Find the right partners to help you break down internal silos and reach your full potential

It is more necessary than ever for companies to break down functional silos within business lines to support digital customer experiences (CX). Savvy service providers are capitalizing on these trends by investing in capabilities and assets that will help their customers bridge the gaps between their internal silos. Enterprise marketers and customer service professionals need to make sure they have the right service providers as partners, and they should not rest for a moment to ensure that they’re staying on top of new trends regarding digital customer experience. 

Unite customer service with marketing and sales for seamless experiences 

In a recent Top 10 report, HFS Research analyzed the top 16 service providers leading the way in front–office services, which include the design of customer experience and marketing and sales operations. These front–office areas are moving toward greater connectivity to understand the wants and needs of customers and to make their experiences with your company feel as smooth and personal as possible—and these service providers are on a race to become “experience agencies” that can help their customers across many facets of CX. 

To function in the ideal seamless fashion, the traditional silos of the front office need to work in harmony, including customer service, marketing, and sales. These silos should function together to ensure that process changes due to trends and customer preferences you discover are implemented effectively. But how often is it painfully clear, for example, that the website and social media functions (traditionally under a marketing hat) are completely disjointed from the “traditional” customer service realms like contact center or retail points of service? As service providers begin to help enterprises bridge these gaps, they also become disruptors to the traditional “agency” models that have bogged down the market for decades. This kind of data–driven marketing requires input from across the customer journey to inform its campaigns.  

Plus, service providers are offering a much more flexible and customized approach than the legacy ad firms. “Regular marketing doesn’t work anymore. Our usual partners, the WPPs and Omnicom types, just have their standard inflexible offers,” said the VP of marketing at a beverage company. “We need a collaborative, holistic CX partner that brings ideas and helps us improve analytics and our route to market.”  

All of this means that there is a new ripe spot in the traditional BPO and consulting service provider market that is disrupting the way things used to work for designing customer experiences. So how can you take advantage? 

How can service providers’ race to become “experience agencies” benefit your company?  

As this “experience agency” market emerges, it provides a unique opportunity for enterprises who want to become more customer–centric. Look at providers with capabilities across the major areas of customer engagement: consulting and CX design, digital marketing, and sales services, including expertise with areas such as social media advertising, understanding customer segments on the web and mobile apps, purpose marketing, personalization, and sales conversion. The front office providers we looked at in our Top 10 report all showed success in the major areas of CX with an ability to implement the right balance of technology and talent acquisition to reach those points. Currently, Accenture leads the pack, with IBM and Deloitte not far behind, and there are many other strong players with compelling offers as well. 

The top service providers in our assessment had significant capabilities across the building blocks of design, production, and deployment of campaigns. Accenture has the greatest capability in the true creative realm. With significant agency acquisitions such as Droga5 as parts of its portfolio, it can help its customers with “tip of the spear” for creative design work. While many of the service providers haven’t gone as far as acquiring discrete agencies, they are often deploying design techniques like design thinking to help marketers and CX professionals think through customer journeys and understand the pain points. But most importantly, these design elements need to have a clear connection with the development and production of marketing campaign and CX strategies. Look for partners that are adept in understanding how different customer channels work and the best ways to utilize them to effectively get messages to the appropriate audience.  

The Bottom Line: Carefully think through your requirements in partners as you become more customer-centric. 

Staying deeply tuned into customer wants and needs is vital to reaching your enterprise’s full potential. But you don’t have to do it alone—if the resources aren’t yet available internally, partners with expertise in CX design, marketing, and sales strategies can provide the support and insight needed. Working with partners like this can ultimately help to elevate your entire enterprise to the customer-centric ideal necessary to stay competitive in the face of disruption.