Driving Customer Experience one of the toughest challenges for brands: Gary Teo, VMLY&R

VMLY&R clearly ramped up its focus on CX last year after roping in Gary Teo who moved from Accenture to the agency as Managing Director, Experiences & Technology, Asia. Teo is tasked with the mandate of applying Customer Experience (CX) and data-driven marketing solutions to help drive business KPIs. He has worked with notable brands like 3M, Hilton, Ford, CIMB, Shiseido and Dell.

On the sidelines of his visit to India, exchange4media chatted with Teo on how brands should adopt the dynamic nature of customer experience in a culture of convergence, the notion that consultancies continue to gain ground in the race to CX service dominance, among other things.

Edited excerpts below:

CX is a foundational capability within the agency’s mission of creating connected brands. How do you ensure that it aligns strategy, experience design, commerce, technology and data to transform businesses?

Increasingly, the conversation of CX is being discussed at the highest levels of an organization and leaders are seeing it as more than just an afterthought that is bolted onto the product/service. Instead, there is widespread recognition amongst that CX strategy permeates all levels of the business to provide a competitive edge. We work with leaders driving change to help them across a variety of verticals and levels, including Exploring whitespace business models and services that can fundamentally transform their category (E.g. could I ‘subscribe’ to a car instead of buying one? Or perhaps, could the fuel needs for my vehicle come to me instead? Or, could I personalize my fast food?) New physical experiences (offices, spaces, stores, vehicles, agents) Omnichannel digital and commerce experiences. 

These endeavours and conversations are ignited by the courage and inspiration of leaders, but are realised by strong craftsmen, advisors and practitioners of technology, data, strategy and CX Design, and could take the form of a new service, product or customer journey.

VMLY&R’s CX practice has significant partnerships like Ford, United Rentals and Pfizer. What have clients seen as major challenges in the space over the years?

Despite the ambition of change, there are several major challenges and unfortunately, they are largely internal. Driving a culture of CX and change is one of the toughest challenges a brand will face. There are too many examples of transformation projects that have failed for a variety of reasons. It’s like that quote from Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Change requires an incubative environment and some of the most important factors of that environment include a strong and resolute champion, an inclusive process, talent, enablement and a culture that can accept risks and mistakes. It’s easy to see how if even one of these factors is overlooked, things can go wrong very quickly. Unfortunately, these are also factors that an external agency can do little about.

Another notable challenge is the increasing pressure to prove returns. The industry is peppered with feel-good CX projects that have not made a difference. C-level executives are increasingly (and rightfully) demanding that new CX projects build in clear business KPI goals. That’s why you will see that the best CX partnerships today have well defined common KPIs and skin in the game by both parties.

The artful balance of demanding percentage improvements on key metrics versus exploration of innovative and strategic change is something that leaders are still trying to grapple with. It’s the difference between evolution and revolution.

Do you agree to the notion that consultancies continue to gain ground in the race to CX service dominance?

Consultancies are absolutely gaining ground in the CX landscape. Conversely, agencies also continue to gain ground in strategy and business consulting. The worlds are colliding and it is getting difficult to tell them apart.

A lot of research has very concretely established that with rising expectations of the consumers, the new battleground is on the field of the Customer Experience (beyond just the product and service merits) hence recognition by business leaders that they have to marry advancements of their business plans to their experience transformation endeavours. Where consulting groups are spectacular is their deep domain knowledge. They help augment their clients as their strategy, process, finance and technology counterparts.

Where I think agencies like VMLY&R makes the most impact is in helping our clients deliver the best experience to the consumer and conversely bring the voice of the customer to the boardroom where it’s sorely needed and that is ultimately where the business impact is really made and felt. It's amazing to see the contention and collaboration that is possible as these two worlds collide.

Building for purpose is clearly more of a priority for agencies than for brands. What is your view on this?

I’m not certain how long that will remain true. I’d be surprised if I can get through a day of commuting or consuming media without a single ad of a brand sharing some good that they stand for. You hear it at every conference and read it in annual reports. How much of that is simply good advertising and how much is actually tangible and impactful remains to be seen.

What’s real is that consumers are rising to the call of brands with values like healthy living, sustainability and equality, and that’s being quickly translated into brand equity and business performance. It’s already becoming a palpable vector of differentiation for various brands.

I expect to see more good and meaningful partnerships where both brands and agencies come together to use their resources and influence to bring purposeful services and products to the world stage. If not already, then very soon.

How should brands adopt the dynamic nature of customer experience in a culture of convergence?

CX is not rocket science. It’s perhaps more of a reminder to care and to be well-considered. To remember and stand up for the little guy and his needs. Adopting practices like design thinking, agile practices and continuous improvements are always a great place to start.

Design thinking helps imbue the organisation with a sense of consideration for the various stakeholders related to the business. It allows us to imagine better service if we organized ourselves around their needs.

Agile practices in various forms put the responsibility of actionable change into the hands of the crew. It empowers teams to get out there, make a difference and respond better to changes in the environment.

Finally, continuous improvement puts a lens of accountability into the transformation. The process applies data and evidence-based logic to continuously seek incremental optimizations and efficiencies for the customers which ultimately benefit the business.  Thus, in a culture and age of convergence (both in organisational division and crafts), these practices unify teams to do better. I’d imagine any self-proclaiming modern business ought to be running so in 2020. You’d certainly expect that of Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc.

What are the various trends that you have seen in the CX space in the past couple of years and the ones to watch out for as we go forward?

Several come to mind: The adoption of data strategies, artificial intelligence, real-time and single view of the customer, next best action has been around for several years but we are seeing an early majority adoption now especially in the context of omnichannel orchestrated personalization. Data and technology teams develop models to predict a customer’s propensity for products, which is then shared into a central single view of customer systems that affect their experience in all online and offline channels.

Every interaction and behaviour is monitored in real-time to constantly reassess the most relevant and best-performing offer for the customer. Marketers and brands are forced to reevaluate their processes and assets to truly deliver the right experiences to the segment.

This will also be combatant to the increasing general awareness and demand for privacy. The improvement of natural language processing and associated voice interfaces will start to drive a change in the way consumers interact with brands. Instead of structured information that consumers expect to navigate, they will quickly demand painless answers to their questions (text or voice).

This, in turn, affects demand for bite-sized and high-quality content that brands will have to provide deeper expectations of low investment, on-demand and personalized experiences. More and more business are starting to reconsider themselves as subscription services that deliver goods/products/Driving a culture of CX and change is one of the toughest challenges a brand will face to consumers where and when they want it, in the way they want it. These are all category-transforming considerations that can leapfrog a business to the top of the chain, forcing their industry to have to change or die.

Remember life before Netflix (vs mainstream TV broadcasting) or ride-hailing apps, or home delivery of food or even your coffee beans? Now, imagine that transformation happening to traditional businesses like healthcare, automotive, consumer electronics, education, sports, oil and gas. Because the leaders of those industries already are.