A mobile app’s main purpose has always been to provide consumers with a richer, quicker, and simpler experience on mobile devices for which they don’t have to access websites, desktop apps or online services. However, to stay ahead of the competition, businesses today tend to develop an all-rounder app of sorts, loaded with features that might not add value or be of any help to the user with a crisp & focused solution. A mobile app that is loaded with unnecessary features imposes several challenges.

Functionality Concerns

Most businesses continue to add more functionalities to their mobile apps, making them massive in size, sluggish to load and difficult to use. Today, in most cases, mobile apps are nothing more than a condensed replica of an existing website, online service or desktop application. This results in a large, complex application that occupies a lot of storage space in devices and is eventually uninstalled from the device after just a day or two.

Lack of a Seamless User Experience

The main reason why users install mobile apps is to save time from a website performing the same function. They are in a hurry and thereby want the app to resolve their issues quickly. Unfortunately, due to being loaded with several unnecessary features, mobile apps struggle to provide users with a simple user experience and pose numerous challenges such as, difficult to access features, prolonged load time & process-driven registration and performance issues.

Soaring App Development Costs

Due to the feature and functionalities overload, the app development costs soar high due to which most companies are unable to stick to the assigned budget. Consequently, in the production phase, many apps are abandoned, and never reach the app store.

Fail to Run on All Devices

Users today expect more due to highly flexible, dynamic and disruptive technology. Within a span of 10 minutes, the user may need to access his/her smartphone, tablet & laptop. This makes it imperative for apps to function seamlessly across all devices.

To address these challenges and in the pursuit of creating enriching app experiences the technology world is exploring a brand new phenomenon in the business and mobile app development space: micro apps. Micro apps are tailor-made applications based on HTML which aim to reach a specific goal. They are compact, highly focused on the target audience, and extremely user friendly. Though relatively new entrants in the technology space, these compact tools have gained immense popularity among users, developers and companies alike.

Facebook announced in May 2019 that it would blend the Facebook app, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram functions to create a super app. Around the same time, Google said its micro apps feature was tested in the Search and Google Assistant apps.

Google is now experimenting with a solution that offers some of an app’s best features without taking over all of its phone storage. According to VentureBeat, the concept called micro apps is a new feature of Google Search and Google Assistant.

Micro apps essentially aim at distilling the best of the regular app’s experience while getting rid of the worst — one of them being the trouble of visiting app stores and waiting for apps to be downloaded.

Micro programs are small applications running in a super app. These micro programs operate essentially as a separate mobile app; except that they work alongside another larger app.

Principles behind the Microservices Architecture

Microservices have been around for several years, and many organizations are beginning to benefit from these small, autonomous, independently deployable and easy to maintain code blocks. Even the front-end development can also benefit from building them into independently deployable blocks of code, rather than a single monolithic app.

It’s relatively simple – by emulating the microservices approach and applying it to a frontend application and thereby splitting the frontend monolith into many different apps. They are also organized around specific business capabilities that make them a perfect candidate to work with micro apps, something that we will explore further in this article.

A micro app is just like any other application on your mobile device, except that it is far more focused and efficient in performing a given task. In software terms, we often think of the principle of single responsibility, which means to perform only one function, and do it well. Micro apps take this single responsibility principle and apply it to the creation of mobile experiences.

The value to the consumer is obvious. We can focus on delivering exactly what the consumer needs, without the unnecessary overheads.

Solution overview:

What is a Micro app?

A micro app is an HTML-based, small in size and customer-oriented, built to perform, specific functionality with a simple user interface. Unlike a feature-rich mobile application, the micro apps have limited functionality and let users interact, perform the specific task and leave the app with maximum efficiency.

Micro apps help consumers in providing precise features and make it very convenient to accomplish the task. Also, they adopt the specific user interface for the particular use case. This means that the user interface is based on the specific need of the user.

In order to build the micro app ecosystem, we first need to build a single container super app that can host a myriad of micro apps. The super app provides the native experience for both iOS and Android users which is the face of the company/enterprise. The consumers of a particular company can avail a myriad of services through micro apps using the super app.

Here is the high-level architecture of the Micro app:

For example, a typical personal banking mobile app contains several features, like:

• View the current balance
• Get mini statement
• Change the ATM pin
• Transfer money
• Show the last 5 transactions

However, if we build a micro app for those features, it will perform only one specific task, like getting the current balance or changing the ATM pin.

Existing Players:

WeChat has more than 1 million mini-programs covering 200 categories and has come to be a part of everyone’s day-to-day life in China, from ordering goods to booking tickets, covering a wide range of services used by millions of users every day. Various businesses are adapting mini-programs for getting access and visibility to their customers.

Ant Financial’s Alipay is WeChat’s closest competitor, boasting over 120,000 mini programs as of January 2019. Other successful super apps in China using the mini program model include Baidu, Meituan Dianping and Taobao’s Tmall.

Indonesia’s GO-JEK and Singapore’s Grab — the biggest super apps in Southeast Asia — follow this model of developing their services in-house and packaging all of them in one app.

India is another hot spot for super apps, with companies such as Paytm and Flipkart dominating the scene. Reliance Jio, the disruptive mobile operator that redefined India’s mobile landscape through its 4G offerings, is also set to launch its own super app with over 100 services.

1. Agile Development: Developing a feature-rich mobile app is always a time-consuming task, however micro apps can be developed and deployed quickly because they are specific to a particular task. The feedback loop is also quick which can be considered for improvement.

2. Adaptability: The adaptability of a general mobile app w.r.t device, types of users, workflow and use cases are very limited. However micro apps can solve this problem quickly by ensuring that developers can modify, upgrade, adapt and move the user interface considering a variety of parameters.

3. Solving Technical Challenges: A traditional mobile app contains loads of features that users may not use. These unnecessary features cause performance issues such as high load times, sluggish performance, complex navigation and so on. Having a single functionality in a micro app seems to address these issues resulting in a seamless user experience, navigation, and better performance.

4. Faster and Easier Development: As micro apps focus on a particular task, it is easier and faster to build and deploy them independently. Also, teams working on such apps can work independently without the need to integrate multiple features. This saves a lot of developer time, money and resources.

5. Independent of Other Apps: As micro apps ensure the popular and unique micro services architecture, they can work independently. This results in a decentralized approach in terms of app development and deployment.

To sum it all, micro apps are a relatively new format of mobile applications that have been popular over the last few years. It is a hybrid solution that is based on web technologies (HTML/CSS/Java scripts) but can also integrate with native apps/capabilities. Depending on the nature of the business and use cases, enterprises could opt for micro apps based solutions to realize various benefits and fill the gap between the web and native.

Enterprises across consumer goods, B2C and B2B believe that customer experience can be an edge to attract and retain customers. While a digital medium is a key element of CX, customers decide when and on which channel they want to contact a brand, for what type of information, during which stage of the sales cycle and so on. Brands may be under pressure to be present across channels (which may not be required) and also orchestrate a positive and cohesive omnichannel experience.

What is Omnichannel Customer Experience?

At its core, the omnichannel promise is simple; it means supporting customers effectively and cohesively across all digital channels, and all the different ways in which customers and organizations can interact with each other. The overarching goal is to ensure that the product or service being offered makes the best use of the channel and helps in fostering a consistent, positive customer experience.

Omnichannel CX can thereby be summed as the cumulative effect of the strategically planned user experiences that extend across all channels, devices, and incorporates the brand’s tonality across all designs and messaging seamlessly and consistently.

Omnichannel CX success, however, is not merely limited to the number of channels integrated as part of the customer communication cycle. There’s a lot more to an Omnichannel CX strategy.

The CX vision of your brand is exclusive to the experiences you wish you create. It is about the larger purpose you wish to accomplish and the feeling you would like to invoke in your customers. Brands should thereby formulate their exclusive omnichannel definition to create a strategy for managing omnichannel experiences efficiently.

Why do brands struggle with Omnichannel CX Transformation?

One of the most common reasons brands struggle in this area is because they are channel-aligned rather than customer-aligned. Also given the surge in customer touchpoints, enterprises are overwhelmed and tempted to be present across platforms in the hope to garner a competitive advantage.  The key, however, is to identify what works, carefully plan and execute a strategy that resonates with your brand and customer vision.

Brands with omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain over 89% of their customers on an average. Tapping into the right combination of omnichannel and customer experience trends will be the key to success for enterprises, business leaders, marketers and CX professionals in 2020.

Is Multichannel and Omnichannel experience the same thing?

In multichannel communications, the ‘brand’ remains the focus through which businesses engage consumers by sharing relevant content across multiple touch-points. Most brands often apply multi-channel marketing methods as it seems quick and easy to implement. As the nature of multichannel communications is fragmented, the messaging is not necessarily seamless or consistent across channels. This approach does not focus on creating a unified voice by optimizing the customer experience across channels.

On the contrary, omnichannel experience focuses on creating a unified customer experience from the first to the last point of contact, gathering customer insights and data along the journey to provide relevant and integrated messaging throughout – the ‘customer’ being the point of focus.

Brands embarking on an omnichannel transformation must thereby ensure that all channels are optimized for each customer interaction. And to be able to achieve this, they must seek to understand what customers truly care about at a granular level.

So what do customers truly care about?

1. Speed and flexibility
2. Reliability and transparency
3. Simplicity and clarity
4. Proactive outreach and timely communication
5. Empathy and care

That said, not all customer expectations can be categorized into specific segments. Brands should explore ways to gather direct feedback and insights from customers to understand what matters most to them and why. Additionally, not all these factors can impact the overall experience. It could be a combination of these at varying degrees and more that can contribute to the overall experience. It’s thereby critical to analyze the factors that can make all the difference. While speed might be the top priority for one brand, timely customer communication might be the key to another.

Let’s explore the essential components for brands to consider while crafting an exclusive omnichannel experience.

Begin with User Research

User research is the foundation for creating a successful product or service. It lays the user at the center of the experience and helps in crafting offerings that align with the user’s needs. It’s essential to align your omnichannel strategy with a scientific technique like user research to gauge and assess what users say vs what they do, which could often be remarkably different. The insights with user research can be integral in creating a befitting omnichannel strategy and help in understanding the key triggers that influence a positive customer experience across channels.

Craft Design Principles based on the Omnichannel Strategy

Considering the surge in digital platforms and technologies, the way ahead for brands to differentiate and garner a competitive advantage is to create offerings embedded in an intuitive design interface that is custom built to match the customer persona. Design principles that align with the omnichannel strategy can help in influencing the customer communication process with insights about the most receptive channels that can increase engagement and elevate the customer experience to a whole new level.

Prioritize Customer Touchpoints

Not all touchpoints are significant for every business. Even within a brand, the touchpoint that works for one service might not be apt for another. Prioritize customer touchpoints in the context of the business and focus on the ones that can have the most significant impact on the overall customer experience.

Design Customer Journeys to ensure they meet all Customer Requirements

Cluster customer segments by determining where their buyer journey begins and identifying all the touchpoints they prefer & the triggers that lead to desired outcomes. By identifying what leads to cart abandonment, retail brands can modify the customer journey and enhance the shopping experience across channels. By mapping customer journeys and beginning with the end objective in mind can help brands in setting goals, prioritizing the most important journey; analyzing the complexity involved in enhancing the journey and what this means to the customer.

Balance between Automation and Human Interaction

While customers expect brands to understand their preferences with intelligent technology they also expect empathetic human interactions depending on where they are in the journey. Maintaining a fine balance of both into the overall customer experience can be the real differentiator for brands. By understanding when a conversation needs to switch from a bot to an agent especially when a customer has a specific or unique request can bring in a remarkable difference to the customer experience.

Have an IT Structure that supports a Seamless Omnichannel Experience

Seamless user experiences are close to impossible without the right technology in place. The changing consumer preferences, the convergence of technology and the dynamic business environment are opening doors for new opportunities.

To succeed and capitalize on these opportunities, enterprises will have to adopt an agile, design-led, customer-first development process that views the IT & design structure as an ongoing process with openness towards continual redesign that evolves alongside the customer journeys. With new technologies and applications on an all-time rise; brands will be more open about experimenting and implementing an IT backbone for their omnichannel experience.

Brands that have Scaled with Omnichannel Customer Experiences

Amazon

To be able to begin where you last left, regardless of the channel being used is one of the factors that make omnichannel experiences most desirable to customers and brands. True to its mission, the ‘digital-only’ company nailed its data unification process through its customer accounts, a space where they’ve been gaining a competitive edge with relevant promotions, personalized recommendations; enabling users to review, screen and order effortlessly. Its omnichannel strategy allows shoppers to switch between the app and website without losing track of any of their activities. Additionally, the prime account enables access to the e-commerce platform, video content and also enables integration with Alexa and Kindle. This gets a boost further where customers with Prime Subscriptions can use the same account across different countries. It also manages third-party vendors who can communicate via Amazon’s channels and enable a seamless experience with the same speed and efficiency.  Amazon is truly one of those rare brands that are infinite with its reach, making it one of the brands that master the omnichannel strategy remarkably.

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Bank of America

With the need for personalization & seamless experiences at an all-time high, Fintech terms are no exception. Banking service providers must thereby leverage data and insights collected throughout their customer journeys and use these insights to build customer value & trust, improve satisfaction and reduce operational costs. Whether an in-person or online transaction or an ATM visit, banks need to ensure a seamless omnichannel experience to their customers. Bank of America, one of the biggest brands in the industry, takes its omnichannel development seriously. They are raising the bar for creating dynamic experiences that allow cheque deposits, appointment scheduling and paying monthly bills from desktop and mobile apps to ensuring it creates a hassle-free experience for users. The virtual bank visits enable customers to access Free Wi-Fi and continue bank transactions during their wait period and also offer tablets at their kiosks. Taking the omnichannel experience one notch higher they formulated the ‘Robo-branch’ initiative where customers can manage conversations and grievances online without having to wait for a teller, perfectly blending digital with personalized financial planning.

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Disney

Another brand that has an impeccable omnichannel strategy is Disney. It has every detail carefully planned and seamlessly executed. The My Disney Experience tool is available for both desktop and mobile devices and enables guests to plan their entire vacation. From purchasing Fast passes, park tickets, viewing showtimes, making dining reservations, checking transportation and also purchasing merchandise,  all of this can be managed from within the tool.  Besides, Disney’s Magic wristbands connect guests with predetermined My Disney Experience choices that help guests enter parks, unlock hotel room doors, get photos, check-in at Fast Pass entrances for rides, make payments via the credit cards stored in their accounts and also get deliveries of their purchases made right to their rooms.  Disney’s CX experience is second to none for how it magically integrates it’s online and in-person customer experiences.

IKEA

IKEA the global home furnishings retailer is making the most with its omnichannel experiences. The brand has one of the most intuitive mobile app interfaces that operate like an eCommerce website, enabling customers to choose and save their favorite catalog items to be used on the website or in-store. Additionally, it also uses VR technology to help viewers visualize furniture in their homes without having to visit a store. The stores are equally well planned with the app informing users precisely where they can pick up goods from the store.  Not just this, they also share current inventory and stock availability information based on the forecasted shipment inventory and current stock levels to ensure customers can plan their visits based on the stock availability. Ikea also has ‘pick-up and order’ points which enable customers to pick up orders closer to where they live.

One of the most recent additions to its omnichannel experience is its new batch of IKEA Planning Studio stores which uses 3D planning tools for kitchens and bathrooms. These are relatively smaller stores aimed for customers who cannot visit out-of-town stores. They hold no stock, inspiring customers to pre-book orders that are thereby delivered and installed from their larger warehouses. Ikea is one of the brands that have seamlessly integrated its online and offline shopping experiences to create a truly exceptional omnichannel strategy.

The need for omnichannel is not limited to specific industries; it’s influenced by customer preferences as more channels continue to emerge.  With mobile and assistive technologies becoming ubiquitous to the customer experience, brands need to look at ways to embracing these to stay top of mind and provide users with relevant omnichannel engagement. And the ones that understand this & commit themselves towards understanding customer journeys to build capabilities that provide a seamless omnichannel service will be able to scale customer experience & delight in the years to come.

A day in the life of an average consumer today is filled with digital experiences. From the time we wake up (and check our social media feeds of course) to the end of the day, we interact with native mobile apps, websites, smart watches perhaps and maybe digital kiosks of some kind. A product manager and a team of experts are behind every such experience. They decide the features, look & feel, functionalities and more. But is that all they do? Is there scope to take a broader view of today’s product managers and their role in the success of an enterprise? I believe so. But first, what is product management? Up until recently, this term was used largely to convey project management. An enterprise would decide to revamp its website or app and that project would need to be managed within a specific time frame, specifications, quality and cost. The person leading such projects – by definition short term approach, would be the de facto Product Manager. Thankfully, things have changed.

Today, Product Management is a much sought after job across many markets in the world. According to a study, Product Management roles in the US have grown 32% over just a two year period. Aside from digital product led start-ups, several established enterprises and legacy companies are seeking the role of a product manager. What has led to this change?

Digital experience as a competitive edge: many enterprises operate in tough competitive categories where genuine, meaningful product differentiation’s are difficult to come by. In such a scenario, what the consumer perceives as a superior digital experience is an edge. As consumers we can experience it in taxi aggregator services, mobile banking, OTT streaming services and more. Loyalty towards a taxi aggregator app may depend on ready availability of vehicles, pricing, safety perceptions, the behaviour of drivers and other factors. But the experience with the native mobile app – the primary mode of brand interaction is critical and can make a difference. Similarly, our choice of an OTT service may depend on the catalogue of content and subscription pricing. Then again, the mobile app’s design and its intuitive ability to have a consumer hooked on and remain loyal makes a huge difference.

Consumer expectations – the bar is set higher: until recently, enterprise software was expected to be dowdy. Legacy companies believed that it was alright if a website, intranet or a tablet app was not aesthetically designed as long as it delivered on the basic functionalities. However, the same consumer who is expected to use an internal app or intranet of an enterprise also enjoys using a well-designed consumer-facing app. In fact, the latter has conditioned consumers to expect a better customer experience with all their brand interactions across categories.

A Product Manager in a digital environment is akin to the classic brand manager. Brand management is a concept well understood in the consumer products business. Companies such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever and many more owe their success to effective brand management – a phrase used to convey all aspects which impact success: product conception, feature augmentation, increase sales, build equity and command loyalty. Many believed that leading a business is much like managing a brand.

Which brings me to the three possible approaches to a Product Manager’s role: mini-CEO, fire fighter or conductor of an orchestra.

Mini-CEO

Depending on the size, structure and hierarchy of an enterprise, the Product Manager may be given varying degrees of freedom to decide on the road map of a product. In large enterprises, where the digital experience is the business, the CEO or CXOs maybe directly responsible for the product concept, feature sets, design and more. Even in such a context, it is possible for the Product Manager to mentally re-orient one’s role as a Brand Custodian and take a broader, long-term view. This calls for understanding business needs, the larger business goal the digital product should meet and consumer needs & trends. Since Digital Transformation is not merely a buzz phrase in enterprises, this role can be critical in the changing the fortunes of the business.A typical CEO mindset sees P&L responsibility and treats digital not just as another channel – but aims to create a disruptive business model.

The fire-fighter

‘Wanted yesterday’ is the lead time on most digital products. Native mobile apps have product updates shipped regularly – some within a span of few weeks. In such a scenario, a Product Manager has to play the role of a fire-fighter – managing conflicts, solving issues, conducting stand-up meetings with agile teams, allocating resources, understanding the needs of design & technology, managing timelines and more. If the role is in a service organization, the role involves managing the client expectations too. It is critical to assume that user research is done and understood by all stakeholders. A fire-fighter mindset also goes with the philosophy of ‘fail fast and fail forward’.

An orchestra conductor

The day-to-day operations of product development can be seen as a perpetual struggle or as bringing harmony through diverse talents – in strategy, design and technology. A Product Manager can then see the role akin to that of a philharmonic conductor – orchestrating seemingly diverse talents to deliver a harmonious experience. The mindset her is to accept that there are many stakeholders (users, business leaders, marketing, engineering, design, etc.) and that are involved and need to collaborate to get a successful product in the market.

More often than not, all three roles maybe required to be performed in parts. In essence, a Product Manager’s role is balancing a strategic vision and driving operational details –a combination of having a birds eye view  and worm’s eye view, as it were. Another key trait of an effective Product Manager is to place the end-user’s needs at the centre. No decision pertaining to a product is due one’s personal inclinations or bias. In case of stakeholder conflicts, a Product Manager should only trust end user research.

In upcoming articles in this series on product management we will examine in-depth the characteristics of a great Product Manager, the tools and services essential for product management and relevant trends in the industry.

There are millions of apps on app stores, but only a select few have been successful with users and most others experience a drop of interest right after their launch. As per research, an average individual uses close to 25 apps per month, of which 96% of the time is split between just 10 apps.

Forrester reports that 70% of the projects fail due to lack of user acceptance. This is mainly due to the apps poor user experience. As per a study from Bain & Company, 80% of companies feel they delivered an exceptional user experience while only 8% of customers agree. This is one of the main reasons why it’s crucial to gain customer insights with scientific techniques like user research and identify what users prefer than rely on assumptions or gut insights.

Let’s explore some of the key factors that make the user experience integral for enterprises to craft & deliver products and services that resonate with the pulse of their customers and prospects.

What is User Research?

User research is the foundation for creating a successful product or service. It keeps the user at the heart of the experience and helps in creating offerings that align with the user’s needs.  Engineers and product designers have since centuries incorporated user feedback into their process, however, it was not until 1993 that the term “user experience” (UX) was coined by Don Norman during his time with Apple.

With the UX discipline evolving over the years, design teams and experts today incorporate various research techniques to enable decisions informed by the end-user rather than be led by assumptions.

The Significance of User Research

User research is a technique that is used to understand the needs, aspirations and behavior patterns of users through a series of quantitative and qualitative methods that help in simplifying the users’ challenges.  A great UX Design is always embedded in great user research – influenced mainly by the user insights while balancing the other key technical aspects and priorities. It’s an excellent way to include the user in the design process for a more human & user-centered design process that is critical to product success.

However, most often teams and enterprises rush through and evade the user research process as it seems exhaustive and time-consuming. But, the implications of not applying user research as part of the product strategy are far too many. There is no one-size-fits-all approach that works in a hyper-personalized era that we are a part of.

While it is an elaborate process, it helps to include user research as part of your product & design strategy. Click to Tweet

“User-centered design means working with your users all throughout the project” — Don Norman

When is User Research needed?

The answer to this is actually anytime. At every stage of the product development cycle, user research helps in bringing new insights that will guide the product development cycle. Although each product development cycle is distinct, it can broadly be categorized under the following steps:

User research is broadly conducted in three distinct stages.

The Discovery Stage

The key goal during the early stage of the design process is to conduct exploratory research. As each project has a specific context and user group, the research should explore what is it that users actually need and understand what’s currently working and what’s not. A few research methods used at this stage include competitive analysis, benchmark studies, ethnographic research, one-on-one interviews, and focus groups.

The Development Stage

The next step is to assess the efficiency of the prototype developed and analyze if the product actually helps to solve the users’ challenges. Here are a few things to consider to ensure you’re on the right track.

• Do users understand how the prototype works?
• Have they been able to interact with the prototype?
• Were the users able to find what they were looking for?
• Do the features look & feel right?

Some of the user research methods used in this stage include card sorting,  prototype testing, moderated and unmoderated usability testing, preference testing, and A/B testing.

The Execution Stage

Once the product prototype is ready to go live, the goal is to evaluate the efficiency of the product and assess if it meets the users’ needs. The objective is to measure the performance in order to optimize the experience. Feedback from users is crucial at this stage, as the users’ needs may have changed or evolved with time and the current prototype developed might not be the best fit. The key is to adapt and reiterate as per the current user needs. A few of the research methods used at this stage include surveys, bug reports, data analytics and more.

In a nutshell, user research is conducted at every stage of the product lifecycle depending on the end-objective. Let’s explore some of the user research methods and how they can be integrated as part of the product design strategy.

User Research Method Approach

The discipline of research is vast and multi-dimensional. Considering the various types of user research approaches and methods it can get overwhelming to focus on the one that you need to choose. Here are some of the important research methods and insights about when to use them:

Quantitative Research

Any type of research that can be measured numerically and used to understand the ‘what’ can be categorized under quantitative research. For example, “How many people have downloaded your app” or “What percentage of users clicked a particular app feature”. Quantitative research explores large samples of data like these to identify key trends and patterns. It gathers information from existing and potential customers with various sampling methods, online surveys, polls, questionnaires, analytics, and AB testing, etc. After a careful understanding of the results from quantitative research, it is much easier for product and business heads to assess the future of the product and make amendments to the product features accordingly.

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research unfolds the ‘why’ behind certain user behavior.  It is a form of research that assimilates and works with non-numerical data and seeks to interpret meaning from this data with respect to specific user groups.  For instance “Why do users have a particular affinity towards a product?” “Why was there a negative response to a product tagline?”. Qualitative research explores the opinions, attitudes, and behaviors of users and provides insights and context into why certain patterns and trends arise. The various research types used here include usability testing, one-on-one interviews,  field studies, and customer calls.

For a holistic understanding of users and to be able to address their needs and concerns,  it’s important to use a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. Both methods are integral to the product lifecycle and cannot be substituted for the other.

Attitudinal Research

Attitudinal research methods gather insights about the users’ feelings, thoughts, needs, attitudes, and motivations. It seeks to discover why users have specific feelings and attitudes towards an experience. For instance, it shares insights about whether users enjoyed engaging with a certain product. Research types include card sorting, surveys, focus groups, questionnaires, and participatory design.

However, there’s one downfall of this research method, especially in a focus group setting. As humans, we are self-conscious and concerned about how others might perceive us. The desire to belong to a certain group and be accepted also referred to as the ‘herd behavior’ can be so overpowering that the user’s responses might be swayed and not be completely honest. One way to keep a check and counter this is to split the focus group into smaller subsets without a moderator that’s observing their responses. Despite room for potential bias, this technique is incredibly valuable as users are invariably engaging with your digital assets and experiencing your brand and ultimately converting.

Behavioral Research

Behavioral research methods aim to evaluate what users actually do. This could help in gauging how users navigate through the website and provide quantitative data about their engagement with the website. For instance, it can provide insights into where users click after arriving at your homepage or identify if users fail to notice the key messaging displayed at the main menu section. Some of the techniques include eye-tracking, click-stream analysis, A/B testing, and usability studies.

As it is important to understand what users say vs. what they do, it is beneficial to conduct a combination of both attitudinal and behavioral research and derive actionable insights from both techniques in conjunction with each other, essentially to back up what users say as against what they do.

Enlisted here a few amongst the many user research types that brands need to consider to identify and assess user behavior and preferences.

Types of User Research Methods

Ethnographic Field Studies: A research type that gauges user behavior in their natural environments, where participants encounter the product or service.

Usability-Lab Studies: A one-on-one lab setting, where the participant is given a set of scenarios that helps in the identification of specific usage patterns of a product or service.

Participatory Design: An experiential method where participants are given to construct experiences that helps in clearly identifying what matters most to them and why.

Interviews: The researcher meets the participant on a one-on-one discussion to gain in-depth insights on a specific product/service or topic.

Eye Tracking: A research method that tracks the eyeball movement to identify how participants engage with the company’s digital assets and environments.

Clickstream Analysis: Data gathered by analyzing the record of the user clicks across all digital assets and platforms.

Focus Groups: Participant groups ranging from 3 –12 members are guided through a discussion about a fixed set of topics. Verbal and written feedback is documented through the course of the discussion.

Usability Benchmarking: Usability studies that are conducted with precise and predetermined measures of performance.

Moderated Remote Usability Studies: Usability studies conducted remotely via screen-sharing tools and remote monitoring capabilities.

Concept Testing: A research type that assesses if the product or service aligns with the value proposition of the concept to ensure it meets the needs of the target audience. This is conducted in both, group and one-on-one settings, offline and online.

Panel Studies: An identification of attitudinal changes using constant participant-base and assessing the individuals’ opinions at different times.

A/B Testing/Multivariate Testing:  A research technique that evaluates the impact of the interaction between multiple variables, to identify the variant/s that have a greater impact on the desired user behavior.

UX Studies: Includes both quantitative & qualitative research methods to observe and track user behavior over a series of fixed goals and scenarios.

True-Intent Studies: a method that maps if users were able to accomplish their goal or intent and evaluate their subsequent behavior.

Diary/Camera Studies: A research study where participants are given a diary or camera to capture and describe the aspects of their lives that are relevant to a product or service including their thoughts and emotions.

Desirability Studies: Various visual-design alternatives are offered to participants to choose and associate each alternative from amongst the attributes selected from a predetermined list.

Card Sorting: Users are requested to classify items into groups and allocate categories for each group. This method typically applies the users’ mental models to refine the information architecture of a site.

Customer Feedback: Mostly commonly used research type, where participants are given open/close-ended review questions either online or offline.

Intercept Surveys: a survey that gathers user data during the use of a site or application.

Email Surveys: one of the most widely used research types that gathers user information via an email survey over a set of fixed scenarios.

Nothing sums it better – “Undervaluing User Research is a Deadly Disease”, says  Jared Spool, a Maker of Awesomeness and co-Founder at Center Centre – UIE.

It is crucial to invest time and resources that bring you closer to your audience.

There is no comparison to the quality and impact of products that are crafted with user research insights. Click to Tweet

However, there is a huge overlap in the various types of user research methods that can be conducted. Selecting the most appropriate method/s to apply depends on the research goals you wish to accomplish. Though it is exhaustive and time-consuming, user research methods and their unique attributes can help enterprises and product heads gain useful insights that – inform the design process with specific and measurable goals, adapt a creative problem-solving approach and follow a user-centric design that can impact the overall business performance and growth.

The former article of this series outlines the various technologies that are driving the travel and tourism industry.  In this article, we will discuss some of the most crucial UX Design strategies from top travel brands that can help enterprises in this niche to increase customer engagement, acquisition and make the most of their digital presence.

As a travel enterprise closely integrated with Technology, it is imperative to understand the finer nuances and underlying factors that influence customer decisions, which to a large extent, can be determined by the website’s UX Design.

UX Design is the process of creating products, processes, services, and omnichannel journeys that provide relevant and pleasant user experiences. It can also be used as a measure to monitor, control, and refine your digital presence to ensure it addresses the core requirements of your audience. Invariably your customer responses and reactions are all great hallmarks of the efficiency of the site’s user experience design.

“In order to achieve high-quality user experience … there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design.” –

Nielson-Norman Group

Let’s explore some of the essential UX principles that Travel Brands can integrate as part of their website design.

1. Neat Layout with Easy Navigation

Users need to know where to begin. As the homepage receives most clicks, engaging content, and a clean layout with an easy navigation process, that prompts the next steps at the homepage can help to increase engagement and keep visitors on your site.  Too many options, search forms, and offers cluttered with no clear indication of where to head next can lead to page exits. Booking.com’s home page is a good reference of UX done right. The content and layout is neat and simple, with clearly segmented categories, including a mention of the average price based on the location, enabling users to choose based on their budget.

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‘Booking.com has everything for your trip’ ‘Browse by property type’  ‘Homes guests love’ ‘Get inspiration for your next trip’ & more of such messaging on their homepage that helps to garner customer confidence, invariably driving a positive action. Each element supports & enhances the other, a perfect instance of a great UX design.

2. High Impact Imagery

A strong visual element, especially for a travel website, helps in invoking a greater connection, where users can get a feel of the holiday experience through high impact imagery. While a lot of brands use stock photos, an effective way to go about this is to invite users to share photographs as Tripadvisor does.  TripAdvisor spices up its content by sharing user-generated images that are real and provoke user emotions that lead to greater customer loyalty.

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3. Keep It Simple

It’s always a good idea to keep things simple and focus on important information. This helps users consume information that is connected with action. Most websites overload users with too much information resulting in a heavy cognitive overload. Yes, it’s quite tempting to squeeze all special offers on the homepage, but keeping it simple lets the user focus on the main task. Trivago follows this UX principle well. It understands customers’ objectives and presents them with a clear and clutter-free search experience. Top suggestions are arranged in a neat grid with attractive thumbnails accomplishing both key aspects of UX, visually inspiring with easy navigation.

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4. Have a Progress Tracker

Progress trackers are designed to guide users through a multi-step process in order to complete a specified process. A travel site with a well-designed progress tracker can keep users informed about the steps they have completed, the section they are currently on, the tasks that remain, and gives them a quick peek into where they stand in the buying cycle. This feature is a must-have for airlines, which helps users to logically structure the booking process while making it easy and intuitive, thereby maximizing conversion rates.

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5. Use an Interactive Map

While locating an address, it is most likely that we look for a visual representation through a map or GPS. This is because it’s much simpler to understand the visual navigation, more so when you can view your destination or travel route.

An interactive map enables users with a dynamic method to screen holiday destinations. Travelers mostly prefer maps that refresh search parameters based on geography or destination-based pricing and find important landmarks, nearby events, and locations.

6. Personalize Messaging

It is reported that returning users are 2x more likely to make a purchase during a session. Personalizing the site based on your core user personas can have a great impact on results. Demarcate messaging for new visitors and returning visitors. Inspire new visitors by offering recommendations on popular locations. On the other hand, greet returning visitors with recently searched offers, which gives them a personalized experience.

7. Smart Calendars

Finding the right flight deals can be a long and tedious process and additionally get tough when the prices are volatile. Skyscanner makes search extremely easy based on its users. Choosing the dates on its calendar is extremely easy, an important UX parameter to have dates of the previous month and the subsequent month. Based on the flexibility of the user’s travel dates, Skyscanner also highlights the options of choosing months when the airfares are most economical.

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8. Use Action Verbs

Let’s admit it; a good copy is often an afterthought in UX. But a reassuring message can ease the anxiety related to the booking by giving more context and insights into the best options based on user dynamics. Also, action-focused words like ‘Discover,’ ‘See’ ‘Explore’ like on AirBnB’s site drives greater engagement, moving users from a passive to an active state. If you aspire to increase your site’s user experience by the virtue of your copy, don’t hesitate to use action verbs and optimize your site’s performance.

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9. Streamline Forms

Too many fields and misleading content in the forms often lead to instant exits. One of the most crucial elements in a travel site is to streamline the forms with clear categories and sections that enable quick and easy action. Here’s a peek at Priceline.com’s search form on its homepage. The forms are hidden inside a handy horizontal tabbed navigation segment, and the tabs include different search forms related to their core services, enabling users to navigate to the service they are interested in directly. Quick, efficient & seamless – best UX attributes in a nutshell.

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10. Make a Personal Impact

Increase user engagement with personal stories from customers. Social proof like testimonials, reviews, and brief travel journals can maximize your brand value, credibility, and overall performance. Invite your customers to talk about the positive experiences that made a memorable travel experience along with images that they will be willing to share online. Adventures of real people are always interesting and more inspiring than stock images and marketing babble.

11. Include Related Products & Benefits

Just like big e-Commerce players, include recommendations of related products and services based on popular choice and user search. The trick is not to sound pushy while letting users know of the various gamut of options available and associated benefits that can elevate their travel experience. Given that consumers today opt for luxury and comfort, it’s a good idea to use words that connote the experience like ‘indulgent’, ‘pamper’, ‘comfort’, and the like.

While customer satisfaction is one of the hallmarks of your sites UX design, no UX Design principle or technology mix can guarantee a satisfactory user experience. Brands need to identify the right combination of UX principles and a host of other diversified experiences like customer journey maps and human-centered design principles that align with their offerings. The need of the hour is for travel brands to constantly evolve alongside their customer requirements that are spoilt for choice with the mounting competition offering similar services. The trick is to stick to the core customer values you offer as a brand and ensure that these are deeply integrated as part of your user experience design.

What does a CXO in a global OTT streaming powerhouse have in common with a counterpart in a FinTech company? While target audience and market dynamics maybe different for every category there is a common factor: we all have to craft business strategies in a digital world. However, are all enterprises on a level playground when it comes to making the most of human capital and digital technologies?

According to PwC’s Consumer Intelligence Series, while Industry 4.0 or the Fourth Industrial Revolution (commonly known as 4IR) ‘may be everywhere, not everyone is yet fully on board’ to thrive in this digital revolution. We may never achieve a situation where all enterprises are equally adept at crafting delightful digital experiences by effectively using emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, blockchain and more.

In my interactions with CXOs across various industries, I have observed three common challenges which all enterprises – irrespective of domain, B2B or B2C, have to grapple with:

1. Human insight as compliment to technology 

Is technology everything? Is effective use of code, blockchain or voice technology a true long-term advantage? In my view, no. Nothing can replace the intuitive nature of human interaction and insight gathered from such. HBR defines an insight as ‘an imaginative understanding of an internal or external opportunity that can be tapped to improve efficiency, generate revenue, or boost engagement’.

In my experience as a student of Design Thinking, what has created the most impact in outcomes is empathizing with end consumers – what makes a person tick, what brings a smile and what gives a satisfyingly delightful experience – making a person feel productive and empowered. Such insights, when married with the right technology have the power to drive loyalty and thus impact a business financially. The fields of epistemology, ontology and psychology (the science of knowledge, being and behavior respectively) play a key role in gaining user insights. These sciences help us understand:

• How the emotional and rational brains work
• How the sub-conscious mind works
• How humans make decisions
• The power of strangers, reviews, ratings and public commitment
• The bystander effect
• The ‘give to get more’ principle
• How to harness a refusal for sale
• How to tap into the reptilian brain for snap decisions
• How to keep the user entertained through gamification
• How to balance color, motion, images, premium slots, information, etc. online
• Usage of powerful words in English dictionary

2. Digital expertise as competitive advantage 

Back in 2018, many industry leaders declared ‘all companies are technology companies now’.  BCG described it as ‘a capacity to capture and capitalize on vast lakes of customer and other data and ultimately the capability to create digitally enabled market-leading goods and services.’ It made sense as what powers diverse businesses such as food delivery, vacation rooms, e-commerce, media or banking was technology. Technology was utilized to understand consumer behavior and help craft product or service offerings. Over the last couple of years a few macro trends have added new dimensions to this state of affairs.

• Firstly, genuine service or product differentiation has become even more difficult to achieve. Customer experience – the catch-all phrase covering digital and human interactions often ends up being the differentiator.

• Today’s consumers are brutally unforgiving. A poor website experience, a service issue unattended or a malfunctioning app is enough to lose a customer forever. Retention is the new growth. Understanding user psychology and analyzing user data during their online engagement is key.

In this context, for most businesses, digital expertise – the ability to apply machine learning and design thinking principles together becomes a key competitive advantage.

3. Purpose for profit

Brand purpose has become a buzz phrase over the last few years – with varying degrees of success. In my view, enterprises need to define a higher order benefit or a value which they stand for. However, such a goal has to be genuine, hard wired to the business the enterprise is in and matched by real, on-ground efforts. Doordash is not just a delivery company – it defines itself as ‘technology company that connects people with the best in their cities. We do this by empowering local businesses and in turn, generate new ways for people to earn, work and live’. They back this intent with initiatives like Project DASH (DoorDash Acts for Sustainability and Hunger), focused on tackling the problems of hunger and food waste in the local communities they serve. At Robosoft we have defined our higher purpose as “Simplifying lives” of billions of citizens globally through technology and human-centered design. Our engineers, designers and product analysts wake up every morning motivated to make a difference and simplify lives of users of the apps we build; simplifying the way citizens buy, sell, transact, bank, pay, get entertained, get insured, consume, order, travel and what not.

Design Thinking principles and understanding consumer insights can also help enterprises craft their higher order purpose and bake that larger idea into not only the products & services they craft but also in the way their employees deal with customers – becoming second nature to the company itself.

This article was originally published at Linkedin Pulse under my LinkedIn handle – Ravi Teja Bommireddipalli

Digitization has enabled industries to accelerate growth by providing solutions to target a wider audience, reach it faster, and deliver their services more efficiently.

Consumers today are increasingly comfortable with no human interaction in categories like hospitality & tourism – which not too long ago preferred human interaction.

The hospitality and tourism industry has seen a massive movement towards digitized services in the last few years. Research suggests that 48% of smartphone users in the U.S. were comfortable researching, planning, and booking an entire trip using a mobile device.

What started with basic services like online booking and registration has since grown to apps facilitating shared economy like Airbnb and Uber, and mobile check-ins like from the Apple Watch.

What is Driving Digitization in the Hospitality & Tourism Industry?

The growth of an enterprise in the hospitality and tourism domain relies predominantly on the customer experience. Customer experience is about how a customer perceives the brand through all interactions across the various stages of the customer life cycle. Unlike customer service, which focuses on the specific interaction at a given time, customer experience is more of a holistic approach that takes into account the overall customer journey.

By leveraging the right technologies, travel enterprises can enhance the customer experience while maximizing customer acquisition, engagement & retention. The Atlantis in Dubai, for example, has a Virtual Tour video on YouTube that allows users to experience the hotel even before stepping out of their house.

Another major contributor in the shift towards digitization in the hospitality and tourism sector is the concept of the shared economy. Shared Economy is a peer-to-peer service made accessible over technology, for instance, Airbnb and Uber. In both cases, a consumer with a need and a peer with a solution are brought together via an application. Such P2P services have simplified the travel experience by making basic necessities like accomodation and commute more easily accessible, and have contributed towards attracting a greater percentage of consumers.

Technologies that Businesses in the Hospitality & Tourism Domain are Leveraging for Better CX

1. Chatbots, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

Hotels, airlines, and other divisions in the hospitality and tourism domain are leveraging chatbots for better customer service and communication round the clock. Today customers prefer contacting a company via chat rather than on a call; according to a report by Outgrow, 56% of people are more comfortable texting over a chat window than calling customer service, making chatbots an ideal solution. The reason for an aggressive adoption of chatbots is obvious: it saves manpower costs, eliminates wait time, minimizes errors, and maximizes efficiency with automation.

Powered by AI and Machine Learning, chatbot solutions today are capable of performing more than just basic conversations. The entire process can be automated to be triggered based on keywords entered by a customer.

In collaboration with the Government of India, we created a digital platform for Indian air travelers. We designed and developed a web portal and a mobile app that gives users realtime flight status and domestic & international flights schedule. The platform offers chatbot support for faster resolution of queries and also provides a personalized travel experience.

Another great example is FCM Travel Solutions’ Smart Assistant for Mobile, or SAM. Unlike Expedia, which is built on Facebook Messenger, SAM is a travel assistant mobile app that can be used to book flights, hotel rooms, gauge the weather at a destination, and more through a simple chat interface.

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2. Smart Rooms & Voice Assistants

Voice search and assistants have become the norm today. According to a report by Quoracreative, Google sold over 8 million Google Home models in the year 2019, and Amazon had sold over 4.1 million Echo devices in the year 2018 by Quarter 2. And, according to a report by 99firms, approximately 65% of Amazon Echo and Google Home owners state they wouldn’t go back to using keyboard input unless necessary.

A brilliant example of using Voice-enabled smart rooms for improved customer experience is Amazon’s Alexa for Hospitality by hotel giant Marriott. All smart rooms are equipped with an Alexa device that is configured for the hotel. It allows guests to control appliances within the room, ask questions about the hotel, book services like reservations, order items from the hotel, place requests with the staff, and also perform general search inquiries.

Another instance for smart rooms in hotels is Hub Hotels by Premier Inn. They provide a mobile app with which visitors can control appliances like the television and settings like the room temperature directly from the device.

3. Virtual Reality

VR technology gives potential customers an experience of their services and attractions to help them make a decision through 360-degree videos, VR hotel tours, virtual maps, etc. Another instance of VR in hospitality and tourism is the Pullman Brisbane King George Square Hotel VR Tour. The VR tour provides a complete view of the hotel from the outside, the lobby, individual rooms, services, the indoor restaurant, etc., all through a single video accessible for free on YouTube. This enables consumers to avail the ‘try before you use’ option that was, not an option previously.

4. Augmented Reality

The tourism and hospitality industry is leveraging AR to improve the customer experience through interactive hotel elements, pop up facts and information at tourist destinations, fun games like treasure hunts within resorts, etc. Here’s an instance of – AR wall map in Hub Hotels by Premier Inn, where room visitors point their AR-enabled devices to the map, and popular attractions around the city pop up on their device screen.

5. Internet of Things (IoT)

IoT goes beyond a single room or hotel and covers a tourist’s experience throughout their tour. It is enabling smart cities and is fostering smart tourism ecosystems. Airplane can install sensors that sync with flyers’ devices to track heart rate and anxiety to improve their flight experience; hotels can leverage IoT to provide visitors with Smart Room features, local businesses can provide more personalized services by learning a user’s likes and dislikes from past purchases, etc.

Some of the top applications of IoT in the tourism and hospitality sector include:

1. Smart rooms
2. Airplane sensors for mood monitoring
3. Location tracking for safety
4. Personalized marketing
5. Easy public transportation and better connectivity
6. Better customer service

The customer trends and growing need for personalization in the tourism and hospitality industry demand platforms and technologies that can simplify the customer experience. And technologies like Voice, Alexa Skills, AI & ML are facilitating this process exceptionally. With most industries switching to technology-based solutions, the disruption of technologies in the travel and hospitality domain will continue at a steady pace, and travel brands will continue to transform and embrace technologies that elevate the customer experience.

Part 2 of this article will outline some of the top UX Design best practices that travel brands can emulate to increase customer engagement, acquisition and retention.

From Uber to Amazon to Airbnb, two-sided marketplaces have disrupted multiple industries. The workforce or labor industry is now going through disruption that retail, hospitality and automotive industries have gone through due to the emergence of such marketplaces. The ‘freelance economy’  currently makes up 36% of the U.S. workforce and is projected to reach 50.9% by 2027. Labor marketplaces have been key players in shaping the freelance ecosystem. In this article, we explore how two-sided marketplaces will impact the future of work and how these models could augment in the future.

What are the factors for emergence of two-sided marketplaces

There are various macro-trends that have led to the emergence of such marketplaces:

• Everything is moving online: This trend started with eCommerce portals like eBay and Amazon, which were among the first industries to move online. But as the internet and economies matured a lot of industries followed and the internet became the entry point of work.

• Increasing cost of living: The other macro trend that has contributed to the emergence of two-sided marketplaces is the increasing cost of living and people across the globe are looking for ways to supplement their income.

• Rise of remote workers: In today’s gig economy people are looking for flexible lifestyles. They do not want to spend a lot of time commuting to their workplaces. Even companies spend substantially to shuttle employees to offices.

What is unique here is, two-sided marketplaces are not just restricted to traditional gig-economy workers, limited to one category like graphic designers. Such type of work has always been outsourced to freelancers, but now we see other categories of work going online too.

• Rising skills gap: The demand-side of the marketplace is facing a skills gap. Organizations are increasingly finding it very difficult to identify the right resources at the right time. In the Bay Area, it takes an average of 3 months to find the right resource, which may be too long a waiting period for many enterprises.

Traditional Managed Service Providers vs two-sided freelancers’ marketplaces

A Managed Service Provider (MSP) is an entity that large enterprises could engage with to manage their contingent workforce. MSPs help enterprises in the complete cycle from hiring contingent workers to paying them and ensuring that it is done efficiently. Such services drive a lot of efficiency and value for large enterprises.

Gig-economy or freelancers’ marketplaces like Upwork provide a different way of engaging with the worker. In most MSPs, the operators are staffing companies, and they continue to operate with their traditional models. They call hundreds of potential candidates each day to fill the on-site vacancies. The drawback is these companies have a very large footprint.

The challenge most organizations are facing today is the skills gap, especially in emerging technologies like AI, ML, RPA (Robotic Process Automation), and Blockchain. Additionally, considering that MSPs are under pressure to deliver cost-savings, it becomes difficult for them to balance the equation because of the overheads.

Two-sided marketplaces bring technology as a solution to the cost and skill gap problem. They replace the traditional overhead in recruiting with a global marketplace platform that essentially flattens the world. Once you take the location out of the picture, the skills gap is not so wide.

Also, these platforms enable hiring managers to self-source candidates and allows them to hire candidates faster, and at a much lower cost. In the case of MSPs, the process takes much longer – from submitting a requisition, waiting for it to come back from the suppliers, reviewing the resumes and so on.

The gig economy marketplaces deliver on the speed, cost, quality equation really well – just like Uber and Lyft have done in the taxi aggregator space.

Gig economy sector-level distinctions

Broadly speaking, the gig economy can be broken down into four sectors based on services provided to the customers.

Source: Mastercard Gig Economy Industry Outlook and Needs Assessment

Asset-Sharing Services: When we talk about Airbnb, Tripadvisor rentals, many of these services are located in areas such as the USA and Europe where the cost of living is high. Even though the volume of bookings for these services are much lesser than transportation-based services, they compensate with higher ticket size per home rental.

Transportation-Based Services: The universality of ride-sharing economy across the globe has shot up transportation-based services and caught the imagination of the world like anything. From major platforms in North America such as Uber or Lyft to those in Asia Pacific such as Grab, Go-jek, Ola; everyone has thrived in this economy. And despite having low ticket value per customer, the sheer volume of bookings more than compensate for the revenue generation.

Professional Services: This sector of the gig economy brings the lowest of revenues when compared to others. This may be due to the transactional nature of the services. While many of the consumers of these services are present in developed markets, the access to high speed internet in developing nations has enabled businesses to outsource their services to gig economy workers present in these countries. The cost per work or “gig” is significantly lower in the developing countries to add to the abundance of choices available.

Handmade Goods Household & Miscellaneous Services (HGHM): It is the fastest growing and diverse of all the gig economy sectors. It features many niche platforms that are still working towards brand awareness. Currently, there is a heavy concentration of these platforms in North America and Western Europe when compared to the rest of the world. It is expected to start reaching for a global base once it starts approaching the saturation limit of customer base in the current regions. These companies seek to fill a specialized gap in the service market such as on-demand message services to in-home tech support.

Key challenges for Corporate and Corporate Real Estate (CRE) to support gig economy

The rise of the gig economy has instilled a sense of freedom and empowerment in workers today. It has increased the expectations of gig economy workers from corporate and CREs in terms of facilities and benefits. Today corporate and CRE groups are expected to do more than just provide a desk to every worker and maintain space. They are expected to create an environment of harmony and support that contributes to company goals.

Some of the key challenges are mentioned below:

1. Building corporate culture and work harmony

The most difficult aspect of working with gig economy workers is incorporating a corporate culture among them and creating an ideal work environment for them to work. The fact that 30 to 50 percent of your workplace are not your employees makes it difficult to build that corporate culture. It directly affects the worker attitudes and their commitment to long term needs of the company.

Addressing these concerns starts with treating all workers the same, whether they are gig workers or permanent employees. Companies need to understand the brand equity and future opportunities gig economy workers bring. The gig economy workers may return in a new role later to the company. Now if they had a good experience in your company, then they’ll be the advocates of your company even after they have moved on from their job.
CRE can go a long way toward supporting this mindset, by providing environments that encourage all workers in the gig economy to feel like part of the team.

2. Supporting mobility at work

The convenience of technology has increasingly made all the workers mobile and flexible to work from anywhere without any drop in work quality. People are working from home, in coffee shops and on the road as suits their responsibilities, schedule and lifestyle. Gig economy workers may not have the say in the matter since they don’t have a permanent desk job.

Corporate and CRE can support gig economy workers by providing access to required technology that helps them stay connected from anywhere. Moreover, if you provide agile work spaces that accommodate more people with fewer spaces, more and more contingent workers may desire to work from the office.

3. Supporting and adapting to rapid pace of business change

The biggest benefit of the gig economy for corporations is the ability to scale the workforce up and down as required by the immediate business goals. It helps the business to become more agile and adaptable to any changes in the business economy. It’s also easier to move gig workers with a particular skill set between business teams for short-term work.

Corporates must be always ready to respond to any rapidly changing structure of business teams in the gig economy. It means being ready to move and rearrange office space or implement work from anywhere settings at the drop of a hat. The recent pandemic has shown those businesses who always had a contingency plan were the first ones to recover and resume normal services in the gig economy.

4. Inclusive workspaces

Collaboration in the workspace is what runs the business machine smoothly. Having half your workforce as gig economy workers would always pose a collaboration challenge. The teams are in constant flux and the people don’t know each other well to build some sort of rapport. This in result hampers teamwork and stops the influx of better ideas, leading to fewer innovations than needed to be competitive in the global economy.

Corporates and CRE groups can encourage more impromptu collaborations by providing collaborative workspaces based on the understanding of spaces required. If your office has workspaces for different sets of groups like groups of 2 or 3 or 10 people to work together, office mingle areas such as cafeterias, gym, team huddle areas then it’s already half the work done.

5. HR management of gig economy workers

The HR department is the frontier for any gig economy worker. Traditionally HR departments in corporate culture have been reduced to hiring individual talents based on requirements and reactive risk mitigation. But with gig economy workers being reactive to risks isn’t going to cut it.

The HR department must always plan ahead when it comes to gig economy workers. It will be like assembling a crew for a special task and each crew member has to be thoroughly checked and tested for business requirements.

How the two-sided marketplace is redefining the future of traditional HR in enterprises

Traditionally, HR’s role in most organizations has largely been of risk mitigation – coming into effect when employees are not performing well, resources need to be reduced or during employee onboarding. All these can be labeled as fairly reactive.

But HR has also to be at the front center when it comes to the macro-trends with skills gap – how an organization’s talent pool is in comparison to other organizations, how to retain, grow and re-skill resources and so on. As these macro trends evolve HRs role now has become much more strategic. The two-sided marketplaces are giving HR an incredible tool for strategic workforce planning.

Traditionally strategic workforce planning was about the talent inside the four walls of an enterprise. But the workforce of the future is going to look like construction crews or movie production – where experts come together to build something and then disperse.

As HR starts playing a strategic role, there is an opportunity to include these gig marketplaces into their workforce planning and beyond winning the talent war, delivering strong outcomes for their stakeholders. This is one of the things that is redefining HR from managing risk to playing a more strategic role to deliver real quantifiable results for businesses.

With online marketplaces, HR teams can deliver on speed and cost – both of which are quantifiable and can be a game-changer in the domain. This will impact the traditional roles of HR in terms of background checks, training, etc. as most candidates will be self-trained. Some gig workers can also act as mentors or trainers going forward. For instance, Everwise connects resources to mentors, and LinkedIn matches mentors to profiles. Further, e-learning is becoming increasingly popular. A growing trend suggested that large enterprises will soon use online marketplaces such as these to help their employees experiment. This is something that Google already does. Enterprises can allow workers to enroll on these platforms, interact and share their skills, and get real experience. This benefits the employee as they can get trained and paid for the project at hand, as well as the enterprise as they get a skilled resource.

• The chicken before the egg problem: Marketplaces should have good jobs that are matched to the right resource. So they have to be really good at profiling and matching freelancers with opportunities based on their skill sets. Marketplaces struggle with the ‘chicken before the egg’ issue of whether they should get the supplier or the demand first. In an ideal labor marketplace, we need to find both. For instance, Uber started with both, they seeded demand and also had drivers.

• Making payment structure easier: Make payments easier is one of the biggest pain points for freelancers. On an average, payouts take 30 to 90 days, which can prove to be inconvenient for freelancers who rely on this income to pay their daily bills. It is important to create a marketplace that makes it easier for them to get paid soon after the completion of the project. This gives rise to another important marketplace – the responsibility of collecting payments from clients.

• Ease of use for hiring managers: It is imperative to design an easy request creation process for resources, much like Amazon. Additionally one can bring value to them by curating relevant talent and building trust through reviews, ratings, etc.

• Mitigating risk: For buyers, HR, procurement and legal teams it is important that these online marketplaces mitigate risk. For example, through classifications like the 1099 forms for freelancers as in the US. If you are engaging someone from a gig economy it is important to ensure that all relevant documents are in place – from registration to insurance.

• Incentivization: It is also important that these marketplaces provide incentives to both sides to get them on the platform. They have to kickstart liquidity (transaction) through tactics like lowering transaction fees, offering referral codes and making some transactions free. While it is not difficult to get freelancers on such platforms, demand-side is the tougher nut to crack, especially with large enterprises.

Key challenges in successful onboarding of both parties to a two-sided marketplace

Some things play an important role and should be considered while creating a two-sided marketplaces:

For freelancers:

• Easy profile creation that can be matched to their skillsets
• Fast and frictionless payment process
• Finding quality demand and quality projects

For hiring managers:

• Fast and easy search of relevant resources
• The right collaboration tool
• Imbuing a sense of trust with the platform and those registered
• Protection from below-par delivery or non-performance

Additionally, these are some points to consider in the case of legal and procurement teams:

• Visibility on spends
• Usage pattern of the platform by hiring teams
• Proof of value for the organization
• Protection against misclassification

How two-sided marketplaces can build trust on their platforms

The data provided by freelancers is usually not validated, much like how resumes work in the traditional recruitment world. It is important for marketplaces to validate the information to build trust. For instance, it is highly essential to verify a creative freelancer’s portfolio. Hiring managers should also be able to verify their work portfolio by way of displaying renowned client logos. For engineers, Github is a great platform to validate their skills. They could complete skill-based tests and get rated in order to get verified on the platform, thereby mimicking a storefront where one can make a decision to purchase after careful consideration of the quality of the product and its reviews. Evidently, this means the marketplace has to use elbow grease in verifying the recruiter/freelance profile in the initial stages.

Marketplaces need to evoke trust in freelancers, especially for SMEs by using Escrow as a way of protecting freelancers’ work, holding money in a trust and releasing it only when the work is completed to satisfaction.

Few learnings for HR based two-sided marketplaces from counterparts in other industries

One of the biggest learnings from a platform like Uber is how they match buyers and suppliers. Similarly, Airbnb curates suppliers by identifying them on behavioral metrics and highlight things like – ‘This host is known for being friendly’. Uber suggests features like ‘This driver is known for great conversations.’ Labor marketplaces can take a cue from this and up their curating game by classifying freelancers beyond their listed skill sets. It can make a difference between a good digital experience and a great one.

Impact of technologies and business models in such marketplaces

 From a technology perspective, AI, ML, and Blockchain will play a huge role in how the marketplaces establish trust, resource profiling, getting matched, and getting paid quickly.

Blockchain will play an important role in building trust because of it’s shared ledger model. It is a great opportunity in labor marketplaces to make it more transparent versus the current models that are siloed and closed.

In terms of business models, the prevalent business model is a transaction fee or percentage fee that is taken from the freelancers and buyers. This model will probably stick for a while. However, over time these marketplaces could have difficulty commanding higher prices.

New models such as retainer-based SaaS models where you pay a certain amount and get services on a monthly fee, may emerge. In such models, both freelancers and the marketplaces get paid on a revenue-based recurring model. One such example Legalzoom – an online legal technology company that helps its customers in creating an array of legal documents without having to necessarily hire a lawyer.

Unequivocally, the freelancer economy is on the rise, and the two-sided marketplace is sure to transform the future of work into a more flexible, efficient and cost-effective systems.

A few years ago, the customer experience was how a customer was treated when they were at a store, a restaurant or a hotel. It perhaps began when the customer entered and ended when they left the premises. In that context, enterprises, especially in consumer goods, placed a lot of emphasis on in-store experiences right from point of sale material, shelf display and packaging. Service brands laid emphasis on people-driven customer service.

Procter & Gamble, coined the phrase ‘First Moment of Truth’ to an in-store experience, especially when the customer is interacting with the packaging or POS material. It is believed that it occurs within the first 3-7 seconds of a consumer encountering the product and it is during this time that marketers have the capability of turning a browser into a buyer. The actual product experience was the ‘second moment of truth’ – as it was about the product living up to the claim. As the world became more digital, enterprises realized that the web played a big role in influencing brand choice even before they entered a retail store or went to an e-commerce portal. Google called it Zero Moment of Truth – as the web, especially search results, expert & customer reviews influenced the consideration set before the final brand purchase. So what the consumer saw in the digital world influenced the sale. In a way, it paved the way for Customer Experience – heavily influenced by digital, as we know it today.

Customer Experience (CX) today goes beyond the product or service a customer is looking to buy (or has already bought). Technology has made communication quick and easy, and customer experience today is a continuous, on-going process. When Amazon, for example, receives an order, they follow a process to ensure the customer is happy and informed throughout the journey. Constant email and message communications inform the customer where their product is, and when it will arrive. Once it is delivered, they ask for feedback and offer a return-back window. They have a 24×7 service line that customers can use to express issues. They send periodic emails about other products that a customer could be interested in. All of this culminates in ‘Customer Experience’. It may begin with a web search and include an app experience, interactions with customer service or the website. CX today is associated not just with the product, service, store or salesman, but with the entire brand that is delivering the experience.

In many cases today, the digital experience is perhaps the most dominant factor in customer experience. [click to tweet]

However, this is not to say that a great customer experience in digital can be a substitute for a poor product or service experience. It is said that good advertising can kill a bad product faster. Similarly, today’s savvy consumers will see through ‘all style and no substance’.

Why Customer Experience is Important

The sheer variety of options that are available to consumers today, makes CX the primary differentiating factor. Consider the e-wallet market, for example. Customers looking to perform the simple task of making quick transactions have over 100 options, as listed in this blog alone. In terms of functionality, there’s not much these apps can do differently. The only factor setting them apart is how customer-centric the brand is, and that encapsulates the app, the support team, the customer-facing representatives, etc.

 13% of customers will share with 15 or more people about a bad experience with a company, and 72% of consumers will tell 6 or more people about a happy experience.

It’s quite evident that in 2020 and for the foreseeable future, customer experience is going to play a vital role in the growth of sales and customer retention. Here are 3 factors that sum up the importance of CX:

1. Customer Experience Enforces Customer Retention

More often than not, customers return to a brand because of their experience than only due to the product or service itself. ‘Build it and they will come’ is simply not true. A product or service with great functionality needs the expertise of customer experience design too. In today’s world of product parity, this is even more important. There is very little that separates one bank’s services from another and hence the primary interface – in many cases, the mobile app becomes crucial for customer retention. According to Forbes, 96% of customers pledge loyalty to a brand based on customer experience. Acquiring new customers is important, but retaining customers and getting repeat orders can propel a business.

2. Consumers Decide Based on the Experience, Not the Product

Yes, having a great product is important, but it does not ensure a sale. Research shows that CX plays an important role in consumer decision making. In fact, consumers who have a good experience with a brand tend to spend more, return and refer. According to GrooveHQ, a customer that is highly engaged is 6 times more likely to return to try a new product or service. The report also states that customers who have had a pleasant experience with a brand spend 140% more compared to the customers who have had a bad experience in the past and 69% of these happy users would recommend the brand to others.

Here’s how McDonald’s was able to scale their CX with a user-friendly mobile app. McDonald’s India had a vision to make its mobile app the preferred medium for ordering. The goal was to bring the emotions of joy and delight from the in-store experience to the new McDelivery app. By analyzing the pain points in their current user journey and crafting a strong intent for the desired experience, McDonald’s was able to simplify the process of discovery, personalization, decision making and create delightful interactions. With the best UI in place, they increased orders by 103% with the new app, redirecting traffic from web-based ordering.

3. CX Gives Brands the Information Needed to Make Their Product or Service Customer-Centric

Customer experience involves customer engagement, which gives businesses the data needed to improve products, services or the experience itself. According to this article on Hubspot, 70% of dissatisfied customers are willing to shop with the same brand again if their issues are promptly resolved by customer care. Enabling customer feedback channels through store forms, online chat windows, email, and telephone is a great way to initiate communication between the brand and a customer, and also seek feedback that allows brands to improve.

However, customers do not think about these things as much as enterprises do. They do not segregate an ‘offline’ and an ‘online’ experience in their minds. They simply want to get things done irrespective of the channel or technology.

Customer Experience Strategies That Brands Should Adopt to Scale Acquisition, Engagement & Retention

1. Collect Data & Infer Results

Collecting customer feedback is quite easy with numerous options available. A simple NPS survey or customer effort score (CES) survey can give brands valuable information about their product/service and CX. Advanced technological solutions like AI and Machine Learning enabled bots that can interpret a customer’s mood through Natural Language Processing allows brands to take proactive measures in solving a customer’s problem. There are many solutions at a brand’s disposal, and it is important to collect consumer experience data to derive useful insights.

2. Find a Balance Between Automation and Human Intervention 

Anyone who has dealt with customer service calls (and the hold timings) can say how frustrating it can be. Chatbots, powered by Artificial Intelligence was meant to be the solution to resolve customer issues. However, we can safely surmise that neither of the routes have reached perfection. It’s vital for brands to implement a smart mix of technology and human intervention. The first step is to identify roles that are best addressed by humans. AI can play the role of enhancement by analyzing interactions, the context of queries and automating several processes. An often neglected aspect of human intervention is the role of strategy and the role of design thinking prior to crafting or solving a customer experience issue.

3. Implement Immersive Technologies

During the launch of their SUV XC90, Nissan rolled out a VR enabled application that allows customers to take a test drive, virtually. Advertising and marketing methods have changed with the changing technological landscape. Technology like AR, VR, 3D Images/Videos, etc present customers with an immersive shopping experience that helps them better understand the product, in turn improving customer experience and satisfaction.

Video source

4. Deliver Hyper-Personal Services

An article by Accenture stated that 75% of customers are more likely to purchase from a brand that knows their name, purchase history and/or recommends products based on past purchases. This forms a part of several design thinking principles that can help in customer retention and help prevent churn. With smart feedback systems and CTAs in place at customer exit locations (in-store or on a website/app), it’s not difficult to gather relevant customer information. Brands should then segment their marketing campaigns based on customers’ data, which increases the chances of engagement and purchase.

5. Have a Relevant Omnichannel Presence

Customers will not articulate that they choose a brand because of its omnichannel presence. But a relevant usage of platforms and experiences adds to a brand’s aura and helps in creating a ‘big brand’ feel. It can lead to brand affinity – a key differentiator in a parity world.  The modes of communication consumers prefer, depend on demographics, location, age, gender, lifestyle etc, making it vital for a brand to be active and reachable on multiple channels today.

An omnichannel service does not simply mean having a token presence across channels of communication, but a one that is relevant and adds value to the consumer [Click to Tweet]

Success Stories Resulting from Exceptional Customer Experience (CX)

Hewlett Packard’s Virtual Agent for Customer Service

HP Inc sells over 50 million PCs every year, and with every PC they acquire a new customer who will in some time in their journey be in need of service and support. In fact, HP Inc handles over 600 million technical support contacts every year. Working with Microsoft, HP rolled out an AI-enabled virtual assistant that interacts with customers and helps them solve issues they face with a product. It guides users through a troubleshooting process and provides solutions. If a solution isn’t available, it transfers the customer to a human representative. Here’s a brief overview of the key benefits:

• Prior to implementing the virtual assistant, HP would address 15 % – 20% issues digitally. Now, they address close to 80% issues successfully.
• The bot helps customers navigate over 50,000 pages of product information by understanding their needs.
• All of this resulted in increased customer satisfaction.

Mercedes-Benz Leveraged Predictive Analysis and AI to Better Serve Customers

Image source

Mercedes-Benz was looking for a solution to better serve its customers in Brazil, which has the second-largest plant followed by Germany. They invested in a Microsoft Azure cloud solution coupled with Power BI and Cortana Intelligence to map their sales processes, and analyze decades worth of data like license plate records, macroeconomic indicators, regulations, sales information, and statistics by each region of the country. Through this change in data analysis and interpretation model, Mercedes-Benz was able to:

• Provide 180 service locations around Brazil with consistent, actionable information to ensure each location could provide accurate proposals to their clients.
• Assist sales reps to engage with consumers proactively before a need is even expressed with the help of predictive analysis.
• Support employees in engaging and serving customers better, and in improving overall customer experience and satisfaction.

Thomas Cook’s Nurture Program

Thomas Cook was looking to establish a better and direct relationship with their existing customers, and prospects. They wanted to influence customers to be able to recommend their travel packages. Thomas Cook ran a CX improvement program a few years ago and collated data to study their customers’ interests and ran campaigns to request for personal recommendations based on past interactions and through display re-targeting. Through these hyper-personal campaigns, they were able to:

• Receive over 15,000 leads.
• Increased ROI, as high as 7.5 : 1 in a span of 3 months.

Hotel THE PIG Revamped their Online CX Experience to Boost Revenue

Kitchen garden hotel THE PIG wanted to increase their customer acquisition through online channels. They revamped their online booking process to make it more customer-centric and easy to use. In collaboration with Etch and Micros, the hotel implemented Opera Reservation System (ORS) in order to put in place a customized booking system that is customer-centric. By simplifying the customer’s booking journey, they achieved a 250% growth in online revenues over a two year period.

Improving customer experience is a seemingly simple two-step process: understand the needs of the customers, and implement effective methods to satisfy those needs. However, it is a lot more complex to accomplish and calls for collaboration with experienced partners who understand customer journeys, the role of digital experiences and the technologies that help craft them. There are also a plethora of tools available that help to collate consumer feedback, analyze customer satisfaction levels, and serve customers better. With the right strategy and tools in place, brands will be able to scale their customer experience alongside brand reputation, sales, and customer retention.