In the now-famous 1998 article in Harvard Business Review, B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore set up business in the concept of historical economics. The idea went like this: businesses went through various stages of the economy – agriculture, industry, and employment – as sales continued to change. For example, agricultural economics focused on selling ingredients (he used the example of ingredients in a cake), while industrial economics saw that the ingredients were already set up to make a total contribution (cake mixing). Finally, the service economy saw the emergence of companies that made many services around the items (bakers who make you a cake). With each step, the consumer price skyrocketed.
Early in the millennium, the authors accurately predicted a new economy, where trade and employment are the culmination of a great party-party event at Chuck E. Cheese! In economics, the goal is eternal memory (although some may prefer not to remember all of Chuck E. Cheese’s experiences).
Of course, there is little doubt that the writers had. The economic experience worked fast and continues today. But there is an economic boom that is growing rapidly. This new transformation, which we call “digital wealth,” furthers the idea by looking at the goods and services offered not only as physical events, but also as digital experiences (and sometimes so). In our image above, a birthday party for Chuck E. Cheese becomes an online event between your child and a group of friends around the world.
Recent Facebook back to Meta, a company that focuses on creating real worlds, makes digital economic prospects possible — and at the same time. But before we go down to “Total Recall” – like a rabbit hole, let’s take a look at how digital assets look today and how they will look soon.
Supporting digital assets
Moving information resources into digital assets means data — and more. The most important factor in the knowledge economy, according to Pine and Gilmore, is your preference. In the digital world, however, the experience must move forward to provide hyper-personalization. Likewise, creative thinking and real-time knowledge are crucial. In particular, companies must not only create opportunities to reach more customers, but also need to understand all the customer experiences of the machine in real time.
The transformation of the digital economy requires a deep understanding of every customer. With this understanding, companies are able to present personal experiences – as well as memorable ones – that drive greater profits for their customers (internally and externally), which allows companies to drive greater profits. Doing so requires systems that can help gather information on a large scale.
Event systems
So what does it take to support this new digital economy? RingCentral is known for its “knowledge systems” to describe technologies that can help the form of hyper-personalization and collect the information we have discussed above. In a nutshell, information systems not only have state-of-the-art digital financial support stores, but also a wide range of technologies that support the way customers (internally and externally) interact with your organization.
In 2018, Gartner discussed the release of many development platforms, recognizing that, while many companies focus too much on the Internet (e-mail) to create customer experiences, and in recent times mobile phones, the platforms alone will not diminish today. What has happened in recent times has called for more videos, conversations, and, more recently, the realities just mentioned. Why? Because customers recognize the communication methods they want the colors to use today, and when they do not get what they want, they simply leave. The RingCentral survey found that customers stopped using an item or service about four times in 12 months because poor customers.
But information systems do not simply connect to multichannel or even omnichannel. Real-life scenarios create different scenarios for each channel based on what each channel has. That’s the challenge of “one size fits all.” And it goes on and on. While every experience is tailored to each channel, the experience should feel consistent. Why? Because customers want to switch between channels with difficulty. The truth is that inconsistent behaviors affect your race.
Symptoms of cognitive systems
Although technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data support information systems, for consumers, those technologies mean little. For them, the symptoms of their actions will revolve around thoughts, such as:
- A deep experience that combines several experiences
- A community concept, where customers feel like they are in a larger group of like-minded people
- Simplicity that allows customers to enjoy simple events
Ultimately, information systems must meet three main objectives:
- Increase the revenue available to your company
- Improve customer skills
- Improve staff skills
That final goal, to improve the skills of staff, is one that is largely ignored in building knowledge systems. It is because many companies often overlook the employee’s experience on all aspects of the customer service. In short, happy employees make happy customers. And those are not mere words. There are storage numbers. A Gallup poll found that organizations have a lot of money co-workers surpassed its rivals by 147% in terms of earnings in each category.
One of the ways in which companies today work to improve communication between employees and customers is to build bridges between the two components of knowledge systems. It makes sense, especially because customer support teams, for example, are crying. In a RingCentral survey, about 80% of agents said they had to stop customers every day while searching for information to solve problems. The problem, they say, is job breakdown. Combining customer service with working systems, however, was a welcome solution: 92% said ways of communicating and collaborating– platforms that integrate messaging, video, phone, and customer experiences – can help.
While the digital economy may seem like an economic growth experience, the information systems needed to support it need to be carefully considered. Cloud connectivity technology will be the center for collecting, storing, melting, and using communications technology to create a simpler, more powerful, and more relevant experience for your brand. Being able to integrate these systems aggressively with other technologies, such as creative thinking, will also be important.
This was created by RingCentral. Not written by MIT Technology Review authors.