Emerging Tech
Next Best Experience: Unleashing the Power of Real-Time CX Orchestration
Orchestration—The Future of CX?
Customer experience is the final competitive frontier for today’s businesses.
It is an opportunity ripe for exploration, considering many customers are not satisfied with current CX standards. Indeed, the gap between what companies are providing and what customers expect when it comes to CX is wide: 90% of retail leaders believe they are delivering the best customer experience possible, while only 34% of customers agree. The divide is similar across other industries like telco (84% vs. 34%) and financial services (83% vs. 41%).
Companies looking to seize that sizable opportunity for a competitive advantage are turning to industry-leading, AI-driven technologies and strategies to reach the next level of CX—connected and continuous orchestration.
The Stellar Take
Meeting customer expectations is no longer enough. The future of CX is about ensuring every step along the customer journey is orchestrated to guarantee the next best experience (NBX) for each individual customer so they can effectively complete the jobs they have set out to do—whether that’s learn about your product, complete a purchase, or get customer assistance.
The NBX model aims to always deliver stand-out, differentiated customer experiences. It’s about creating real-time customer segments of one, resulting in an unprecedented level of personalization—where each customer is treated as a unique individual, and their journey is meticulously tailored to their preferences. And all of this must be done in context—taking into account not only who they are, but where they are in their journey, how they got there, and predicting where they are headed next. This approach transcends traditional one-size-fits-all strategies, allowing businesses to be so in tune with their customers that they can connect with them effectively precisely where they are in their journey—wherever, whenever, and however that may be.
“It’s time to set a new standard in CX—to commit to delivering unparalleled, personalized journeys that exceed customer expectations,” says Joel Frost, VP of Global Strategic Partnerships at Stellar Elements. “By embracing the NBX model, CX leaders can orchestrate and curate meticulously tailored experiences that take into account individual preferences, behaviors, and needs in real-time, treating each customer as a unique entity. NBX transcends traditional CX; it forms a powerful, ownable connection with customers at every step of their journey.”
“NBX transcends traditional CX; it forms a powerful, ownable connection with customers at every step of their journey.”
The Business Case for Mastering CX Orchestration
Despite 81% of leaders believing their businesses excel at CX, only 20% of customers agree. Part of this enormous disconnect may be attributed to a misunderstanding of what CX actually is. Often confused with just customer service and product quality, CX is actually all-encompassing, involving every interaction a customer has with a business, whether positive, negative, neutral—or planned.
Forty-three percent (43%) say the inability to provide the seamless, integrated experiences expected by their customers is their biggest challenge. We refer to this as the Integration Gap—and it’s just one of 20 CX gaps potentially hiding within an organization. Identifying and bridging these gaps is critical. CX orchestration, with a focus on NBX, can help.
CX is actually all-encompassing, involving every interaction a customer has with a business, whether positive, negative, neutral—or planned.
With 42% of businesses struggling to provide seamless experiences, the focus should be on understanding and anticipating customer needs in real-time, not just reacting to them,” says Jeannette Michels, Stellar Elements’ Senior Director of Marketing Insights, Strategy, and Analytics. “This isn't about bombarding customers with technology; it's about using that technology to create experiences that feel right, that feel personal. When a customer feels like you know them and are there for them at exactly the right moment, that's when you've hit the mark. This kind of precision in CX builds loyalty and drives business success."
“When a customer feels like you know them and are there for them at exactly the right moment, that's when you've hit the mark.”
NBX transcends traditional one-size-fits-all strategies, allowing businesses to connect with their customers precisely where they are in their journey.
The NBX model is not only about improving customer experience; it’s also about improving business outcomes. NBX transcends traditional one-size-fits-all strategies, allowing businesses to connect with their customers precisely where they are in their journey. In this way, the NBX model shapes personalized experiences based not only on a static customer profile, but also on a dynamic understanding of their current state and context.
Tips for Success
To master CX orchestration, you first need to understand the customer journey, which consists of a variety of “jobs” that the customer is hoping to complete. By developing a customer journey map that reflects these “jobs-to-be-done,” you can deliver the next best experience.
This starts with understanding each job by creating a job map. A job map offers insights into customer needs at a high level, while also providing the framework to orchestrate meeting these needs at a granular level. These jobs can be categorized into categories such as define, locate, prepare, confirm, execute, monitor, modify, and conclude.
Once you have mapped out the tasks customers are hoping to accomplish, you can use customer journey analytics to pinpoint and address any significant points of friction in the process. Then, CX orchestration platforms can adapt to the customer’s context to meet them at their current stage, and even expedite the process with the assistance of GenAI. CX orchestration enables you to track the individual steps a customer takes in their quest to get specific jobs done, gathering real-time data from various cross-channel interactions, usage patterns, and campaigns, and delivering the next best experience to that customer in the moments that matter most.
CX orchestration allows your business to optimize customer journeys in real time, providing each customer with the next best experience every step along the way.
Top Five CX Orchestration Use Cases (That Deliver Real Business Value)
When done right, CX orchestration allows your business to optimize customer journeys in real time, providing each customer with the next best experience every step along the way.
Here are five key ways that orchestration and NBX can transform your CX game:
Real-time customer segmentation: Using AI to generate real-time insights into customer behaviors, CX orchestration platforms can be leveraged to dynamically segment and personalize every customer’s experience. Your business can deliver highly targeted, relevant content and offers, leading to dramatic improvements in conversion as a whole.
Churn reduction: Using real-time engagement data and behavioral insights, CX orchestration helps you foresee and forestall the unique, context-specific points of friction and frustration that translate to customer churn. For example, leveraging GenAI, you can respond to increases in price sensitivity with personalized pricing offers or stave off content or product fatigue by serving up hyper-personalized recommendations that the customer has not seen before. Predicting churn can also help improve important metrics such as Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
Real-time issue resolution: Rather than waiting for a customer to come to you with a complaint, CX orchestration leverages automated processes and data analysis to identify and address issues as they occur. This allows for immediate, personalized resolutions to common problems, mapping to the customer’s unique needs and priorities.
Highly personalized experiences: At its core, CX orchestration is about delivering personalized experience in context. Human beings are dynamic—our wants, needs, and priorities are in a constant state of flux depending on our circumstances. By considering the customer experience in context, CX orchestration transcends traditional personalization by dismissing the idea of a static customer identity and serving up experiences that are suited to each customer as they are now.
Intelligent chatbot automation: CX orchestration allows you to recognize where, when, and how best to use chatbots to engage your customers across touchpoints. Chatbot automation allows for instant support, information, or assistance, while also ensuring that the chatbot’s responses are relevant to that unique customer’s past interactions and history.
CX Orchestration in Action
CX orchestration and NBX are already being used successfully in a variety of ways across a range of industries.
Globe Telecom, the Philippines’ leading telco provider, is redefining customer experiences by identifying potential churners and delivering hyper-personalized offers. Teaming up with Stellar Elements and AWS, Globe is targeting opportunities to enhance CX for key personas using GenAI, creating a unified view of customer journeys, automating issue resolution, providing hyper-personalized offers to boost engagement, and delivering seamless interactions via AI-powered chatbots.
Globe is setting a new standard for customer engagement, reducing churn rates and elevating the telco customer experience.
In retail, etisalat by e& in the UAE is using AI-driven orchestration to turn the stale old world of retail into a white-glove, guided, “boutiquey” experience by creating the first-of-its-kind fully autonomous retail storefront. What sets this autonomous store apart is its ability to empower customers with full control over their shopping journey. Customers enter the store via QR code or facial recognition, select items or services, and make payments instantly using a mobile app, all at their own pace.
This innovative approach shifts the brick-and-mortar retail experience from one-size-fits-all to tailored, efficient, and technologically-advanced.
And across the banking industry, AI is empowering frontline employees to offer the NBX to customers. GenAI's capabilities extract insights from various sources like historical service interactions, customer transactions, and social posts significantly improves service and the overall customer experience. For example, if a banking customer makes a large purchase on their credit card, the system detects whether they are able to pay it off and how quickly. Depending on the result, the customer is offered a personalized loan tailored to their unique purchase, salary, and savings.
The New CX Standard
The future of CX hinges on the art of real-time orchestration, where each interaction is finely tuned to address the unique needs of every customer. Embracing the NBX model sets a new standard, utilizing data and AI to comprehend customer jobs and journeys within their context to effectively close the gap between expectations and reality. By embracing NBX and crafting bespoke, personalized journeys that surpass customer expectations, your company can truly distinguish itself from competitors.
Align your intended and actual customer encounters for an optimal, connected experience.
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