Believe it or not – in the US alone, about 67% of customers are considered ‘serial switchers.’ Why do they switch? According to a recent study from SAP, most switch due to poor customer experience. Enterprises are waking up to this bitter truth: Instead of prospering customers, they have withering customers!

Countries witnessing this sweeping trend include China, India, Germany and the UK. Everywhere you look, customers are switching for better experiences. On Wall Street, most big stocks get plundered and often see this same downward spiral- at least until customers start experiencing better product performance. It seems that the road to prosperity is paved with customer experience!

So how do you know that your enterprise is really providing the experience your customers yearn for? Can we derive a mathematical formula or an equation that helps us understand the complexity of customer experience in moderately simple terms?

Interestingly, SAP has come up with an equation that is easy to understand:

X Data + O Data = Winning in the Experience Economy

This equation helps put to rest some of the grave customer experience issues enterprises have been grappling with for a very long time. Let’s define the terms ‘X’ and ‘O’.

X – stands for experience data;
O – stands for Operational data

According to the study, if you look at customer experience, it’s all about connecting the dots between the operational data and the experience data. How do you know which is operational data and which is experience data? Determining the difference isn’t that complex but does require a deeper understanding, which we will discuss later. For now, it is enough to know that experience data is all about ‘the why’ while operational data is all about ‘the what.’ I promise we will discuss this in more detail next time!

Looking at the information above, we can write a formula for not only keeping existing customers but also attracting new customers: X Data + O Data = Winning in the Experience Economy Intelligent Technology.

Intelligent Technology: Answering for X + O

The SAP study says that, “Listening, understanding, and acting on your X + O data requires intelligent technologies. Developing technologies make it possible to gain a complete, accurate, secure picture of your customers. The Internet of Things provides a wealth of customer data, blockchain technology helps you securely store it, while machine learning and artificial intelligence enable smarter and faster analysis to make the data useful.”