How a Customer First Approach Leads to a Unified Experience

I have always been a huge advocate for Customer Experience, championing the importance of brands committing to a customer first approach.  That’s why I was so excited to be on-site at Adobe Summit last month to witness Adobe, Microsoft and SAP expand their commitment to an initiative that I see as a first of its kind collaboration to improve customer experience on a massive scale.

The three powerhouses announced a plan to expand the Open Data Initiative (ODI) they first revealed at last year’s Microsoft Ignite Conference, and that announcement involves Hootsuite!  Three of the largest enterprise vendors are joining forces to create a process to enable their customers to move data between each others’ services by standardizing on a common data format.  This approach truly is pioneering a collaboration like we’ve never seen before, and they’re not doing it alone. The three companies have compiled a Product Advisory Council of 12 partners (initially) who are key participants in the ecosystem and I am thrilled to say that Hootsuite is one of them. As the leader in social media management, we will provide use cases, consultation, and overall strategic guidance to the committee which will help establish the initial rollout of ODI. I really respect this approach to ensuring this is an open and free flowing initiative rather than being governed by a few, and excited we get to be a part of building it from the start.. And this is just the start, the group expects to expand far beyond this first set of partners to include a much larger group of stakeholders going forward.

But what does this mean for our collective customers? In my mind it is a customer-first approach at its finest. We hear more and more about data restrictions, siloed into a variety of different applications, whereas this aims to allow businesses to safely, securely, and in a compliant manner leverage the power of their data irrespective of its source.

As a marketer myself, I see how this initiative will enhance how brands engage through their customer journey by being exposed to a much bigger picture view.   Businesses are gleaning information about their customers from all kinds of data points whether that be Zendesk for support, Marketo for CRM and Adobe Analytics for web traffic, that data should absolutely be used together, accessible in 'one place' to help drive a cohesive marketing strategy. The ability to centralize and pull data from e-commerce, social, CRM and web (for example) to create the ultimate multidimensional view of a customer translates into a marketers dream.

And what does this mean for us as consumers? Ultimately this is the start of another whole new chapter in a “unified experience” as a customer. If brands can ensure that my experience as a consumer is personalized, in-context, and most importantly..relevant across all channels then I’m all for it!.