Why savvy businesses should use a Digital Experience Platform (DXP)

14 January 2020 | 4642 Shares

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Today, businesses are subject to the rising expectations of consumers when it comes to things like personalized content delivered in real-time and best in class digital experiences.

Technology doesn’t just have a role in the workplace, it’s in every facet of daily life and users expect a seamless experience with every digital interaction they make. If services aren’t personalized and consistent, then a company’s competitors are only a click or screen tap away. In fact, according to a Salesforce survey, 57 percent of customers said they would stop buying from a company that gave them a second-class experience.

Until the last two or three years, those expectations were isolated to D2C (direct to consumer) companies, like e-commerce businesses, or direct-service providers. But now increasing consumer-led level of expectations and hyper-personalization is infiltrating all business dealings: B2B as well as B2C.

With the need for a personalized service at every touchpoint comes the genuine possibility that dissatisfaction can be broadcast publicly far and wide. Online review sites that garner public opinion are often the first place that people and businesses look for recommendations, and multiple surveys show people are more than willing to share bad experiences online— in fact, most of those surveys show bad experiences are shared more often than smooth, highly positive interactions, visits, or purchases.

The flip-side to those statistics is that when customers or business partners do enjoy positive experiences, their loyalty will increase, and in many cases, they will end up spending more time and money with the company.

The business challenges faced
Reaching the right people at the right time, with the right content, in the right channels is the major challenge that organizations of all sizes face. In comparison, a few years ago, every interaction started with a Google search, therefore SEO was the primary focus of most marketing. Today, consumers and businesses are tuned into social media, direct messaging, influencers’ messages, video content, mid-roll advertising and remarketed messaging.

That reality makes hitting the sweet spot with a carefully directed message a task that involves being on top of every channel, every messaging opportunity, and every touchpoint— which is all but impossible without the right technology.

It’s in the scale of it all
A small startup company selling a high-value service to a handful of customers may well be able to manage their customer base manually; hand-crafting messages to each client down relevant channels, tuning, and tweaking each message’s form and content on-the-fly. This is simply not scalable for any company beyond their startup phase. The costs of providing hyper-personalized content, messages and experiences for a global business would be crippling and would require enormous resources, without a full-feature Digital Experience Platform (DXP).

To address the three pain points many marketers face like scattered data sources, the need for omnichannel strategy, and scalability without fuss, here’s TechHQ‘s three-step guide to succeeding in providing the demanded experience.

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# 1 | Gain oversight onto your sources
Even in the most technologically advanced organization, data often exists in disparate silos. There might be incredibly important information held in file-shares, in CRM and ERP systems, in creative departments’ databases, in martech apps, and in disparate systems across the enterprise.

Rather than copying data to a central repository, the sensible way to approach this issue is to use the technology of APIs (application programming interfaces) to create links between silos. Connecting data in this way is key to creating actionable insights and make better decisions, based on information in real time.

That way, as specialist repositories distribute their content, technology acting as a hub has access to the most up to date media.

That’s where a solution like the Digital Experience Platform (DXP) from Progress comes in. It allows organizations to get full oversight onto multiple collateral sources: what’s available, what formats, and especially important, what any missing elements might be.

# 2 | Create the missing pieces, create the strategy
One of the primary benefits of a DXP is to help companies map out the customer journey and identify gaps in that journey. It provides the tools required to fill missing areas and deliver seamless interactions with every customer in the right format, the right message, on the most relevant channel.

At an enterprise scale the challenge is to ensure that if the company needs to approach a new market segment or slightly alter its messaging or brand “vibe,” it has the technological base to be able to rapidly achieve that.

# 3 | Distribute the message, keep the messages “on-message”
At the highest level, DXP enables businesses to provide rich media, highly personalized, and relevant, seamless interactions that actively drive brand loyalty and encourage repeat business. The ability for an organization to have continuous interactions with the customer that never break the experience is fundamental to an effective DXP.

This requires companies to have a connectivity layer. That’s a message delivery framework that is as elastic and agile as the messages are themselves. Previously, businesses have assembled rattling toolkits of applications and services that provide that service — at least partially. In this context, it can be important to run a DXP as a headless service, thus fully-decoupling content management services from delivery.

Unfortunately, as with any attempt to use competing products which try to operate in the same space, there’s little interchange of information between the applications, and a great deal of duplication of resources.

With a centralized content distribution platform that’s engaged with the data sources, smart, omnichannel messaging gets integrated as part of an overall business strategy. That means directed information going out to customers and prospects, as dictated by the business, not what’s possible with a limited toolset.

Rather than waste resources, time and energy on blanket campaigns that have little impact, a DXP enables organizations to use laser-focus to reach out to new customers, loyal customer bases, and customers-to-be. The continuity in customer touchpoints drives the customer journey, making the difference between a customer and a brand advocate. The latter only emerges when every interaction is right, and the personalized service creates positive user satisfaction metrics, time after time.

Now you act
Adopting the agility and scalability that DXP brings is an essential factor to surviving in markets dominated by the global companies. Drive conversions and improve your bottom line – take the next steps towards implementing a full-service digital experience platform.

Progress is ranked as the top leader in G2’s Digital Experience Platform Grid, and has the experts available to help you deliver cost-effective and easy to implement impactful digital experiences across your business.

To read for yourself about the benefits of a full-feature Digital Experience Platform, download the Why Savvy Businesses Should Lead with a DXP whitepaper, today.