Join ISG’s CMO, Paul Gottsegen, as he interviews ISG Advisor, Prashant Kelker, about digital customer experience trends and predictions for 2022 – and the importance of connecting and leveling up your backend operations.
Transcript:
Prashant
[Continued from previous video]
I think we should go back to the first principles on design of workloads and not fall for newspaper headlines.
Paul
OK, fair enough, and let's fly down from the cloud and talk about the customer experience. Yeah, we've all been through the ringer. Now all the retailers you can go to, there are four or five spots in the parking lot for curbside pickup, which I kind of like. At the Gottsegen household, we don't go to a grocery anymore, but we eat well, and they deliver it. And what’s cool is my sweet wife will give me a heads up where the next delivery is, and then we know that the truck’s within 5 minutes delivering the groceries.
But see, that's all done, so that's the kind of my new normal in in the world of as we live now, kind of settled in. The dust is settled on the real must-haves over the first wave of, you know, these new challenges and the dynamism. Moving into 2022 customer experience, what are some of the interesting opportunities or challenges that organizations will face as they think about better serving their consumers?
Prashant
That's a good question, Paul. I think what organizations have done very well over the last three years is this: they've ticked a few boxes on user experience, be it mobile or portals. They've been working on their front end.
I think COVID-19 forced everybody to start thinking about curbside pickup, which is actually backend processes. So, most of the spends we are seeing at the moment are moving away from front end to connect front end to mid office to back office.
So, you know, we’re asking:
- What's the kind of inventory you need to have curbside pickups?
- How much can you predict in advance?
- Do you have the right stuff in your inventory?
- Do you need a new place to store things?
I think that's that's where the spends are.
The second thing is, of course, on ecommerce. We're seeing lots of spends on connecting customer experience with agent experience with employee experience, and then the ecommerce trail which has to go throughout. That's where I think the next spends will be for the coming four or five quarters.
About the authors
Paul Gottsegen
Prashant Kelker
Prashant Kelker is Chief Strategy Officer of ISG, Partner of ISG Americas Consulting and a member of the ISG Executive Board (IEB). He was named to the IEB in January 2023. Prashant was appointed Chief Strategy Officer in 2018, responsible for developing the firm’s three-year strategic blueprint, and he was instrumental in the development of our highly successful ISG NEXT operating model in 2020.
In January 2023, he was named to the expanded role of Partner, Americas Consulting, bringing together all our advisory capabilities in the region to support our commercial and public sector clients in response to the growing convergence of digital technology and enterprise operating models, business processes and revenue-generating connected products and services.
Prashant joined ISG in 2012 from Accenture, initially working for our DACH business and based in Germany. He moved with his family to the United States in 2018. Prashant earned his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore and a BE in electronics from Bangalore University in India.
