Some of the main takeaways from DX3 this year were all about creating value for customers, how customer experience drives innovation, and how to build the teams in your organization to support change.
DX3 was structured around three pillars: Demand, Action and Data. Demand sessions looked at how demand is created for products and services. Action sessions were focused on how attendees could apply to customer experiences and journey in real life, and data sessions were focused on how to use insights and put data into action.
Sometimes these conferences can be hard to get to, or if you did attend, you may have missed sessions you wanted to attend. If you weren’t able to attend the conference last week or missed a workshop you wanted to attend, check out our key takeaways from some of the keynotes and sessions.
Day One Opening Keynote: Achieving Customer-Centric Growth
The opening keynote was by Amazon, about achieving customer-centric growth. During the session, Amazon’s country manager for Canada, Tamir Bar-Haim spoke of the company’s plan to bring Canada to the same ecommerce volumes per person as the rest of the world.
But how does focusing on the customer translate to growth? Bar-Haim focused on four tips for success as part of a ‘toolkit’ for customer obsession: insights, moments, experiences, and convenience.
Bar-Haim also spoke about unlocking insights across the stages of the buyer journey. Using impressions and clicks at the awareness stage, product detail page views at the consideration stage, reviews at the advocacy stage and subscriptions at the loyalty stage.
An essential part of customer-centric growth is looking at where your customers are experiencing your brand : on the web or inside an app.
Innovation is About Creating Value, Not Shiny Toys
By far one of the most memorable quotes from this session led by Rangle.io CEO Nick Van Weerdenburg was: “silos are killing me”. Innovation means change, and dramatic as that quote may sound making change is extremely hard across multiple channels. So if change is difficult across an organization with many silos, it literally kills progress.
Fail and fail fast.
Another quote that seemed to be repeated throughout the two-day conference was: “fail and fail fast”. Van Weerdenburg discussed how important it was for larger organizations to build the structure and ability to move quicker.
Innovation happens in the customer journey, but planning – or specifically over planning – can kill that innovation. The experience customers have is now equivalent to the company’s brand. Teams within the organization must be enabled to innovate and innovate fast.
This can be achieved by removing barriers: bringing the silos in the organization closer together or changing ‘how things get done’ to facilitate innovation on the customer journey.
Defining the Path Forward: Key Takeaways to Compete in the Digital Landscape
Our AVP, Mobile Platform and Products Oscar Roque led a session on how digital can help companies of all sizes innovate quickly and compete (pictured right). During the session he discussed how the brands we know, like Airbnb and Candy Crush, succeed because they understand how they can compete from a ‘higher order’, an abstract point of view. Basically, they understand the META.
The first meta: customer experience (a key theme that clearly came up a lot during the conference). Candy Crush doesn’t add more widgets or distractions, they focus on expanding ways they can create community.
The second meta: openness. In this area, Roque highlighted fintechs who have changed the market with an ‘open access’ approach. Consumers are now driving change across all industries – including ours. Bank-sponsored innovation is how we’ll balance openness with being able to change so we can meet the needs and expectations of consumers.
The third meta is partnerships. No company, organization or idea is an island. Roque pointed out how diversity fosters change. Partnerships automatically mean more minds in building better products and services.
Day One Closing Keynote: How to Develop a Best-In-Class Marketing Team
The first day closing keynote was a session on building a best-in-class marketing team by Theresa McLaughlin, EVP and Global Chief Marketing Officer of TD Bank Group. McLaughlin (and others) rightly pointed out that without the right people on your team, the work doesn’t get done.
In the bank’s evolution since McLaughlin joined the company, they’ve invested heavily in their people. But what was also key, was working with people who stay curious and are willing to learn. It’s more than creating a work place that people want to go to every morning, without learning you (or your company) won’t be relevant in five years.
One of the keys to building a best-in-class marketing team, is making an investment in the team. According to McLaughlin, investing in talent must be a key priority.
McLaughlin recognized Netflix for being open about their culture. Check out the Netflix culture deck here: Netflix’s Culture Deck
Value Proposition Design: Create What Consumers Want
During an action session led by Alan Smith from Strategyzer, we went over a business model canvas, a tool developed by Strategyzer that showed how a company’s customer relationships, revenue streams, channels, segments, value proposition, key resources and activities all work together in the product delivery cycle. We covered how this canvas applied to large companies like Nespresso and Tesla.
The basis of the business model canvas was the value proposition canvas. This canvas helped attendees figure out how to frame both the customer’s and the business side of the buyer journey. On the one side you have customers with problems that need to be solved and questions that need to be answered. On the other side of the canvas, you have your business. The idea of the canvas was to map what the customer needs to where the business solution solves a problem or provides and answer.
Check out Strategyzer’s book on Value Proposition Design.
