The next wave of business change is Customer Science. Customer Science is the fusion of artificial intelligence (AI), customer data, and the concept of the behavioral sciences. However, if you miss this next new wave of change, you could be in danger of repeating the same mistakes you did last year and the year before that. 

As the new wave of Customer Science comes in, the old tide of Customer Experience (CX) is receding. It’s not the first time a big idea’s time has come and gone. I have seen it before with other influential business concepts, like Total Quality Management, Business Re-engineering, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). It was the CRM wave that receded in the early 2000s to make way for CX in the first place. 

Over the last 20 years, Customer Experience has been a concept embraced by businesses. 

However, despite this emphasis on providing excellent experiences, customer satisfaction levels have not improved. Many of you might think, well, that’s because of COVID. However, that’s just an excuse. The truth is COVID isn’t the only reason that customer satisfaction scores are declining—and you must fix what you can for your organization before it’s too late.

By now, you have probably heard of the metaverse. If you haven’t, Fortune.com describes the metaverse as a digital universe that users access through virtual reality (VR). This metaverse concept is poised to change everything, from how we interact online to how we buy things to the way brands market themselves. 

We hosted an expert on a recent podcast to tell us how the metaverse will change brand marketing. Dobrian Dobrev (@DobrianDobrev) is a User Experience Designer, a speaker at UX conferences, and author on UX Design and Information Architecture. He has been working with Coca-Cola on their use of the beginnings of the metaverse. Coke has been doing some exciting things with immersive technologies, including VR and augmented reality (AR), which Dobrev explains to us all. 

Customer relationships have to be win-win. If they aren’t, it’s time to end it. However, it shouldn’t be a quick decision, nor should it happen in an email or text. There is a process, and today we will look at when and how you should sack a customer.  

This topic came up on a recent podcast. Robert, who works in software development, has a pickle from time to time with annoying customers. Sometimes, Robert says, no matter how much time, effort, and investment you put into improving the customer relationship, it remains dismal from both perspectives. While Robert believes in fixing the relationship, he also wonders if there is a point where it makes more sense to go their separate ways. How should companies decide when and who should make the final decision? Also, Robert wants to know if there are any traps to avoid in the process. Finally, Robert asks how to handle firing a customer in the best possible way?

Now, we have covered this ground a little before on the podcast, with our episode, “Why You Should Be Proactively Firing Customers Without Hesitation.” In it, we introduce the idea that complex customer relationships take a toll on your organization in the form of resources and employee experience. In some cases, they can drain the organization to the point that it is no longer worth continuing. So, despite the title, we recommend “hesitating” a bit by trying to resolve the situation first before letting them go. 

The late Steve Jobs said at a 1997 Apple World Worldwide Developers Conference, “You’ve got to start with the Customer Experience first and work backward towards the technology.” Now, in 2021, this quote couldn’t be any more pertinent than it was nearly 25 years ago. However, customers are changing how they have experiences these days, and organizations that don’t keep up will be left behind.

Consumers are making radical changes in their behavior that impact brand loyalty and revenue. Research reveals that once loyal customers switch brands, retailers, and stores now. An October 2021 research survey conducted by McKinsey and Company stated that 75 percent of consumers are radically changing their shopping behaviors, and about 40 percent of those consumers are switching brands and retailers. Moreover, 84 percent said they would continue with this new behavior once the pandemic officially subsided. 

I participated in a panel discussion on helping retailers and wholesalers find better ways to improve the digital Customer Experience. Along with Belwadi Srikanth, Group Product Manager, Google, Inc.(aka, Bell), and Roland Gossage, CEO of GroupBy, we talked about the challenges that hinder the Digital Customer Experience. Also, we discussed how Artificial Intelligence (AI) tackles these challenges and how GroupBy’s new product discovery platform powered by Google Cloud Retail AI is helping digital leaders and merchandisers improve sitewide success metrics and how retailers and wholesalers can democratize AI within frameworks quickly. 

Proactive is a key word for me for the future of experiences and customer strategy. Anticipating the needs of your customers is going to be the next level of exceeding their expectations. However, to be proactive, you need to add a new voice into the mix with the “Voice of the Customer (VoC).” It’s the “Voice of the Product (VoP),” and it can tell you a lot about what your customers want.

The VOP adds another data stream from a crucial part of a customer’s experience—using the product. With this data, organizations can anticipate and provide a proactive experience. 

In a recent podcast, we hosted Tobias Goebel (@tpgoebel) Product Marketing Principal at Twilio IoT. Goebel recently wrote a great article, “It’s Time for the VoC to Get a Little Brother: The Voice of the Product,” that introduced me to the idea of the ‘Voice of the Product’. Goebel comes to us with nearly 20 years’ experience with enterprise software and a career of product management, sales engineering, and product marketing.  Goebel describes himself as a technology solution evangelist with a passion for leveraging the potential for connecting the physical product world with the internet.