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The arrival of new market players like Amazon, Uber and Airbnb has profoundly transformed the customer experience. They have promoted immediacy, provided global customer solutions and made the customer experience the focus of their business model.
At Sopra Steria Next, we believe that large public and private companies can emerge as the driving force in their ecosystem, since they are in charge of the entire customer relationship. They can become platform companies if they are willing to “pivot” to adopt the customer's point of view, reframing their offering within the wider context of the customer's overall need. With an ecosystem of partners, these companies develop their value proposition based on their customers’ goals, challenges and ambitions, adapting a catalogue of solutions and services to support these objectives from end to end. The company thus moves from a “catalogue-centric” to a “customer-centric” business model. For customers, the platform-driven company is the exclusive partner of their projects. It manages all aspects of the customer relationship, across the entire ecosystem. This means that operational excellence is a must.
The end-customer relationship is the building block of a platform company, so maintaining and developing this key asset is a top priority. Today, a platform company must be able to build up in-depth customer insights that go well beyond its own solutions to understand and anticipate their goals and their pain points (prediction and efficiency). Leveraging data is therefore key to becoming your customers' preferred partner and building a relationship of trust. As you become the key player in your ecosystem, you must sustainably engage your customers and turn them into your brand ambassadors. We help you make the most of your customer data, develop your company’s customer culture, design and implement policies to keep customers engaged over the long term.
The value delivered by a platform is assessed and measured against its value proposition. To grow continuously this value, the company must adopt a continuous-improvement approach to its products and services through innovation and customer insights. It then will need to coordinate your partners' offerings to build a value proposition that fits your brand platform and strategy. Our consultants help you develop and implement this cohesive end-to-end value proposition. They work with you to coordinate products and services with partners of your extended business, and redesign the customer and prospect experience (customer experience [or CX] design and user experience [or UX] design). Together we help speed up your time to market by drawing on agile methods while promoting industrialization.
For platform companies, ensuring a high-quality, consistent customer experience is crucial. There must be a coordinated continuous-improvement approach overseen by the company’s top management to identify and correct any issues, optimising the customer experience at each touchpoint and every stage of the life cycle. Constantly improving the customer experience and service delivery leads to greater efficiency, facilitates adoption of the service by users, and ultimately enhances their satisfaction considerably. Finally, companies often think about how to improve the customer experience while sometimes forgetting about the kind of experience they offer prospects. Creating a prospect experience on a par with customer experience is key to maximising business potential. We work with you to tailor your governance, organisation, operating methods and solutions to optimise the full customer experience, which extends beyond the bounds of your company.
Digital Strategy Manager, Sopra Steria, Italy
Chief Design Officer, Sopra Steria, Spain
Director, Business Consulting, Sopra Steria Next, Norway