The LEGO effect: Customer service and composable business

Customer service, and by extension the entire customer experience industry, is at an inflection point. The promises of the last decade have been delivered: omnichannel engagement is within reach (although statistics show that less than 20% can do it, and less than 10% do it well), and the single agent desktop is readily available.

Now, the focus is on creating a composable business; a way of constructing and running an entire organization so that it can quickly adapt to changing customer needs and evolving market conditions.

Gartner’s 2022 CIO and Technology Survey found that just 7% of organizations surveyed have invested in creating a composable business, but 60% are planning on doing so in the next three years.

The composable element is the ability to shift departments, operational elements, and even channels around as if they were LEGO bricks. The result: highly customized business models that adapt to rapid change.

Customer service is well suited to take advantage of the composable trend. It must be able to react quickly to change – whether helping customers with ever-changing requirements, supporting unexpected loads, or dealing with change that disrupts business as usual. Agile customer service is foundational to better CX.

B2B customers want B2C experiences

One of the clearest trends in customer service is the desire for a consumer-grade experience in B2B. Organizations aren’t judged on whether the experience they offer is the same or better than a direct rival. Rather, they’re judged on how good the experience is compared to Netflix or Amazon.

It brings value to the customer beyond the transactional nature of B2B commerce. An organization needs to provide better experiences created around the idea of better service, while maintaining the customization required by B2B buyers.

Industry-specific platforms, built to serve the specialized needs of businesses and customers, offer this capability with a highly customizable, easy to maneuver front-end that helps customers and employees succeed.

Reacting quickly, adapting on the fly

Like the composable business, a composable platform is built from a set of components that can be quickly and easily switched and customized. Microservices allow rapid innovation that delivers at scale, and makes good on the promises of automated, agile and integrated using low code/no code models.

Microservices allow you to create hyper-personalized experiences for each customer and employee. Serving hundreds or thousands of people, all with different needs and wants, requires the ability to adapt as you go.

And when you’re up against a forced change, the ability to react quickly and give people what they want is a huge advantage. Turning those opportunities into co-created value for your organization and your customers is key to survival.

Data: to use it, you have to find it

Of course, at the core of any good experience is good data. Most organizations have the answer to a customer’s problem somewhere. The challenge is finding the data, knowledge, content, and rules necessary and making it easily available to the platform.

Data has to be pulled from the source as and when it’s needed, not stored in a distant vault. A service agent looking for an answer to a customer’s query doesn’t want to search for the relevant data – they want the information to come to them, with minimal effort and time required.

During the next five years, the companies that succeed will be the companies who become a composable business. They will be the ones who will be able to react to disruption without disrupting their business.

Customer service plays a vital role in this success. While it may be just a part of the bigger organization, it’s also where the opportunity to add value lies.

Businesses that find ways to make service more efficient for the customer, and for themselves, will be the winners.