In the landscape of digital transformation, the customer experience (CX) is emerging as a key catalyst. The rise of the CXO title, a novelty in executive leadership, is a testament to this evolution. This process necessitates a bold reassessment of our digital encounters from the customer's vantage point – a task that calls for both courage and humility. A willingness to challenge the status quo, and the humbling realization of one's digital shortcomings through a customer's lens, are vital in this journey. However, many companies fall prey to a widespread affliction – Search Denial (SD).
SD is the paradoxical dilemma of investing copious amounts of time, effort, and resources to enhance our visibility in customer searches, but neglecting the search functionality on our own digital platforms. Over the past two decades, we have poured energy into optimizing our content, brands, and data to show up on a customer's search radar. Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) dominate our budgets. Yet, upon achieving this feat of visibility, we often lead the customer to a digital experience devoid of an efficient search mechanism, indicative of our assumptions that their search journey ends there.
The question then arises, how can you identify this affliction within your organization? The journey from SD to enlightenment can be traced through four distinct stages:
The first stage of SD is outright denial of the need for search functionality. Your website lacks a search bar, and you stand convinced of its redundancy. You navigate your site using an intricate network of drop-down menus, reflecting the organizational structure à la Conway's Law. Such a setup might confirm your segmentation strategy, but it can also lead to a confirmation bias that overlooks the necessity for an effective search functionality.
At this stage, you introduce a search functionality, albeit in an inconspicuous form - a barely visible magnifying glass icon tucked away in the corner. It might not provide accurate results, but it exists nonetheless. This diminutive design choice might be defended as a necessity to maintain design aesthetics, but it can often result in overlooking an essential functionality due to survivorship bias.
This stage involves reluctantly accommodating a proper search bar, owing to persistent client requests and negative feedback in UX surveys. Despite having been warned about the subpar search functionality, the bar is consciously designed to be small to discourage use. However, the appeal of instant answers starts to become evident, challenging previous assumptions and strategies.
The final stage marks a complete shift in perspective, recognizing the importance of a robust search functionality. Now prominently displayed on the homepage, the search bar encourages customer interaction. It allows for a better understanding of customer intent, promoting a personalized experience. As the conversation on the website shifts from a monologue to a dialogue, you begin to understand the importance of a 'datable' company and how intrinsic, neutral, objective, and dynamic data can drive conversions and enhance customer experience.
In the realm of datability, a company must be able to handle its own data adeptly and forge strategic data partnerships. To truly benefit from this, a company must recognize its datability type: whether its data source is intrinsic or extrinsic, the privacy level of the data, its nature as either objective or subjective, and its temporal aspect as dynamic or constant. Ultimately, datability is about leveraging the strategic use of data to drive decision-making, enhance customer understanding, optimize operations, and spur innovation.
