The pandemic ushered in an era of rapid innovation, particularly around the digital transformation of customer-facing experiences. In fact, to meet core customer demands, brands had to adjust their digital approach by providing alternative ways to securely interact and engage with customers.
This continued push to improve customer experience has caused some organizations to rethink how they can deliver products/services to customers faster, and they’re turning to fusion teams as the solution.
What Is a Fusion Team?
A fusion team is a “a multidisciplinary team that blends technology or analytics and business domain expertise and shares accountability for business and technology outcomes…typically organized by the business outcomes or customer outcomes they support.”
Often, members of a fusion team are drawn from different departments like IT, business development, marketing and sales. They work together to deliver digital initiatives faster, with less administrative burden and a focus on continuous enhancements.
With roots in agile, fusion teams share the same goal of putting the customer first; after all, one of the values of the agile manifesto is “customer collaboration over contract negotiation.” And, they don’t just help organizations accelerate their digital transformation. Here are five ways that fusion teams enable improved customer experiences:
Related Article: What Makes Customer Experience Agile?
1. They Put the Customer at the Center of Each Decision
The most valuable reason for adopting fusion teams for product delivery is because they focus on the customer. Typical enterprise projects take months or even years to complete, and can include dozens of stakeholders. By the time the product is launched, the solution isn’t solving the customer’s current problem.
Fusion teams take a customer problem, gather five to nine diverse skill sets from business units across the enterprise and work to solve the problem quickly. Instead of focusing on business metrics and solving for it from the inside out, fusion teams flip the script and solve from the outside in. Customer insights and product adoption determine what success looks like, and fusion teams continue to iterate until they get it right.
2. They Spin Up New Products, Faster
Instead of taking months to perfect, fusion teams work to get a minimum viable product (MVP) to market. In a recent study about successful digital transformation, 49% of the respondents said that process was the most significant barrier slowing down their ability to adapt quickly. With fusion teams, the bureaucracy and red tape is significantly lowered, and the team has the freedom required to accelerate a product launch, giving customers value closest to the time they will actually use it.
For example, a bank is getting complaints from customers because there is nobody to help answer questions outside of business hours. So, the product owner on the fusion team prioritizes a logic-based chatbot to be implemented that can manage inbound inquiries outside of the working hours. The fusion team quickly scopes out a solution and evaluates approved vendors to determine the best fit.
Related Article: What Do Customer Experience Teams Actually Look Like?
3. They Amplify the Customer Voice
Fusion teams have a continuous customer feedback loop and use customer data to influence new product features/additions. So, when they get feedback from customers that the chatbot isn’t able to answer all of the customer needs, they go back to the drawing board and collaborate on a solution.
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They might decide to implement conversational AI into their chatbot which, instead of just pulling from an existing script, is scalable and uses machine learning, sentiment analysis and data insights to provide a better customer experience.
4. They Create Consistent, Omnichannel Experiences
Once fusion teams have gathered feedback from customers and implemented a successful solution, they work quickly to replicate it across all channels. In today’s digital-first world, there’s no question that it’s a competitive imperative to have an omnichannel strategy with friendly customer service.
For example, when a customer moves and wants to update their address with their healthcare provider, they login to their account on their laptop at home, but get interrupted mid-way through the process. The next day, on the train on their way to work, they decide to finish updating their address from their smartphone but notice the healthcare provider’s app doesn’t have the capability to do an address change. The customer is frustrated because they expect the same experience across all platforms.
In a matter of weeks the fusion team takes the customer complaint and turns it into a new app feature so that customers can self-serve on the channel of their choice.
Related Article: The Skills Your Customer Experience Team Needs to Succeed
5. They Provide Technology With a Human Touch
Because fusion teams always have the customer top of mind, and have a mix of people from different business units, they’re able to consider all aspects of the customer journey. Fusion teams deliver the right touch when it comes to using technology and understand that the customer will still want to speak with a person throughout their transaction.
So, although the customer likely doesn’t want to speak with their healthcare provider to update their address, they will want to have the option for a video consultation with their doctor, and they’ll expect that their doctor already has their patient information conveniently displayed on screen.
The mix of technology and human interaction at the right time, carefully thought out by the fusion team that is closest to the process, makes for happier customers and friendlier employees. When fusion teams focus on delivering seamless digital experiences, employees can focus on empathetic human experience and customers can get the best experience.
