From Customer Experience to Total Experience

Changes in our modern world cause the price of a barrel of crude oil to fluctuate, which forces companies in the oil and gas sector to make decisions on reducing operating costs and improving their business processes.

Normally, “adjustments” is often synonymous with disinvestment in critical and adjacent areas of the business. However, investment in technology is currently helping to improve operations and the approach to the end customer, in a market that is growing ever-more competitive and digital every year.

Let’s separate this article into two segments: Users and Marketing, and Technology.

1. Users and Marketing

Over the last five years, and following the COVID-19 pandemic, companies in the oil, gas and energy (O,G&E) segment have been encouraging their CMO or marketing leaders to look for better experiences in their highest billing segments, but above all, in the B2C, supported by CIOs and aligned with the organization’s strategy. The objective behind this is to create more and better experiences for their customers, starting with Employee Experience (EX, regardless of the role they play in the organization), through an agile strategy that leads from Customer Experience (CX) to Total Experience (TX): 

Customer Experience (CX) + Employee Experience (EX) + User Experience (UX) / User Interface (UI) = Multi-experience (MX)*

What is TX and why is it so important to the O,G&E segment? 

TX is a business strategy for creating superior shared experiences for customers and employees that intertwines the CX, EX, UX and MX disciplines to drive customer and employee trust, satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy through digital and non-digital techniques. In this way, organizations will increase their revenues and profits by achieving adaptive and resilient TX business outcomes.

But why is TX so important in the oil and gas market? Let’s talk a little about the history of how the first electronic transaction in Mexico took place: 

The first credit card in Mexico, and the first in Latin America, was launched in 1968 by Banco Nacional de Mexico (Banamex). Since its inception, the subsequent arrival of the internet and the more recent e-commerce explosion brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, Mexicans have increased their use of both credit and debit cards exponentially as they strive to find a more digital interaction in their banking habits.

Customer experience is not only a set of actions, but also emotions. How do your customers or prospects feel about your brand? At every customer touchpoint, you can enhance — or mar — the customer’s perception of your brand. Currently, the practice of paying for essential services like electricity or gas at the bank is decreasing substantially; what new generations are looking for is a paperless strategy and to direct debit their payments digitally.

Payments are also growing in convenience stores, at kiosks or customer service centers, with the hope that service will not be affected. This leads brands to seek agile technology that permits them to reflect these payments as soon as possible so the service won’t be affected. 

Another example is that, according to INEGI data, 100 percent of gasoline and natural gas vehicle (NGV) stations around Mexico already accept digital means of payment, not just cash. Therefore, CMOs have to make important decisions at every customer touchpoint that will influence the success of your business.

A value proposition refers to the promise a company makes to its consumers to equip and enable them to produce value in order to achieve their outcomes.

2. Technology

Importantly, every organization has an IT strategy cycle through execution or delivery, which is used to identify investment opportunities, make decisions and develop IT execution roadmaps. 

Modern utilities have been moving from projects to products, but that is far from sufficient for what lies ahead. The time has come to move from products to experiences. 

How do you maximize the lifelong value of customer and employee experiences? 

Total Experience (TX) is the way to break down silos and create transformative, differentiating value by interconnecting CX and EX with effortless user experience and multi-experience technologies. TX unlocks the potential of connected human experiences to create exponential business value. We use enterprise architecture to bridge the gap between strategy and execution in order to build a composable IT estate that is adaptable and resilient. 

Gartner’s IT best practices suggest that digital organizations must build and combine key enterprise architecture outcomes in order to develop TX roadmaps that reflect our investments and changes in the IT estate.**

TX roadmaps result in a project or product. Sometimes we might have multiple agile initiatives that are integrated into a global project. Modern utilities have to update business capability models, value streams, and customer and partner journey maps on an ongoing basis to support these new CX and EX initiatives.

Ultimately, all TX initiatives will be represented in IT roadmaps so that programs, projects and deliverables can be prioritized, aligned and scheduled to obtain adequate levels of funding and resources to achieve the intended business outcomes.