Design as an enabler of experiences | Juan Jose de la Torre

It is common for companies to declare that the customer is the center of everything they do. Who would dare today to say otherwise? However, the reality in our country is far from this statement. 

According to data from our Virtus Digital Maturity Index (IMDV), in which 297 organizations participated, 87% of the country's large companies maintain that they make their decisions based on the customer. However, going into detail we can see that only 76% frequently measure their satisfaction levels, 70% use digital tools such as CRM or Analytics to understand it, and 63% use agile methodologies to improve their value proposition. At the same time, only 63% have a formal system to drive action based on customer feedback and say they have the resources to implement a truly customer-centric experience. Finally, only 49% use advanced analytics to manage the business effectively, segmenting, predicting, optimizing and recommending, among other actions. That is, today 

 Turning our businesses really towards our customers requires knowing more about them, understanding them, empathizing and changing our approach, going from "selling" products to generating "conversations" around experiences. We should no longer just look for purchase transactions, but rather create relationships based on audiences. And to have a focus on audiences, a key element is being able to have a long-term vision of the client, beyond the pure transactions to which we are accustomed.

 In this sense, Design appears as an essential enabler to achieve these objectives. We go from cosmetically "decorating" products and/or services to designing experiences that are capable of generating certain behaviors in the audiences we seek to impact. In this sense, it is essential that the design becomes an element that seeks to answer questions related to the potential capture of market opportunities, customer needs and company objectives. 

 For all of the above, organizations in Chile need to move forward in incorporating these capabilities as a central element of their value proposition, which helps them rethink their business models from this different point of view and outlining the transformation they really need to continue growing. and developing for the next few years. 

In a world with changes as profound and relevant as the ones we are facing today, the differences between saying and doing are simply no longer allowed.