The Customer Experience, Defined

ORLANDO, Fla. (PegaWorld 2013) – All companies strive to improve the customer experience, but the problem lies in finding a uniform definition of customer experience for all businesses.

That was the main point raised during a morning keynote panel at today's Pegasystems user conference. The panel, moderated by Paul Greenberg, founder and president of The 56 Group., included representatives from Unitedhealth Group, Mass Mutual, Telerx, and Pega, and each had their own ideas of what the customer experience meant to them.

"The customer is our true magnetic north," said William Krenz, senior vice president of OptumHealth, a division of Unitedhealth Group. "We need to understand his needs and solve for them."

For Linda Marr, vice president of Mass Mutual, the customer experience is a journey. "In our business, it's a long-term journey with us," she said. It involves many touchpoints and life stages, which are important to both the company and its customers, she added.

And then, she added, it means "delighting the customer, even when he doesn't know what he wants."

Ted Sak, senior director of solutions at TeleRX, said it's really about the interaction and "allowing the representative to achieve the best resolution to that interaction."

Rob Walker, director of decision management and analytics at Pegasystems, said it's about making the customer interactions contextual and consistent across channels. "An interaction is a moment to increase the customer value," he added, but it must be a win/win for both the company and the customer.

All the panelists agreed that customer experience can and should be a key point of differentiation for any company today, regardless of the industry or size.

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