The Age of the Customer

The future belongs to customer-obsessed enterprises, according to Forrester CEO, George Colony. He says we are now in the "Age of the Customer", a 20-year business cycle in which the most successful companies will reinvent themselves to systematically understand and serve increasingly powerful customers. The age of the customer, he predicts, will change everything at the intersection of business and technology.

Speaking at LeWeb Paris in early December, George Colony focused on one early element of customer empowerment – the mobile mind shift. He says customers expect any information or service they desire be available to them on any device, in context, at their moment of need. Forrester has even developed a global Mobile Mind Shift Index that measures how far along a group of consumers are in this change in attitude and behavior.

What does all this mean? It means that organizations will need to think hard about their mobile engagement with their customers. Developers writing mobile apps will need to find ways to instantly deliver the right services, information and context to the right customer, across any device he or she may be using. Data distribution will become essential. In fact, successful organizations will need three key data distribution capabilities:

1. Speed and performance – the essence of engaging increasingly impatient and tech-savvy users.
2. Efficiency – distributing data intelligently in real time and improving the user experience while at the same time optimizing network utilization.
3. Scalability – to meet the demands of large numbers of concurrent users and end devices.

With these capabilities in place, organizations will be able to increase revenue opportunities, reduce expenditure and improve the application experience and mobile engagement. They will also be in a much stronger position to master any challenges that the age of the customer may bring.