking the AI functionality to the next level. And it is really cool and really compelling. It's just a matter of making it accessible and user friendly to everyone.
• Q: Any other thoughts on any of this customer centricity stuff, AI data?
• A: I can share a little bit about so from a customer centric point. It's more, maybe more internal customer handling than directly out to the customers, but what we are looking into now is to integrate the full customer handling part from CRM into IFS, B2B, from IFS and of course the fully ERP and supply chain into IFS to get the kind of a seamless handling our customers from A-Z. That is not into the customer behavior. I mean, as long as we have one ERP system and all our entities, we also gathering a lot of valuable input on within data warehouse on top of course we will add a lot of valuable input and data at the end, having all these functions into one place. And if you start, that will be kind of a big data exercise to actually define the pattern and find how customers actually react on campaigns we are running through CRM. Hope the sales goes and all those things. So, utilizing AI to navigate into that landscape could also be interesting, but at least we are building the foundation to do that as a part of IFS.
• R: Yeah. That’s a good point. I think in reality a lot of this, when you look up customer experience, customer satisfaction, customer centricity, research and content, a lot of it is done through the lens of almost the marketing and sales front, not necessarily the back end piece, but I think your point is a very important one which is, if you don't have that foundation built and that seamlessness piece is such an important one because it's if you're falling short on the basic demand of just a seamless and good overall experience, then you shouldn't be trying to layer in all of these different preferences and things like that because you're just setting yourself up to fall short. You really have to I think, breakdown those internal silos and make sure that the background is connected and seamless before you can go and present that to the customer base. So, I think it is a really good point that that has to come first. And a lot of organizations, I think are maybe unintentionally overpromising by asking a lot of preferences and a lot of input without really breaking down those internal silos and being in a position to deliver on that. So, I think it's a good approach. I do think when we talk about insight information, AI, et cetera, I do think that point that I showed briefly about predictive analytics and how can we as organizations gather insight on customer preferences and customer needs. Not just asking that from them, I think is a really interesting point to have in mind going forward because I think the more we can take the onus off of the expectation of them to do all of that through survey will become more and more important.
• F: Just as a as a point to make, and I know that some of you guys are in the process of making these surveys available to your customers and whatnot. But I'm I think just an important point to think about is what does the customer get out of filling out these surveys? Because we are in this world where surveys are apparent, right? There's a survey for everything. And what type of things are you going to do to motivate your customers to actually fill out these surveys in order to you for you to get those results? And I mean I don't have an answer obviously, but they are I guess various things that you can try. Such as, I don't know, giving some kind of reward for your customers or showing them that their feedback matters and showing them how you've incorporated that feedback into your daily business or something. But I think it is important to think about. I mean you can create these surveys, but if you're not going to get anyone to fill out these surveys, which being a customer, I’ve had that problem in the past. It's just something to give thought about.
• R: Yeah, I think it's a good point. I mean one is, how easy is it for them to complete, right? So, is it delivered at or immediately after the point of interaction? Is it very, very easy to respond to? And then I think you still have to consider, yes, you could offer an incentive if that's an option or if it's important enough to do so. I think though, at least for me, I only complete a survey if I've had a really poor experience, usually right? And so you have to imagine that's the norm and it skews in that direction. I think the most important point is what is the process that triggers a response to those situations? If you're asking people for their input and they're giving it, especially if they're frustrated, and then they don't hear from anyone, you may very well cause bigger problems than if you just didn't ask at all. So I think making sure that there is a workflow to follow up on the responses you get. You have to figure out how they're flagged or what have you, what warrants a response. And then what level of urgency etcetera, but I mean making sure that if you're going to ask for the input, you're acknowledging it and showing that I think is a really good point.
• F: Yeah, this is a great point. From our perspective is we're looking to do this just to provide some feedback on that. Ours is very transactional based or will be right? So, we go out, we do a job we cut down trees or whatever the case might be, performed some Arbor work or some landscaping or some construction work. And then it's feedback at that job level and the response from that will be very simple. It'll be basically numerical with room for comments and depending on the numerical scale we get back, it will automatically escalate and notify either the sales manager or the branch manager or the regional manager depending on how bad it might have been. So, we're looking for the downside because we're assuming we did a good job and if people don't provide bad feedback. Again in our line of work it's OK, they pay for it ongoing maintenance and so forth and that's where it comes from. So that's our approach. I mean, everybody's business is different, but we're very simple, so it works well.

Next Meeting: 20 February 2024 10:00 AM US Eastern Time
IFS Combined CollABorative: Think Tank – Human Centricity: Trends in Recruiting, Hiring & Retention with Guest Speaker Lauren Winans, CEO of Next-Level Benefits

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