I'm reading through the DIB Digital Trends Report for 2015 and there is some interesting tidbits. For one, on Figure 5, what is the most exciting opportunity in 2015 vs last year. Customer Experience has jumped into a huge lead, while Mobile and Social have fallen. Why is this? I believe organizations are starting to realize that both of those decliners are just channels. Channels for your content to create great customer experiences. Mobile shouldn't be your strategy any more than email. I view content marketing and personalization as the same thing. If your content isn't personal, then work needs to be done on your content. However, I understand why they are separated here. I believe multi channel campaign management needs to rate higher on these lists. This is the engine that will run most of this,
Another interesting section is asking what companies plan on how they will differentiate themselves from their competitors within the next 5 years. The report states they are surprised that price is only 5%. I believe organizations will try to differentiate through customer experience, and maybe there is some bias in the respondents, because these companies are probably a little more innovative than the typical organization. I believe companies tend to fall to price differentiation because it is the easiest way to gain sales and market share.
Number 1 and 2 are intrinsically related. As I wrote here, companies that focus on design will constantly look to improve on 1 and 2. A design first mentality puts the experience and the quality ahead of all else. Companies who are answering these questions should be looking to change their culture to a design culture before tackling these differentiators, or else the strategy may fail.
Strategy does not work without the culture to back it up. The fact the respondents have listed strategy before culture leads me to believe these initiatives have a higher chance of failure. If the culture of the company does not support the strategy, it will take too large of an effort to accomplish being customer first.
These are my thoughts halfway through the document. Tomorrow I will comment on the next piece of the document. Very interesting stuff. Organizations are saying the right things, but with anything, it is all in the implementation. The next 5 years will be very exciting indeed.