How to create frictionless customer experience

The simplest customer experiences are the hardest to build. We are working with Adobe to help change that.

Subhash Ramachandran Subhash Ramachandran

Customer experience truly is king, and brands that create seamless, personalized customer flows will have the keys to the castle.

According to a recent Gartner survey, customer experience drives over two-thirds of customer loyalty. It beats brand and price combined.  

Why, then, haven’t brands created frictionless experiences that flow between devices, from online to offline, from server to cloud? The simple answer is that it’s really complicated. In fact, the simpler a customer experience gets, the more complex it is behind the scenes.

Think of a regional grocery chain that offers online orders as they look to accommodate demands for social distancing. While grocers do have a basic offering for online ordering, they have a long way to go compared to the likes of Amazon, who have been doing this for decades. They need to create unique offers based on purchases from loyalty card data. Or send notifications when new deliveries of their favorite items are expected to roll in.

It makes sense for both grocer and customer, but behind the scenes, there are important pieces of data, that are available in their own silos (internal or external), but speak different languages, unable to communicate. The end result is a missed opportunity for a seamless grocery-shopping experience.

Imagine a fine-tuned, sophisticated machine that takes in huge quantities of data, and spits out extraordinary, customized customer experiences. It uses clever logic to intuit what the customer wants to give him that exact experience wherever he goes next – whether online or in real life. That machine is simply amazing; managing and analyzing an intricate flow of data across systems.

But in order for that machine to do its job, it needs to (1) get data from disparate sources and (2) make sure that those sources are speaking the same language.   

These two things create the weak link that has destroyed frictionless customer experiences for millions of brands.

What if that marketing machine could collect seamlessly data from a number of silos, so you can create the most amazing customer experience for your organization?

Industry is working on initiatives that can help make this possible – notably, the Open Data Initiative (ODI), which was introduced in 2018 by Adobe, Microsoft and SAP. ODI turns siloed data into a single, reusable resource that can then be used by multiple enterprise resources. We believe this is an important step towards seamless customer experience. This is why Software AG is the only Integration vendor on the ODI Partner Advisory Council.

Until the entire universe of data speaks the same language, brands need solutions that can both transport and translate the data into and out of the machine. Otherwise the fabric that creates these experiences falls to pieces.

Enabling a free flow of data

We are constantly seeking solutions that create living connections between systems and people. That’s why we are working closely with Adobe to help solve this problem. Adobe builds the world’s premiere marketing machine–Adobe Experience Platform (AEP). And webMethods.io is the world’s premiere integration platform, which transports and translates data into a format that AEP can work with.

We recently announced an important step in helping the data flow freely—an out-of-the-box webMethods.io AEP connector that seamlessly brings data in and out of AEP. Prior to this connector, that connection was a developer-intensive process. Now, it’s plug and play.

We are excited for the continued collaboration with Adobe. Together, we can help you create an experience that turns customers into advocates. Simply.