When I founded OnDemand two decades ago, customer experience (CX) was simple. Customers called you or emailed you, then your business responded through those channels, and that was it.
Today, everything is different. Customers expect to reach you through voice, email, text, social media, and chat – often within the same conversation. This shift from single-channel to omnichannel didn't happen overnight, but when it did, it changed everything for CX leaders.
Over nearly two decades of advising mid-market companies on their customer experience strategy, I've noticed that the most important shift isn't technological. It's philosophical. It's about how leadership thinks about the connection between customer experience and business performance.
Twenty years ago, investing in customer-experience technology felt optional. Early adopters who leaned into it were willing to experiment and learn along the way, and they gained a competitive advantage. The rest of the market was comfortable with the status quo.
That world doesn’t exist anymore. Businesses that don’t invest in modern CX technology now lose market share to their more agile competitors. It’s no longer a differentiator – it’s table stakes.
The most common mistake I see mid-market companies make is delaying digital transformation and the foundational infrastructure that today’s customer experience tools require. Organizations tell me they want to implement AI in their contact center or upgrade their CX platform, but they want to skip the infrastructure investment.
That hesitation is expensive. Modern CX requires clean data, integrated systems, and the governance to maintain both. You can’t bolt AI onto a fragmented tech stack. You have to build the foundation first.
OnDemand works with a large volunteer-driven nonprofit here in Southern California. When their volunteer base preferred to communicate via text message and largely ignored emails, the leadership team initially saw this as a problem.
Our CX advisors helped them embrace a new SMS and text communication platform that allows their team to communicate with volunteers at scale. The result was better engagement, faster response times, and volunteers who felt heard because the organization met them on their channel of choice. This simple decision transformed how the organization connects with its most important customers.
If a mid-market leader could focus on just one thing to improve their customer experience in the next twelve months, I’d encourage them to prioritize conversational intelligence in their contact center.
If your platform supports it, enable conversational and sentiment analytics that automatically analyze customer interactions in real time. This capability lets CX leaders identify friction early and quickly.
The technology landscape is complex, but the principles are simple. Customer experience drives revenue, and modern CX requires a foundation.
Still not sure what’s missing from your customer experience? OnDemand’s CX consulting experts can help you assess where your customer experience strategy stands today, map a path forward that aligns technology with your business goals, and execute a strategy that delivers measurable results.
Reach out to OnDemand or message me directly if you want to talk through your CX strategy.