IT and the Customer Experience

In the world of free enterprise being better than your the competition is the name of the game.  However, how do you measure better?  Price is a major factor, but that’s often out of your control.  Quality of goods is another facet; however, you and competition have access to the same manufactures so that’s wash.  What can you do?

You could provide a superior customer experience.  What’s that you ask?  Well according to Adam Richardson of the Harvard Business Review, customer experience is essentially the interaction between you and your customers.

This includes everything from face-to-face meetings, ad views and when a customer pursues your website.  All these areas of interaction are call touchpoints and they are an element that you have control over.

Well, how can an IT consultant help you with that?  A simple example within your brick-and-mortar store is setting up an Easypay account so people can pay with their smartphones.

Another simple example is logging onto a social networking site and seeing what everyone is talking about.  If everyone is talking about the big game, it might be time push certain merchandise.

A little more forward thinking and investor heavy is seeking out new in-store technology.  Walmart has been planning on deploying new near field communication technology.  The idea is giving their customers more ready access to information about the products they are viewing.

Though I believe they may be developing this convenience so they control what information their shoppers first see. Caveat Emptor!