This document outlines four steps for delivering a great digital customer experience: 1) Free your data by using APIs to make data accessible across channels, 2) Test your software early and often to speed time to market, 3) Ensure performance by monitoring the entire application chain, and 4) See the big picture with agile planning but mind the details with fine-tuned processes from senior leadership to testing. Taken together, these steps can help brands satisfy the demands of digital consumers who interact with companies across multiple touchpoints and devices.

1. Four Steps to Deliver a Great
Digital Customer Experience

2. Satisfying the demands of digital
consumers is challenging.
Satisfying the demands of digital consumers is
challenging.
Today, consumers expect brands to be easily available and
accessible across multiple touchpoints.
– They book a flight on their laptop
– They check into the flight on their tablet
– They use their phone to check the status
That’s three interactions over three different touchpoints.
And each touch needs to work flawlessly.

3. Are you providing your prospects and
customers a choice in the way that
they connect with you?
If not, you need to accelerate your digital
transformation by taking these four critical
actions …

4. 1. Free Your Data.
Is your data trapped in a legacy system or other
silos, making it difficult to distribute over
multiple channels?
Use an application programming interface (API)
to free it, securely.

5. Today’s applications use APIs to
blend in-house data with external
data sources to provide a better
customer experience.
Inside your company, APIs can bring together
data from all segments of your business.
Externally, APIs can help you create new
applications and services by safely opening your
data to your partners’ developers.

6. 2. Test Your Software.
To compete, you need to develop and release
products faster than ever before.
However, the testing and QA process can delay
your time to market as teams lose valuable time
waiting for various resources to become
available.

7. Ramp up the speed of your testing
process without cutting corners.
Root out software problems faster— and
earlier—by moving development and test tasks
to earlier phases of the software development
lifecycle (SDLC).

8. 3. Ensure Performance.
Consumers want an application load time of less
than six seconds.
Yet today’s application delivery chains are incredibly
complex, involving dozens of systems and third-
party APIs.
The New Battleground for Brand Loyalty Study, CA and Zogby
Analytics, 2014.

9. For the best customer experience, you
need to track performance through
the complete application chain,
ensuring each touchpoint offers
familiarity and consistency.

10. 4. See the Big Picture; Mind the
Details.
In a recent global study, 25 percent of
organizations have developed five or more
customer-facing applications in the past year.
Bringing more apps to market—at an
increasingly rapid rate—leads to greater
complexity and a chaotic development
environment.
Application Economy Global Study, CA and Vanson Bourne, 2014.

11. Your project planning environment
needs to be as agile as your
development process.
Manual spreadsheets won’t cut it anymore.
Fine tune your planning and decision-making
processes at every level— from the C-suite to
the QA lab.

12. Learn more about satisfying the demands of
digital consumers in the eBook:
How Do I Deliver an Amazing Customer
Experience Across All Touchpoints?