Total Experience – The New Buzzword Everyone Should Know About

It is no longer sufficient for brands to sell a product; they need to sell an experience. Total-experience (TX), an intersection of customer, employee, and user experience is a new concept that is anticipated to become a priority for tech and retail companies in the future.  According to Gartner, TX will become a key metric that will help organizations to create competitive differentiation in the marketplace. The concept of TX is based on the idea of elevating the experience of every customer-company interaction and all the encapsulated components related to these experiences- technology, customers, employees, and different departments.

In an “Experience Economy”, an idea first proposed by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore in the 1990s, companies will need to embrace a wider spectrum of values, ideas, and experiences that goes beyond the physical product. With so much noise to work through and so much competition in the market, business leaders are driven to create memorable experiences for their customers, a streamlined lead generation and sales funnel to attract quality leads, and a human-centric organizational culture to attract the best talents. It will become crucial to leverage technology and analytics to personalize buyer journeys and create immersive physical and virtual experiences across all touchpoints. 

What is total experience?

Total-experience is defined as a strategy that connects multi-experiences with customers, employees, and user experience disciplines. TX unifies UX designs, content marketing strategies, and employee and customer experience to provide a singular, seamless, and holistic brand experience. Traditionally, all these strategies/disciplines have been siloed separately within the organization. But the concept of TX is fundamentally amalgamating these different strategies into one silo such that businesses can create all-encompassing engagement with customers; to achieve a competitive advantage over other brands. TX is helping businesses to enhance their brand’s value proposition. 

The internal culture of the company has a huge impact on the external experience. The experience that a company delivers will define their brand identity and how they are perceived by the customer. Brands must combine their in-store and online strategies to ensure that the engagement is uninterrupted. Companies will need to capitalize on social channels and traditional media like print and television to build awareness and loyalty. Companies that adopt TX into their marketing and business strategy will be able to transform their business outcome.

How can TX transform today’s businesses?

TX can improve coordination among remotely working and distributed teams. From big corporations like Amazon and Google to smaller tech companies, the workforce has become distributed which means businesses have to invest in unified strategies that meet the demand and expectations of both employees and customers. Working remotely cannot result in poor communication and performance. TX solutions will help management to oversee the entire operation and ensure that deliverables are on-time and excellent customer experience is always a priority.
TX can further improve both customer and employee satisfaction. Unified strategies can improve communication and cooperation between different departments as well as enhance customer interactions at both physical and virtual touchpoints. Communication technology is helping remotely located employees to share information and work seamlessly. It’s also enabling omnichannel customer service which is the driving force for customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Delivering optimal experiences with speed, convenience, and relevant information can empower organizations to become more efficient and profitable.
TX solutions can better marketing strategies. Intersectional strategies that combine creativity, technology, and ingenuity can build a more holistic marketing and sales approach. TX strategies can create, implement, and deliver business transformation with powerful customer and employee behavioral insights.
Total experience and its unifying strategies can create a more competitive advantage for companies. Innovative solutions that cater to customer-centric needs can be the differentiating factor that helps companies attract and retain customers.
There will be more implementation of multi-experience platforms to meet user and industry demands.
These platforms will be used for chat, voice search, AR, and wearable devices. Multi-experience platforms will become a crucial component of TX and help businesses to capitalize on upcoming opportunities.

Final Thoughts

TX strategies are still in nascent stages with most organizations now realising the opportunities that total experience provides in terms of customer acquisition, employee satisfaction, and technological advantage. It will become a key satisfaction metric in the near future. At Alkye, we help clients to shape their business strategies and build a more agile and resilient organisational structure to drive future business growth and revenue.