Accenture and Medallia bridging the gap between consumers and organisations
Radically different customer approach needed to sustain commercial viability
Increasingly, consumers are experiencing a serious discrepancy between what they essentially want and the way organisations are trying to respond to those demands. The imminent result for businesses failing to bridge the gap, is a loss of commercial relevance and the end of their viability as successful organisations. To turn the tide, a radically different way of thinking is needed when it comes to approaching the customer. This is one of the key conclusions of a study carried out by Accenture. In order to find practical ways of implementing this much needed new mindset, the company is now partnering with Medallia in a project aimed at exploring, charting and improving customer experience.
All sorts of current or recent developments, like the Covid pandemic, rising inflation, geopolitical conflict and the ongoing process of climate change, have combined to make consumers more quality-conscious, more discerning than ever before. Modern consumers find themselves forced to make very specific choices, constantly threading fine lines between nice-to-haves, need-to-haves, acceptable cost and available options.
The Human Paradox
The choices consumers decide to make, are not always straightforward nor easily predicable. “People are complex. Under the current, mostly adverse conditions, their choices, while on the one hand being inspired by self-interest, are also driven by care for the environment. This leads to contradictory choices in a dynamic we like to refer to as ‘The Human Paradox’, says Mehmet Olmez, Managing Director of Accenture Song. “To be able to successfully respond to this ambiguity, organisations need to create highly sophisticated customer images allowing for genuine understanding of their target groups.”
Pointing to the food industry for an example, Olmez mentions the rise of the flexitarian. ”Consumers do not simply fall into one of two categories anymore, being either carnivores or vegetarians. Monday to friday, they may opt for meat substitutes while for their weekend meals making a very deliberate choice for, preferably biological, high-quality meat.” The same contradiction, according to Olmez, can also be observed on a more general level. “In difficult times, people tend to keep a tight grip on their pocketbooks. At the same time, they are also prepared to spend more on specific products for reasons of durability for instance. Under these conditions, a single-sided customer approach is doomed to fail, as it will make the customer feel misunderstood.”
Life-centric approach
Such lack of understanding, unfortunately, is no exception. Many organisations are finding it very difficult to appropriately respond to this complex challenge of diverse and often contradictory demand. Results from studies performed by Accenture Research show that 64 percent of modern consumers expect faster reactions to their changing demands than most organisations are able to provide. Meanwhile, at the other side of the abyss, businesses are experiencing similar feelings of disconnectedness’, 88 percent of organisations stating that their customers are changing at a more rapid pace than they can keep up with.
It is essential for organisations to bridge the gap now separating them from their customer base. As it is, the image they have of their target groups is much too simplistic, as is the way they approach them. They need to work on creating a much more granular, more holistic image of their customers, an image that does justice to the unique characteristics of personal lives. An image in which the consumer no longer plays the anonymous part of a walking checkbook with exotic preferences but takes centre stage as a choice-conscious individual capable of making divergent decisions based on specific priorities that may vary from one instance to the next. This is what we call the life-centric approach.”
The importance of technology
This life-centric approach can only be accomplished by organisations with genuine understanding of their individual customers. Here, technology and automation are indispensable tools, if only because of the scale at which many organisations currently operate. “This involves more than just CRM and marketing systems for granular registration of all sorts of customer data. It calls for a platform capable of assessing customer experience and identifying opportunities for improvement, possibly driven by artificial intelligence,” says Clara Remijnse, Customer Experience Platform Lead at Accenture Technology. “It is vital for organisations to be able to constantly measure the quality of customer commitment, to pinpoint areas where improvement is possible.”
The traditional survey, according to Remijnse, no longer provides the necessary detail. Customer experience has become too complex, the choices customers make are no longer dictated by consistent considerations and context is an increasingly significant decider. “This is exactly why Accenture recently entered into a partnership with Medallia in which the latter’s platform will play a pivotal role in fuelling transformation processes within the organisations of Accenture’s customers.”
Remijnse is confident that this platform will be the perfect addition to a life-centric approach as it provides the technology to continuously, across all channels, chart customer experience. “The platform is capable of capturing and qualifying customer reactions in real-time, from checkout experiences to comments on social media. It does so at the most appropriate moment in the relevant customer experience, using the measurement tool and device that are most appropriate at any given point in time, allowing detailed mapping of the entire customer experience. This in turn allows the organisation to keep aligning its product and service offering with customer demand, no matter how fast it may change,” Remijnse concludes.
Customer experience as a key concept
Awareness of the importance of an outstanding customer experience, according to Osgar de Laat, Director Alliances EMEA North at Medallia, is not the exclusive domain, nor responsibility of an organisation’s marketing department. It is an issue the entire organisation has to be committed to. “It needs to be a focal point in the hearts and minds of all employees. In this process of building awareness, this journey of transformation, Accenture delivers important added value to our technology. Not only are they able to embed the technology in the organisational fabric, they can also engage the entire organisation and all of its employees. Which makes them the partner of choice for major transformation projects Medallia is part of.”
Another key consideration is Accenture’s prominent position in multiple markets. “The experience this allows them to bring to the table, is extremely helpful in many ways, for instance in relation to the development of industry-specific templates. It helps us to further reduce the time-to-market of our business solutions,” says De Laat. “Our expertise in and familiarity with customer and employee experience on the other hand, can help Accenture to further develop their service portfolio. It allows us to deliver maximum value to a multitude of organisations, helping them to remain relevant and viable. For in these times of change,” De Laat concludes, “the only survivors are organisations committed to change themselves.”
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