Uber: It is the digital taxi platform that has sparked London cabbie revolts and calls upon the Government to crack down on a business that has disrupted the market so much that their hundred-year-old industry is under threat.
Amazon: This is a company that has been built up from a humble online book store and is now a global company; today turning over almost $89 billion [Business Wire 2014]), having acquired a staggering array of businesses and investments and, as of 2015, became the US’s most valuable retailer (New York Times 2015).
These two global giants have well and truly shaken up a digital revolutionising within their markets. So it seems more than pertinent question to ask: just how did these two once fledgling start-ups do it?
Amazon and Uber: Two completely different powerhouses – one solid strategical approach
The staggering successes of Amazon and Uber have actually been built upon one pretty simple strategical notion – having a solid understanding of their customer, and harnessing the right digital tools for a truly customised experience. Sounds simple, right? Well perhaps not so much, as this process requires a solid CRM to feedback all-important customer information for the eventual optimisation of sales, marketing and service processes. What’s more even a comprehensive grasp upon this isn’t enough, and as Amazon an Uber so adeptly demonstrate, there must be customer experience management (CXM) that goes far beyond any CRM exercise.
CXM – The key to digital strategies such as Amazon’s and Uber’s
CXM must factor into any businesses digital strategy when it comes to replicating the Amazon/Uber model. It is the experience beyond, or before, consumers use your services – where they journey through the sales funnel, where they interact with your social media and wherever they externally come across your brand. The key to success here is being able to seamlessly integrate this in a way that provides for a coherent plan.
Goldenberg from Destination CRM puts forward a strong case for employing the hub and spoke model here in order to achieve this. He argues that the hub should be the customer profile, which feeds back relevant information in, ideally, real time. The CXM then serves as the spokes, which include social media, next-best offer deals, customer journey and mobile apps. Each of these spokes is fed with data from the CRM in order to enhance, streamline and ultimately make for the most effective customer engagement rates. The system is then completed with the spokes acting as data senders themselves, where information can be learned upon social media and fed back to the CRM’s consumer profile. This holistic approach is defined by its duel information sharing, and it is very much what Amazon and Uber have been empowered by.
At Langley James we have an unshakable grasp upon how businesses can be empowered with the right IT staff, in the right positions. We know of the solid business growth that can be achieved through innovative digital tools and technology. And we’re the right partner for those who, like Amazon and Uber, seek to harness the world of IT to supercharge their business growth.
