As your business grows, you trade one set of challenges for another. Instead of providing a highly-curated experience to a select group, you’ll focus on scaling your efforts across new markets and audiences. But it can be hard to anticipate how your new customers will engage with your product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s where\u00a0Ange Temple<\/a> comes in. As WeWork\u2019s senior director and head of experience strategy, Temple has a solid background in science and liberal arts\u2014she has studied data science and has a masters degree in communications management from Australia\u2019s University of Technology Sydney. She believes the secret to a good customer experience at scale can be found in the data that companies collect about their customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe foundation should always be in your customers\u2019 data,\u201d says Temple, who cites companies like Netflix and Nike as leaders in the customer experience field. \u201cYou have to understand what you have, what your gaps are, what your technology is, and how you\u2019re going to pour that into different channels.\u201d Temple emphasized that scaling an identical experience is nearly impossible\u2014and it’s not what most companies should aim for. \u201cFind the things that are core to your brand and your business,\u201d Temple says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Automation can help communicate consistently with customers around the world across multiple touchpoints, says Temple, who calls herself \u201ca massive proponent of automation.\u201d Once a company determines its key experience, she says, it should automate it as much as possible\u2014while also leaving room to customize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou say, \u2018This is very important to us. We have to do this thing this way,\u2019\u201dshe says. \u201c[Then] add in the cultural nuances.\u201d That layer of cultural flavor and nuance is what makes a largely consistent customer experience relevant and appropriate for each company location. It’s slightly varied by deliberate design. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n An example at WeWork was the Growth Initiative, which was rolled out to 12 countries. The project took a data layer or data-first approach, built on hypotheses collected through customer research on the ideal state customer experience we want to design, then delivered market-by-market and iterated based on local nuances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe scaled growth experiences while leaving room to customize region-by-region based on cultural nuances,\u201d explains Temple. \u201cFor example, emphasizing workplace reformation in Japan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n While each location delivers its own flavor of customer experience, they are all consistent with the brand’s global tenets. \u201cAt WeWork, that’s evident with the welcome of the community team, the look and feel from our design team, and even the amenities like coffee that our CSA team delivers,\u201d Temple says. \u201cAs we traveled to locations across the world for the Growth Initiative, we always felt at home when we walked into the office…it was incredibly powerful and memorable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Businesses will know that they\u2019ve hit the sweet spot between automation and personalization when a customer\u2019s experience has just enough information behind it so that it feels curated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Temple points to Bluestone Lane,<\/a> the Melbourne-inspired coffee shop with 50 locations in the United States, as an example of a parter company that has succeeded in scaling with a personal touch. In episode 1 of the <\/a>Up At Night<\/a><\/em> podcast<\/a>, Nick Stone<\/a>, the founder of Bluestone Lane, discussed his concerns about how to ensure every location provides customers with a personalized feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGoing into a coffee shop and [having] someone know your name and your order\u2014that can be curated through digital means or it could be the physical rapport with that person,\u201d Temple says. \u201cIt\u2019s a matter of feeling like there\u2019s a connection there and feeling like the brand understands your needs\u2014sometimes even before you even have the needs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s one last element that companies often overlook when scaling up culture and delivering amazing customer experiences. Even with all the data available to a business, intuition still plays a big role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a big reason why Temple doesn\u2019t worry about technology replacing people at a grand scale. A customer is more than a data point, she says, and the differences between people from country to country\u2014or even from city to city within the same country\u2014are tremendous. Cultural differences among customers mean that your business in San Francisco will be different from your business in Austin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe way that technology is today, we can deliver highly personalized experiences at scale, but we always need to have a level of human intuition,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Find out how WeWork\u2019s global network opens up a world of new connections for your company and enables you to expand your business to new markets with ease.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nUsing data to scale your customer experience<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A WeWork example: a 12-country growth initiative<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A partner example: Bluestone Lane<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Putting intuition to work<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Looking to scale your company?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n