Highly Competitive - software industry insights

Managed Services -- Building Real Customer Experiences and Relationships

 

Just like any other business, Managed Services Providers have an important path to follow, to distinctly set their services apart from other MSPs. This path pivots on the commitment to ensuring continuously improved customer and user experiences. High quality experiences for clients comprise a great differentiator in the ever-growing world of new managed services firms and cloud solution vendors. Many services can quickly become commoditized, and too often MSPs resort to "differentiating" on price, a dangerous path that can lead to failure.

As customer and user expectations rise, putting strong focus on their experiences with the MSP organization and its services is a must-have. Customer and user experiences are made up of all interactions across all channels during the entire lifecycle of the client company as an MSP customer, which introduces numerous opportunities to better engage and serve clients.

 

Experiences across the Customer Organization

There are often multiple roles in a single organization that make up the 'customers' and 'users' for technology services. This means very different experiences take place from role to role.

The customer experience frequently aligns with the buyer journey, and post-sale account management for a particular client company. The customer-as-buyer often is a composite of roles: mid-level managers who choose services and technology, VPs who approve purchases, CEOs and CFOs who influence or dictate purchase decisions, and even accounting staff who enact purchase transactions. Defining and engendering excellent experiences for a customer or buyer journey comprised of all of these roles usually requires a lot of work. But this is work that should be done for MSPs to better understand their "customers".

The user experience is much more than utilizing technology services – it's all the interactions that occur during the life cycle of services for a particular set of end users and customers. The term user journey may be the best for describing the ongoing relationship between users and MSPs and the services they provide, including customer support.

Within client organizations, communication disconnects often occur between the customer-as-buyer and end users that can jeopardize the customer relationships that MSPs need to build.

 

Customer Relationships Suffer when Communication Breaks Down

Customer Centricity has taken a look at the communication gaps that can adversely affect customer experiences. The quadrant diagram below spans both the client and MSP organizations to depict how collaboration and communication can fall apart due to disconnects between MSP roles and client roles. Enhanced awareness of these roles should help MSPs consciously improve communications and processes between their organizational roles and client roles, ultimately to ensure positive long-term relationships.

 

            Customer Centricity - Communication Disconnects

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image & explanation: Customer Centricity

 

Quadrant 1: The (customer) business manager doesn't truly understand the value that is being delivered by the MSP. They only hear reference to the MSP when there is a service problem. When it comes time to reduce expenses, they are hard pressed to justify the line item representing the cost of the MSP.

Quadrant 2: The (MSP) Sales Representative has little to no insight into how the (client) company is "truly" leveraging the product, the benefits that are being realized, the issues being experienced by those using the product and the value being delivered by the "service organization."

Quadrant 3: The customer's end-users and technical contacts play a key role in the effective use and performance of the MSP's service. They are also key in shaping the business manager's perception of the MSP. However, the only time that they discuss the MSP is when there is a problem. They don't discuss all the great things that the MSP has done on a day-in / day-out basis.

Quadrant 4: (MSP) Customer Service / Technical Support typically observe that "all things are well with the customer." This impression, which can often be false, is created because the customer's end-users maintain a courteous working relationship with the MSP's service personnel, to make sure that they can continue to "get things done" when they really need to.

Problems Impact All Quadrants: When a significant business disrupting problem occurs (which it WILL), the customer's end-user remains calm, cool and collected when speaking with the MSP's service team. The service team doesn't find it necessary to escalate awareness of the "incident" to the MSP's Sales Representative or Senior Management because they don't understand the level of impact

 

Building Real Customer Relationships

Many of the "business-as-usual" activities for MSPs are rich opportunities to enhance customer experiences and build long-term relationships. Important areas that make a difference are already in play: basics like consistently meeting or exceeding SLAs, delivering on all promises, usability and ease-of-use, high performance, and so on. This is how trust is built for real relationships.

MSPs can make sure that new client relationships are built on great customer experiences by starting with onboarding processes and/or service activation. MSPs should allocate strong resources that will make these introductory functions engaging, effective and worthwhile. Obviously when done well, a positive tone has been set for ongoing business.

While MSP ecosystems of complementary service providers are extremely beneficial, in most cases one major function should remain under the control of each individual MSP organization: help desk and customer support. Customer support interactions are critical for growing customer relationships and to expand knowledge about different kinds of customers. It's also an opportunity to thoroughly document customer environments and conversations about business needs, to help these customers better utilize all MSP services now and in the future.

The information and data gained from all interactions with customers and users become the fuel for customer-focused analytics that help MSPs learn more about current and potential customers and the sorts of services that they want and need. Such detailed customer intelligence is an invaluable competitive edge.

 

But Who Owns the Customer Experience?

As illustrated by the Customer Centricity communication quadrant, MSPs would be smart to facilitate better communication with – and within – their client companies, to make sure the value of their services is obvious to the relevant customer and user roles.

MSPs must work to improve their own internal collaborations across functions to engender continuous high quality customer and user experiences. MSPs also need to implement ongoing analytics processes to generate and share customer insights across the organization.

Within the MSP organization, the responsibility for nurturing and shepherding ongoing customer experiences belongs to all teams that impact customers. At the core, much of the work should be accomplished by strong, continuously evolving collaborations between functional teams. To keep an agile customer focus, MSPs cannot afford to allow functional silos to exist within their organizations.

In the end, only the customer can own the customer experience – but MSPs have a great deal of power to enhance all customer interactions and the quality of services provided to clients.

 

Customer Image source: hudsonvalleynewsnetwork.com

 

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic visit IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Customer Journeys: Miles to Go

                   Originally published on CMSWire, May 2013

 

Analyzing customer behaviors and journeys takes a lot of work. Customer interactions are part of a complex of experiences that can occur in many channels and with many functions in the enterprise. Customer experiences are occurring as events, related to cross-functional and cross-channel processes that need to be integrated into a sense of a "single experience" from the customer perspective, as well as integrated in terms of data, process, people, and practices within the enterprise. Further hard work must be done to orchestrate customer touchpoints, which can include multiple teams within the enterprise. Truly putting the best foot forward for customer interactions can be tricky and complicated, even when the best of intentions are in play.

But from the customer's perspective, it's simple: did I get what I wanted or needed -- or not?

And the customer perspective is what counts. What looks complex to vendors probably makes perfect sense to customers – it's their journeys after all. Many organizations are embarking on complicated approaches to working with the customer journey because it has complexity. But I think the real issue is that engaging customers now requires more work from all teams in the enterprise, and many organizations aren't prepared to handle the transition. Dictating step 1, step 2, step 3 with the notion that everyone behaves the same does not work anymore, if it ever did. Social media sites encourage the individual to step out – and companies now have to deal with it.

 

Understanding Your Customers

I've written quite a bit about the "customer as buyer" both here in CMSWire and in my blog. I've talked about connecting the customer journey for B2B software purchases to content marketing and to marketing automation. I've explored the complex interrelationships of three journeys for buying and using enterprise software. Any way you slice it, work has to be done, assessed and fine-tuned to learn more and more about current and potential customers, and how to apply knowledge and insights to developing products that customers will want to buy, and then how to market and sell them.

Part of the hard work depends on robust customer segmentations and predictive analytics. These "tools" require time to set up, refine, and measure against outcomes; then more time to continue improving and changing. Just as the customer journey is frequently ongoing, with no "final destination", the work to engage and support the customer during the buying journey also has no final destination, particularly if companies want the customer to continue to purchase, successfully use and recommend their products.

Analytics can be very important to understanding customers as related to company strategies. But while data and insights help organizations make better decisions, it's the "people" part that often makes or breaks the purchase. Purchase decisions can be based on emotions, hidden agendas, influence from friends, family and colleagues – or even whim.

Customer behaviors constantly change, markets change, business environments change – sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. So efforts for understanding and supporting customer segments and their myriad journeys must be continuously updated. The constants: create products customers want and need; put high quality into all efforts; focus on the customer first, then align company goals to what the company is going to do for customers.

There's no one-size-fits-all. B2B customer journeys are really different from B2C; within those two mega-categories more differences emerge. Multi-channel customer experiences are often fragmented and hard to assemble into a "singular" experience. For one company and its products, there can be multiple customer / buyer journeys. There can be multiple customer categories, and within those categories multiple customer segments. It all depends on the products, how they are sold, who is the target, and how well a company wants to interact with customers.

Customer journeys may mutate, stall, meander – and this simply may be standard operating procedure from the customer perspective. So organizations need to get comfortable with the changeable, quirky nature of buying journeys, and apply "responsive design" to customer service and support, marketing and sales, and corporate goals and strategies. Not only do companies need to deliver what customers want and need over multiple channels and multiple devices, but companies themselves may do well to adopt the persona of a mega-channel with an agile customer focus. Internally a great deal of integration has to happen for teams, functions, processes, and data before an enterprise becomes an interoperating and responsive organization. Successful outcomes can be aligned with customer behaviors and requirements after the organization admits that only the customer owns the experience with the company.

 

 

 

Source: Brian Solis

 

 

Detours Along the Way

Because life is not linear, and neither are most customer journeys, organizations have clear challenges to following and understanding the personalized travels of their buyers. Organizations need to get busy with meeting such challenges to gain real understanding of customer segments and buying proclivities. Organizations create marketing plans to provide support, content, promotions and offers that will stick to the customer wherever the journey is. But these plans often harken back to linear thinking rather than working with the loops and veerings that really happen.

Loops, veers, stalls and detours in buying journeys frequently have nothing to do with the value of products and services or with what other vendors are offering. Customers are people who have work, distractions, other buying journeys (personal and work-related), family matters, and all the other messy stuff of day-to-day life. And surprise! -- most customers simply do not dedicate a full time focus to a particular buying journey. It doesn't matter if it's a B2B or B2C journey.

Detours can include new channels that demand new ways of engaging customers. Mobile devices are increasingly more important to buyers for investigating products and vendors, looking at peer recommendations, asking questions, and in many cases making purchases. Mobile requires new approaches to apps and content – and requires greater agility in organizations to deliver mobile-smart experiences for customers. But many companies lag here and are missing great opportunities. This detour then becomes a dead end for the customer journey.

  

It's Not Your Journey

The customer takes the journey – companies don't lead them or manage them. Companies can provide what is potentially needed at each touchpoint, made more effective when handled using the customer perspective. Companies shouldn't get in the way of the customer taking the journey, but should make it easier for customers to find what they're looking for and to make purchases. Of course "easier" is a relative term. Organizations are striving to provide the right information and support at the right time on the right device and the right channel. Many times this works pretty well or even great; sometimes not. Relevance changes constantly.

Not only do customers have no interest in being "managed" by a company, it's really not possible. But solutions and practices for customer-focused touchpoints such as websites, social media, CRM, CEM, and product fulfillment can and should make it easier for customers to acquire products and services in ways that can also map to company goals. If discarding the notion of customer "command and control" in favor of recognizing that considerable power belongs to the customer proves to be more effective for gaining and retaining customers, then solutions for the different touchpoints should facilitate customer-enabling functions.

The best outcome of any customer interaction or experience should be the value that is derived by the customer – the assessment of that value also belongs to the customer. Organizations don't always know what value was received – or if it was received – even when asking customers directly. It may well be that continuously improved behavioral and predictive analytics processes will reveal far more in this area, far better than a multitude of customer interviews and surveys. Customer actions speak louder than customer words.

  

Related Links

Symbiosis: Customer Experience and Business Process

Perception: The Customer Journey and Business Success

Three Journeys: Lifecycles of Enterprise Software Buyers & End Users

In Pursuit of Customer Experience Excellence

Strategies from Top to Bottom - Content Marketing for B2B Software Vendors

The Customer Journey: Content Marketing for B2B Software Buyers

Goals and Metrics – Measuring Customer Engagement on the Web

SMB / Mid-Market B2B Software vendors - Findability + web presence + social: attracting the "customer as buyer"

 

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands and sees the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts both software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Three Journeys: Lifecycles of Enterprise Software Buyers & End Users

 

There have been increased efforts to improve the usability and the user experience for enterprise software solutions. The user experience is much more than utilizing software – it's all the interactions that occur during the life cycle of the software for a particular set of end users and customers. This is why the term user journey may be the best for describing the ongoing "relationship" between users and vendors and the software they provide. To engender better post-sale end user experiences, software vendors must integrate that journey with two other journeys: the software design phase user journey and the buyer journey for purchasing software. Although different roles may inhabit these three journeys, this is an opportunity for convergence in terms of how to go about creating software that people want to buy, use, keep and recommend.

Enterprise software often provides a less satisfying experience for the end user journey. Enterprise software vendors really need to do a better job of focusing on the end user perspective, particularly to improve software structure and usability as much as possible. Perhaps larger vendors should take a lesson from smaller vendors: adopt a core focus with the end user at top of mind, and simply break down what is essential to achieve what users really need and want – no more, no less.

There are opinions that choosing SaaS / Cloud offerings is the no-brainer solution to poorly designed enterprise software -- but it's not that simple. In particular, larger enterprises have complex problems that usually require sophisticated software solutions that provide a lot of capabilities. Vendors should pay attention to the key word sophisticated: create clean, smooth-performing software through thoughtful design to enable great user experiences. Many enterprise customers / users' would like easy-to-consume little packages of software to handle needs but not all problems can be solved that way.

 

The Chicken and the Egg

The three journeys. Logically the order would be: 'software design phase' user journey; 'purchase of software' buyer journey; and post-sale end user journey. But I don't think that things really work that way when creating and selling software. Let's forget about the first release of a software offering and instead concentrate on the journeys that kick in thereafter. After all, when software is first designed it isn't about the user or customer as much as it is about the "vision" of the founders, or worst case, "cool technology".

The sequence I see: buyer journey, design phase user journey, and post-sale end user journey.

Each of these three journeys is distinct, and each journey serves up roles that comprise the Customer. Nice and confusing – and I believe that the lack of integration for how these journeys are handled by traditional software vendors has contributed greatly to the existence of far too many software offerings that do not achieve the work that "customers" need to be successful in their own enterprises.

In the sales process for traditional enterprise software, the customer-as-buyer often is a composite of roles: mid-level managers who choose the software, VPs who approve purchases, CEOs and CFOs who influence or dictate purchase decisions, and even staff in accounts payable who enact purchase transactions. Defining and engendering excellent experiences for a customer or buyer journey comprised of all of these roles will require a lot of work. But this is work that should be done for vendors to understand their "customers".

Things get messier when the "customer experience" extends to the two end user journeys – the composite "customer" has become more complex, requiring even more work to reconcile what it takes to deliver software that enterprises will want to buy, that users get value from for their work, and that will earn customer loyalty. And since, like so many aspects of enterprises, the three journeys usually persist in silos with little movement towards convergence, improving the customer experience will require vendors to understand a lot more about how these journeys should integrate and interoperate.

 

Why So Much Bloatware?

Bloatware has become the not-so-great hallmark of enterprise software. Many software companies fail to assess whether they have achieved a good core competency before branching off into other areas. If the knee-jerk reaction is to start adding bloatware, then it's time to re-examine the direction of the company, how it views the solution space, and the current business model. What gets lost in the arms race to add more features is the user experience. A degraded user experience leads to lack of adoption, continuous dissatisfaction with the software offering, and potential defection to another vendor. The inability of software vendors to see the three journeys in an integrated "big picture" may be one of the chief culprits for enterprise software bloat.

But there are other culprits. Buyers frequently focus on business goals and more strategic outlooks, so their requirements often do not always match what end users need. But business goals are also enacted by the day-to-day work of the end users who depend on software to get the job done well. The creators of software should keep both of these camps in mind.

End users are also guilty in the bloatware escalation. The users of software can make requests for features and functions that may only matter for current work needs. If the "customer" (composite of all the different roles) insists that these changes must be made to keep the account, vendors often cave and add more and more features over time. Many of these features may not even matter to the bulk of current and future end users.

 

 

                                                                                        Source: Creating Passionate Users

 

        

First Journey: The Buyer Journey for Purchasing

For enterprise software, it is the buyers of the software that many vendors see as the "customer". On the buyer journey, customers go through various stages to reach a decision about purchase. The buying process for enterprise software can be complex and involve multiple steps. Adding to complexity, the buyer is that schizophrenic composite of multiple roles in the enterprise. Since the buyer frequently is not the end user, the buyer's organization already has a serious disconnect between the decision makers and the employees who have to make use of the software in support of work to be done.

Most enterprise vendors want their sales teams to close deals quickly as possible. So vendors don't want sales teams veering off into extensive discussions of end user needs and requirements. These sales people are dealing with the composite buyer of the software and are more focused on the process to gain approval from all buyer roles.

The harmful disconnect between the enterprise software buyer journey and the end user experience is articulated by Michael Krigsman:

Economics and strategy lie at the heart of why traditional enterprise software is so unloved. For the most part, vendors sell these products to budget holders, who are primarily managers and executives, making end-user satisfaction a secondary consideration. When large companies buy software, selection committees focus on many factors, starting with the product's ability to address "organizational needs." This common approach incentivizes vendors to prioritize management goals over creating delight for end users.

Fellow member, Basab Pradhan, who is Senior Vice President and Head of Global Sales and Marketing at huge Indian consulting company Infosys, offers a pointed view:  

Enterprise software still doesn't care about users. Its focus continues to be serving executives, rather than employees, because executives make buying decisions. Therefore, we see all the song and dance about BI and in-memory computing, while employees continue to suffer with terrible UIs and no options.

 

                                                                      Source: AgileProductDesign.com

 

We are at a point where not only software vendors must better understand end users, but the buyers of software need the same education. If a company is buying software technology to improve performance and competitiveness, then the company had better focus on key contributors to success: empowered end users - their own employees - who deserve to have highly usable and reliable tools to carry out the work of the company without wasting a lot of time each day on software that is difficult to use and doesn't meet requirements.

 

Second Journey: Software Design and the User Experience

In software design and development phases, the user experience and user journey should be important aspects. The software companies that are improving the usability of their offerings realize that they have to understand how the software is used in the 'real world'. There can be multiple user roles that have different routines and reasons for interacting with the offering. It's likely that the growth of SaaS and mobile apps has been a significant factor in pushing more traditional enterprise vendors to take usability seriously, as expectations for what technology should deliver evolve.

Doing a good job with usability and the user experience is much more difficult for traditional enterprise software, which is often complex, with a lot of steps to complete tasks. Consumer apps and SaaS offerings have an easier time with usability due to much smaller scope for what the technology accomplishes. For designers and developers of enterprise software, a constant awareness of the various end users throughout all phases of software design and development is essential.

 

Principles of inclusive concept generation  

• Repeat to refine. Successive cycles of exploration, creation and evaluation should generate a clearer understanding of the needs, better solutions to meet these needs, and stronger evidence that the needs are met.
• Test early and test often. Perform quick tests with rough prototypes, early enough in the process that meaningful change is still possible.
• Strive for simplicity. Simplicity is powerful but elusive, it requires a clear and succinct vision of what the product is about. Ask "can you do it with less?".
• It's normal to be different. In addition, it's normal to want different things and do things in different ways. Understand diversity amongst your customers. Understanding disability is only one part of understanding diversity.
• Consider the whole user journey. Satisfying user goals involves designing for end-to-end journeys that takes place in real-world contexts.
• Detail matters. Dig deeper to uncover and address the things that people really do, really want, and really need.
• More than just users. Consider the needs of stakeholders such as regulators, shareholders, manufacturers, retailers, purchasers, installers, supporters, and maintainers.
• Challenge assumptions. It's easy to get stuck in thinking that the way things have been done is the only way they could be done. List your assumptions and ask "why?".
• Let ideas breathe. Give wacky ideas the chance to become great ideas.
• Prove it. Complement opinions with evidence.
• Wear different hats. Be creative, be critical and know when to switch.

 

In the article Why User Experience Cannot Be Designed, Helge Freheim discusses Hassenzahl's "Model of User Experience":  

Several models of UX have been suggested, some of which are based on Hassenzahl's model. This model assumes that each user assigns some attributes to a product or service when using it. As we will see, these attributes are different for each individual user. UX is the consequences of these attributes plus the situation in which the product is used.  

The attributes can all be grouped into four main categories: manipulation, identification, stimulation and evocation. These categories can, on a higher level, be grouped into pragmatic and hedonic attributes. Whereas the pragmatic attributes relate to the practical usage and functions of the product, the hedonic attributes relate to the user's psychological well-being. Understanding the divide can help us to understand how to design products with respect to UX, and the split also clarifies why UX itself cannot be designed.

 

Hassenzahl's "Model of User Experience"

 
  

Source: smashingmagazine.com

 

 

Often software vendors push their teams to complete new development as quickly as possible, imposing impossible schedules on work-constrained teams. With this approach, design and development teams are not given adequate time or even resources to properly pursue user experience improvements. Some teams may not even be interacting directly with product management or architecture teams – instead they are handed tasks to complete without benefit of the big picture or concern for the end user journey.

Design and development teams can be in silos cut off from other teams, and cut off from the 'customer enterprise' and its end users. Software design often calls out the importance of "stakeholders" -- often the reality is a rocky course through a poorly coordinated "ecosystem" of disparate non-unified groups with conflicting agendas. Often the stakeholder with the least power is the end user of the software.

 

Third Journey: The User Experience After The Sale

Often we think of the post-sale experience as the traditional customer lifecycle that focuses on all interactions between software vendor and the customer after the sale. However, the customer life cycle is usually concerned with the business aspects between the customer and the software company and not on how the customer continues to use and interact with the software itself. The "customer" in the customer life cycle may not even be any of the end users.

End users do have ongoing relationships with the software and the vendor as each user role utilizes the software solution in support of work to be done. Each end user experience is colored by the sum total over time of usability, performance, meeting needs, reliability, training, customer support, and so on.

End user adoption and success with the software should not be the responsibility of the buying company – it is the responsibility of the software vendor, if that vendor wants renewals, customer referrals, fewer unhappy customers, protection against competitors. Many software companies have developed genuine interest in helping end users achieve successful experiences and strive to create software offerings with the end user in mind. Vendors of complex software solutions often implement user enablement programs as guidance for accomplishing different projects and tasks, to help users get up and running more quickly.

Another approach to aiding and improving software user experiences is through monitoring technology. Monitoring technology measures, and at times manages, how end users work with enterprise software. The purpose is to help improve user experiences, to improve the adoption rates of software by enhancing the successful use of the software. Interactions can be analyzed on a user by user basis. However, most of these offerings are "application performance management" solutions where most of the focus is on the performance of the application in a given IT infrastructure, and not really on the people and their experiences.

One of the most empowering ways end users let vendors know about their experiences with software is through independent well-organized user groups, such as Americas' SAP User Group (ASUG). As with any community, end user groups provide a stronger voice for expressing the good, the bad and the ugly about the software in different ways: directly to the vendor, in discussion forums and other social media, in publications, at user group events.

One of the barriers for software vendors understanding end users comes from the customer enterprise itself, which is usually comprised of silos with poor cross-team collaboration and communication. There may be no concerted effort by the customer enterprise to find out what software end users want and need, and what they don't want. Successful user-focused software design requires constant and deep communication with end users. Vibrant interactions lead to better designs and better usability. Often thedesign team is not allowed direct access to end users – by the customer enterprise.

 

                                                         Source: Creating Passionate Users

 

 

Where Do These Journeys Lead?

It can be confusing when considering these three essential journeys that greatly impact the success of software offerings, both for vendors and customers. Terminology is confusing at times, with references to customers, buyers and users. All the more reason to understand what these journeys are about. Software vendors could greatly improve the usability and desirability of software offerings if they would understand and support interoperability between these customer/user journeys and experiences.

Many traditional software vendors lag in adopting an outside-in approach to creating, selling and supporting applications. Often the focus is not on the buyer or user, but on internal goals that can conflict with the needs of customers. Vendors follow paths to success that frequently are disconnected from customer success and end user experience excellence.

For many software vendors and their customer enterprises, the three journeys exist in silos, with disconnects between the teams that are involved in supporting and enhancing each journey. Integration and interoperability between the journeys must take place on both the vendor and the customer sides. And the vendor should see every aspect of the three journeys as an opportunity to demonstrate brand quality and reliability.

The software user experience, just like the customer experience, only belongs to the user. You can design software in support of the user experience, design for enhancing and improving the experience the user can potentially have, but you can never design the experience itself.

 

  

Related Links:

Perception: The Customer Journey and Business Success

Symbiosis: Customer Experience and Business Process

In Pursuit of Customer Experience Excellence

Goals and Metrics – Measuring Customer Engagement on the Web

Customer Buying Criteria - Applying customer & competitive intelligence to selling tools leads to strategic internal benefits

Strategies from Top to Bottom - Content Marketing for B2B Software Vendors

The Customer Journey: Content Marketing for B2B Software Buyers

Content Marketing Strategy for B2B Software Vendors: Starring the 'New' White Paper

SMB / Mid-Market B2B Software vendors - Findability + web presence + social: attracting the "customer as buyer"

 

  

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts both software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective