Why can’t consumers conduct the Experience Orchestra?

Precis: Consumers are much better placed to orchestrate their service experiences if we give them the means to tell us how to respond to their needs. Creating intelligence through interaction intent instead of the legacy inference approach is a game changer. So is an understanding of customer Jobs to be Done. Both help to deliver personalised interactions that are much more likely to be impactful, memorable and differentiated in our customers’ lives. Services and experiences are still being orchestrated – it’s just the conducting is much more informed and personalised and crucially; is led by the customer. Further reading links at the end of the article.

In the current CX industry Experience Orchestration is hot and ‘on trend’. Check out LinkedIn if you don’t believe me. It’s might end up being one of this decades ‘big things’ – like CRM was a decade or two ago. It’s big and there’s a lot of money currently being spent promoting it.

I read a ‘thought leadership’ article recently, on Experience Orchestration, from one of the CX industries so-called thought leaders (written for a tech vendor) that left me both confused and irritated. Confused because it was full of management speak – lots of it – but none of it made any practical sense. There was nothing that anyone could go do or try in the real world, without seemingly having to spend on yet more tech. I was irritated because here was a lot of time and money being spent on promoting IT functionality that just reeked of a ‘solution’ looking for a home or a real problem to solve. All with some borrowed credentials to make it sound compelling and viable. It wasn’t a good look for all involved.

Hands up for an orchestrated experience

Let’s try a quick straw poll: as a consumer, hands up who wants an orchestrated experience? Thought so. What you probably want is:

·       Not to have to make contact in the first place

·       If you have to, that you can find the right support quickly, easily with minimal effort and get the answer/ outcome resolved at a time and place convenient to you.

·       If it’s a bit more involved or complex, then you’d like to be able to speak to someone who knows what they’re doing/ talking about, who can own the query, make empowered decisions and get it all done quickly.

Just to be clear – in preference order, you ideally want: no contact, a single contact, and anything more than once is starting to become a pain. Something along those lines, right? Nothing too fancy – just the basics done brilliantly. In the background it would be good if the brand was being proactive and paying attention to their interactions and using the insights gained to continually improve service and products.

Based on the above I’m not really sensing a compelling case for orchestrating multiple interactions here. There might be a case for the service provider who’s unable, or finds it too hard, to deliver to our consumer preferences but that sounds like spending money trying to do the wrong thing, righter. Treating symptoms, not finding cures. Maybe even orchestrating failure?

The problem here is the overreliance on a data-led, rather than intent-led approach. Thinking differently about how we collect data, in a way that provides benefit for consumers and then what we do with it, is what I’m suggesting.

The reality, as consumers, is we don’t want experiences or relationships with the service providers in our lives. We just want stuff done quickly, sensitively and right first time please. Serving of orchestration with that Madam? Nope. Just please quickly and accurately help me with ‘x’ and let me get back to more important things with my day/ week/ life.

Inference versus Intent

Credit where it’s due; some tech vendors promoting experience orchestration do point out the need for leveraging lots of data to deliver ‘highly personalised and relevant interactions and experiences’. I’m still not convinced though. You ever tried asking someone what’s on their mind, instead of educated guessing? You tend to get better results.

I know it’s not that simple and yes, there is definitely benefit in being smart and leveraging data you already hold about clients. I’m just making the point that Intent insight is so powerful that it’s crazy that so few organisations use it at all and few that do – use it to its full potential.

Briefly, we should be spending much more time, effort and money implementing the ability to allow our consumers to simply and intuitively tell us what it is they want when they contact us. On any and all channels, able to express themselves naturally, through low effort interfaces. Having those interfaces and the data that sits behind them joined up across all channels offered? Now that would be useful.

So, how can I help you today (and make/ save money)?

Hang on a moment - I hear you cry – can’t we already do some of that stuff today? Well, yes we most definitely can. Well designed and maintained Natural Language Speech Recognition (NLSR) services allow customers to tell us exactly what they want - literally in their own words. These services are amazing gateways to receive and do intelligent things with our customers’ intent – like apply relevant and personal interaction treatments (like self-service or fast-track escalation or even a targeted sales offer). Relevant because we know (not made a statistical punt) that it was relevant to what the customer needs – because they already told us.

NLSR services remove the need for horrible touch-tone menu-based IVRs, as they collapse all that user effort and enable us to get straight to the support we need (human and/or automated) in a fraction of the time and cost for all involved. There’s another win in this approach too: we’ve proven with clients that if you collapse the navigation effort involved in reaching relevant and useful self-service applications; customers are more disposed to use them (and keep on using them). So, leveraging intent does make a difference to the bottom line.

Now, let’s remember: customers are telling us exactly what they want, we’re interpreting that and intelligently using it. Forward thinking organisations also use that data as a far less polluted source of insight than traditional derived data that often permeates it’s way out of contact centre MI (for example). Years ago a retail banking client was using NLSR intent data to inform their contact centre adviser product and soft-skills training around what they could see mattered most to their customers. Well, why wouldn’t you?

Intent across all contact channels

At this point I know some of you will be thinking; “Ah, but that’s just telephony and contact centres.. we’re a digital business. We’re different you see.” Fair point, so why don’t we have natural language interfaces on our web sites? Something that allowed our customers to just tell us what they need? Well, we almost do – they’re called chatbots. The problem with chatbots is that they’re often designed once, deployed and often lack tuning budget to improve the range of customer intents they can handle. I.e. deployed as a one time cost-saving measure. Once the payback was achieved, people moved into the next shiny thing. A shame as they could be so much more useful, maybe AI will change this (or not)?

Imagine how powerful intent data could be for an authenticated user on their online portal. We know who they are and what they’re trying to achieve – which would provide real insight to inform better knowledge management services and if the interaction needs mediated human help; rich context to help solve the problem (and not have to re-explain your needs all over again to a chatbot and /or human support).

I don’t know why any of the vendors (that I’m aware of) have yet to come up with this multi-model solution. The technology’s definitely there, so is the experience. Now imagine the power of an omni-channel, multi-modal intent expression interface that could be offered on any or all contact channels? Some money to be made and saved here, perhaps..?

I can also see a role for Experience Orchestration when it comes as a way to help organisations think about better connecting currently disparate, and inconsistent experiences across typically fragmented multi-channel journeys. This is how some CX tech vendors are positioning it. But, and I am 100% certain about this: customer demand drivers, the system of work/ operating model (especially management systems: measures, metrics and incentives) must all be studied and improved first. Turn to the technology last. Really study and understand what’s driving demand in the first place, strip out the avoidable contact and then apply intent insight tech to better support the remaining ‘value demand’.

Technology or the tech vendors are not the enemy here – it and they can be an incredibly powerful part of the solution. But it’s not the solution per se, it’s part of the means of executing the solution to a really well understood set of specific challenges, in your business, with your specific customers and their specific intents, requirements and ultimately their specific set of Jobs to be Done. Most of that solution is, by definition, not ‘off the shelf’ it’s unique to your business and requires study.  Please don’t lead with the tech or you’ll end up with unnecessary, expensive and poorly scoped IT ‘lipstick’ that will likely make things worse, than better, for your customer service.

Time to get to grips with Jobs to be Done theory and practice

If you agree with, or are curious with my reasoning and experience then a good place to go next with your reading would be to learn more about Jobs to be Done Theory (JTBD). JTBD’s basic premise is that consumers don’t buy products or services, they buy the outcomes or ‘jobs’ that they enable them to get done. E.g. consumers aren’t looking to buy electric drills, they’re effectively ‘hiring’ them for the utility of making holes in walls that get pictures hung.

The big change with JTBD thinking and practice is a profound shift in focus from a brand’s product or service to the utility that they offer to the consumer’s more important and ultimate Job to be Done outcomes. So, in an enterprise (customer) service context: stepping back and learning about the customer’s JTBD and designing services and experiences that better enable them (than the competition) creates differentiation and a source of competitive advantage.

Hopefully you’ll understand now that a different approach to interaction orchestration built upon leveraging consumer intent combined with a different and more strategic approach to understanding what it is that consumers are ultimately trying to achieve in their lives though our products and services drives better outcomes for all. Service orchestration is in danger of being pitched as the outcome rather than the means. It doesn’t have to be that way if we let our consumers take the baton and guide us in better orchestrated experiences and services.

Useful Links:

I can recommend these as useful sources of additional reading on some of the key themes in this article.

> An article in the Harvard Business Review that provides an introduction to Jobs to be Done theory: https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done

> Jobs to be Done overview on the Strategyn website (founded by Tony Ulwick, the originator of JTBD theory): https://strategyn.com/jobs-to-be-done/jobs-to-be-done-theory/

If you’d like to find out how to quickly start leveraging the power of customer intent in your service operation then get in touch.