You are going to have a lot of digital change initiatives and projects going as you accelerate the pace of becoming a digital business.

Central to them all should be both the customer experience and the user experience. They are in fact two separate issues to consider.

Improving the customer experience should always be the main driver. It is the catalyst that should drive as much change as possible. It should always be front a center in creating a digital business. It is not about the technology. Repeat after me, “it is not about the technology”.

The customer experience belongs to every department. Technology does affect customer behavior. It makes a difference to the expectations customers will have of your digital offerings. The focus needs to be on people and processes mainly, not the underlying technology.

To truly improve the customer experience in a holistic way, several elements, divisions, caveats, processes and technologies need to be taken into account. It is not about a single technical solution. It is the whole ecosystem that you create for your business.

The people dimension here is paramount. The customer experience is where business and technology need to be on the same page. C-suite members who get that are worth everything they bring to the table. A digital mindset and culture must exist.

These are caused by the increasing importance of an totality of the customer experience improvement approach.

• It is caused by changing customer expectations and customer experiences offered by the best-in-class. Think of Amazon, Apple and Google. They set expectations that customers will use to evaluate their experience with you. It may not be fair but it is true.
• It’s not just digital. Sometimes, in a digital transformation context, organizations look mainly at what has become known as the digital customer experience, although digital transformation projects in customer experience, certainly (can) stretch far beyond the sheer digital dimension.
• Let’s not forget that the customer is one, even if it makes sense to look at the digital customer experience.