Customers don’t care about the systems a business has, only “what touches their eyeballs”, Twilio CEO, Jeff Lawson, told delegates at his firm’s Engage conference held in London on 14th November. This means that businesses should start with what the customer wants rather than trying to integrate what systems they have.
In a keynote speech, Lawson said that businesses need to start their digital transformation projects by looking at the customer experience and work backwards from there.
“The last mile of digital engagement is communications. And so if you actually start with what your customers experience, you start with the right experience, the right notification, the right message,”
He said that connecting the dots of the customer’s journey during the critical point of communication with them and then working your way back from there was an easier problem to solve rather than trying to integrate technology the business has first.
He said that using a visual editor such as the one provided by Twilio called Studio, allows businesses to “take these building blocks and drag them all together and create the kind of experiences based on what your customers need”.
“Then you can go down in the right database to pull the right piece of information right when you need it,” he added.
“We’re finding is that companies realise that orchestrating the communications flow, instead of trying to attain the holy grail [of integrating legacy systems] is a much easier way to build the customer experience that you’re managing.”
Making the job easier for employees
Lawson said that companies should not only think about what the customer experiences, but also the employee. He said that the other part of orchestration is around what information is needed to be put in front of them to better help customers.
“Employees have an equally byzantine set of computer systems to navigate,” he said, concluding:
“You’ve probably called a company to change a flight or something and all you hear is the contact centre agent typing for 10 minutes. They’re just navigating this horrible set of computer systems to get their job done”
