The X factor: why getting to grips with CX and DX has never been more crucial

Advances in technology are enabling companies to transform customer and digital experiences in powerful ways. It’s an increasingly popular theme, and one that our customers – and no doubt yours – regularly seek to address. By implementing the right technologies, businesses can gain valuable insights into customer needs, automate processes to be more efficient, and create highly personalised buying journeys as well as satisfying experiences across all channels. Helping them unlock that potential is what turns a one-off purchase into a long-standing partnership.

What is CX/DX and why does it matter?

Delivering top-notch customer and digital experiences has become a key imperative for companies in the modern marketplace. With consumers empowered by technology and competitors just a click away, customer experience (CX) and digital experience (DX) are critical for building customer loyalty, brand affinity, and business growth.

Positive CX shows customers that a company truly cares about meeting their needs and values their business. From helpful service agents to intuitive website interactions, good CX leaves customers feeling satisfied and appreciated after engaging with a brand. This fosters loyalty and emotional connection beyond just transactions.

Similarly, polished DX across devices and touchpoints conveys to customers that a brand is technologically competent and cares about crafting interfaces that are simple, enjoyable, and personalised. After all, buggy websites and clunky apps breed frustration fast.

It’s also important to remember that customer experience isn’t just about technologies at the front end, such as mobile apps. It’s all kinds of technologies: from connectivity to software, observability, and security. Ultimately, if you’re a solutions provider and you’re not connecting with this line of thinking, you’re missing a trick.

Targeting key stakeholders

More end-user customers are hiring Chief Digital Officers – people exclusively focused on the digital experience being created for their customers. CDOs occupy an influential role in driving digital transformation and customer experience within organisations. When marketing to them, it’s important to emphasise how your solution aligns with their strategic priorities, such as improving digital capabilities, optimising customer journeys, and driving revenue through digital channels.

Show a clear understanding of the challenges CDOs face – from data fragmentation and legacy systems to siloed teams and processes – and clearly explain how your offering can address those pain points.

Of course, other stakeholder groups like IT teams, customer services, and sales functions are taking an interest in customer experience too. And while these groups don’t always care about technology exclusively, they are tasked with improving how customers experience products and services. This creates more buyer groups to target and connect with through sales and marketing efforts. Take Apple, for instance: their messaging on employee device choice extends beyond traditional IT buyers to target HR decision-makers by framing their technology as a way to enrich employee experience – a huge topic in the modern workplace.

Leaning-in to industries

It’s not enough to just understand the customer experience in broad terms. While excellent CX and DX share common principles across industries, companies should tailor marketing communications and offerings to the needs of customers in the context of their industry. After all, what makes your offer stand out to people actively looking at how they improve their CX is how you prove your relevance – and market knowledge is essential here. Choose the industry, uncover the trend, and align with features from your existing product and service portfolio.

For example, banks may focus on building financial advisory-based relationships, simplifying mobile interfaces for routine transactions, and using data to offer personalised product recommendations that align with a customer’s life stage.

Retailers create immersive, omnichannel experiences, blending physical stores, intuitive e-commerce, and context-aware mobile engagement.

SaaS companies provide self-service portals, in-app messaging, and transparent billing to add convenience. Proactive support and robust knowledge bases reduce churn.

Ultimately, aligning CX/DX initiatives to industry-specific customer priorities, business models, and use cases ensures relevance and provides added value. While generic solutions exist, solutions that demonstrate sector relevance are far more likely to be at the top of the list for savvy buying groups.

Deep insights

Leveraging customer data through analytics tools allows companies to better understand their audience segments, identify trends and patterns in behaviour, pinpoint pain points in the customer journey, and gain other actionable insights.

Big data analytics, machine learning algorithms, and artificial intelligence (AI) can process high volumes of structured and unstructured data to fuel CX improvements. Predictive analytics further helps anticipate customer needs. Increasingly the CX or DX is dependent on an entire stack of technologies that work together to create it. Figuring out where services and solutions intersect with a typical stack is key to technology providers proving their worth.

It’s important to note that much of the stack will be consumed as a service and powered by the cloud. As end-customer IT environments get more complex and more distributed, troubleshooting challenges grow exponentially. This is where observability tools come into play, offering the power to corroborate technology events with CX, DX, and business context.

What does this mean for marketing technology?

Firstly, technology solution providers should be switched on to ensuring their services and solutions make a clear contribution to CX and DX outcomes. This means evolving value propositions to surface the messages that resonate.

Secondly, being creative about how you identify and reach new buying audiences is critical. Technology providers will need to increasingly acquire data and insights on new decision-makers and evaluate the communication channels used to reach them.

As ever, content is king and has a valuable role in making the industry-specific connections between a given technology service or solution and the real-world needs of the business being targeted. Early in the funnel, easily digestible, fast-connecting content like videos and explainers will be key. Deeper into the funnel, white papers and thought-leadership content will help make the case even stronger.

For more information on how to better align the technology solutions you sell with the CX and DX agenda, get in touch with the Asgard team today.