A traditional web portal can be limiting when you want to quickly implement an omni-channel strategy like Vodafone. That's what Sander van Mil, User Experience Lead at Vodafone said during the first Customer Experience Hub. Vodafone has therefore switched to a new way of working, where the data, logic and presentation of the website are treated as separate layers.
Time, money and speed
Vodafone came to this decision for these three reasons:
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Every change cost weeks, and sometimes even months of time, money, consultation and programming hours to modify the portal.
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The 'HTML block' in Vodafone's CMS was the most used input block because employees were busy implementing approaches that didn't seem possible in the CMS
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This new approach meant a much faster website with loading times that went from 10 seconds back to 3 seconds (during peak moments).
Vodafone's website is now faster, responding to current events runs more smoothly and coordinating the different channels is now much easier.
Organizational challenge
Besides a technical side, a multichannel strategy naturally has an organizational challenge, which is at least as important, according to Van Mil. Working with a new architecture doesn't solve these organizational problems. It's also about the division of tasks between the Cross Channel Customer Experience Team and the Digital/User Experience Team.
A widely shared problem is coordinating the steps to go through when developing a cross-channel strategy. The app team is almost always in a different phase than the website team. How do you solve that?
Flexibility is key
"Avoid a rigid framework where all steps are already fixed", says Van Mil. "Different User Experience teams simply have different timelines and development stages". Flexibility is key to be able to collaborate well. Especially in a cross-channel environment characterized by many changes and many different stakeholders.
For the channel experience team, the challenge is to first work out the overall concept and then hand over the lead to the various digital teams. The diagram shows how at Vodafone the different teams align their timelines. These are the five questions that must be answered with each coordination:
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Content coordination: What is being developed?
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Time coordination: Who is in which phase and where are the priorities?
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Execution coordination: Who does what?
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Mandate coordination: Who is responsible for what?
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Result coordination: Who determines the KPIs?
Customer Experience Hub
The Customer Experience Hub is an initiative by NEWPEOPLE and WUA! aimed at Customer Experience Managers. With the increase in the number of channels and the different business units responsible per channel, managing the Customer Experience is a growing challenge. With our Customer Experience Hub we create a platform to share knowledge and experiences in a relaxed atmosphere.
