Speed kills! It’s a popular axiom in modern American sports, but in today’s digital world – whether it is service delivery, product development, marketing initiatives, hiring talent or decision-making – speed  is everything. However, speed itself is not enough to spur growth –and growth is what all companies chase, and few ever catch. Here’s the secret to growth: When speed meets differentiated customer experience is when the magic of growth happens – and it’s remarkable growth!

However, many people still get confused by the term ‘differentiated customer experience,’ thinking it’s the same as the term ‘customer experience’ – but it’s not. The phrase ‘customer experience’ is used loosely to mean many things, including happy customers or customer loyalty or user experience or customer satisfaction. Let’s get this point straight: Customer experience is an age-old phrase that traditionally meant ‘delivering quality services.’ Today, those in the know talk about Differentiated Customer Experience.

Customer Experience Vs Differentiated Customer Experience
When we talk about differentiated customer experience, what we mean is providing customized services at every touch point that consumers will never find anywhere but withyour brand. Let’s accept this one salient point – in the modern age, customer experience is dead! The reality is that every business provides some experience to its customers, but providing a unique, differentiated customer experience, requires the help of intelligent technologies like AI, ML, Predictive Analytics, and so on.

Why? It comes down to a simple mathematical equation. In the old world view, the equation could be represented this way: Customer Experience = Selling Price + Customer Expectation (traditional world)

However, in today’s world, the equation has evolved to this: Differentiated Customer Experience = Selling Price + Customer Expectation + Intelligent Technologies (speed)

Do you see the striking difference between Customer Experience and Differentiated Customer Experience?

Every Company Can Become a Leader
Look at it this way: A decade ago, it was unthinkable to even expect a small or mid-sized company to take on larger enterprises using competitive pricing and service quality. It was almost a surrendered notion that larger enterprises could easily squeeze out any small or mid-sized company at will because they could not compete; the field was not level. However, thanks to mass digitization and ever-growing access to technology, today’s small and mid-size companies have leveled the playing field by leveraging the same tools and processes as larger enterprises. And they more or less accomplished this by becoming intelligent enterprises.

What does it all mean? Today, even small and mid-sized businesses can create a Differentiated Customer Experience and beat larger enterprises at will – a sort of role reversal! As proof, companies like Google and Facebook would never have outsmarted the bigger companies had they not leveraged newer technologies available at that point of time.