Decoupling is a part of your journey to becoming customer-centric
All-in-one Digital Experience Platforms exist for every industry, and all claim to make building your customer experience easier, more cost effective, and seamless across digital channels. They offer rich data and infrastructure, as well as frontend or customer experience features.
However, relying solely on a one-size-fits-all use case quickly becomes restrictive for companies looking to differentiate in a market where customer experience matters more than ever. The value proposition you bought soon becomes the reason your digital touch points with your customers look just like another company's web experience or application, not one that’s as unique as your business.
What’s better is to combine the power of composable digital experience platforms and headless technology with a best-in-class features that you combine as needed to deliver differentiated experiences to your customers.
Decoupling your CX from your platform allows you to configure the experience to your customers, responding to market shifts and what you learn about your users.
Headless technologies decouple your CX from the back-end through APIs allowing you to configure the experience to your customers, responding to market shifts and what you learn about your users, because your CX is completely configurable across all channels. Extracting the customer experience layer increases competitiveness in the market—a must for mature firms who are competing for market share.
Here are the top 5 reasons why your business should consider decoupling your customer-facing digital experiences from your platform:
1. You’ll fit your platform to your business goals
If your company is setting goals related to customer growth, it can be frustrating to hear “we can’t”. The expensive platform you purchased starts to feel like a pair of golden handcuffs, forcing you to adapt your goals to the limitations of the platform, instead of making the best choices for your customer. With a custom-built CX, you aren't held hostage to any one technology vendor, and can freely move from platform to platform as your business evolves. Decoupling means that you don’t need to manage an expensive platform migration if you decide to make a switch, making scaling your experience much easier.
2. You’ll serve your customers better
An out-of-the-box platform or SaaS product can’t understand the needs of your customer with the same specificity as your internal product experts. Any unique requirements of your digital products are specific to your audience, and any additional product complexity impacts technical specifications, which will make the team building your experience in a platform product tie themselves into knots in order to find a solution. With a decoupled CX, you can invest time and money into building your unique business cases. You’ll also be in a position to test and learn—which will be easier on your custom CX layer—allowing you to add best-in-class capability, like AI and deep personalization, to meet the needs of your customer.
3. You’ll improve capital efficiency
With a decoupled CX, you’re optimizing not only for your customers and market, but also for your teams and how they work. The upfront cost of the build will be justified by the hours of work your team could potentially save with a tool that’s catered to their processes. As your business scales, there is also a huge savings in avoiding migration between platforms.
4. You’ll empower your teams
Control over one’s work and the ability to make the best choices are two of the most powerful motivators for an individual in any organization. With this in mind, a CX that’s tuned to your company’s work style and workflows could have a real impact on employee satisfaction and retention. Owning your CX will take their needs into consideration, optimizing for not only time savings, and also including a governance model that allows employees to give feedback in order to generate future improvements. Decoupling is a part of your journey to becoming product-centric, and can help you reap the benefits of moving from project to product.
5. You’ll gain competitive advantage with a differentiated experience
If you’re in a crowded market, you have to differentiate through your CX. Decoupled CX drastically improves your lead time between gaining customer insights and responding to this feedback by making digital product improvements. Getting ahead of your competitors by being the first to respond to market needs is a serious competitive advantage.
Decoupling your technology stack is a part of your journey to becoming customer-centric, and can help you reap the benefits of moving from project to product.
Asking “build vs. buy” is the wrong question. Instead, ask yourself, ‘How do I mitigate the risk of missing the mark in creating customer value?” In building a lightweight customer experience layer that leverages your core platforms, you reduce both technology risk by owning your customer experience outside of the platform, and reduce business risk by creating high-value, differentiated customer experiences—the kind that are critical to customer acquisition and retention.
If the risk your business is trying to mitigate is the cost of custom software, you’re missing the point: The real risk is letting your customers down. Companies that decide to follow the traditional path with their digital product experience are focused on the wrong goal. Ensure you’re measuring the right risk. Talk to us.