At CompTIA’s 2016 ChannelCon, the IT Services and Support Community (ITSS) Meeting began on a musical note. Aaron Acker from the ITSS Executive Council hosted and brought a humorous tone to the meeting by having all attendees admit to their neighbors what their first concert was.
The meeting’s agenda was created as a direct result of survey responses from CompTIA members in regard to customer experience. Brenda Dennis, head of sales operations, customer and partner services from Cisco, spoke about the staggering pace of change and how a hyper-connected world necessitates an expanded definition of the customer. With smartphone traffic expecting to exceed PC traffic by 2020, and with the Internet of Things promising to connect 500 billion devices in the next decade, it’s no stretch to imagine that companies are immensely curious about how to evolve their customer experience.
The constant paradigm shifts introduced by companies like Amazon, Uber, Spotify, Airbnb, and Tesla require companies to redefine the meaning of operational excellence, and reexamine what constitutes an enjoyable customer experience. If customers have a positive experience with a company, they’re much more likely to buy from that company again even if it’s at a premium, so how does a business keep their customers happy in a constantly shifting technological world?
The answers aren’t immediately clear, but the speakers all had their own unique ideas. Jonathan Clark, senior digital marketing manager at Ingram Micro, suggests that content marketing plays an integral role in customer experience due to the expanding power of the buyer from avenues such as online reviews and social media. John Tippett from Aisle8 suggested using professional services automation (PSA), which can act as a central nervous system for any IT managed services provider, and Melissa Matlins of Spigit suggested crowdsourcing innovative ideas from employees as a way to keep customers engaged.
