Want to build digital experiences that keep customers in your brand’s gravitational pull? Teach engineers the “why”

Want to build digital experiences that keep customers in your brand’s gravitational pull? Teach engineers the “why”

As an industry, we need to do a better job of teaching technical people the “why” behind the tools we ask them to build. While this extra step may add some project costs and complexities, the payoff in digital customer experience more than justifies the endeavor.

There are several reasons this isn’t a common practice at the moment. One is well-established silos and the outdated beliefs they perpetuate around roles and responsibilities. For example, marketers don’t learn about coding, and engineers aren’t taught about the customer journey and the friction we’re trying to remove from their lives with the things we build.

The other reason is even older than silos. Building expertise, and the extra training it takes to do so, costs organizations money. 

Complete solutions are born out of engineers who know the “why” and designers who get the code. That's not to say everyone needs to be experts in each other's domains, of course they aren’t. But it is critical we get entire organizations marching to the beat of the same drum. This enables more than just run of the mill experiences for customers and brands. It also allows for personal growth and development.

The real cost of cutting corners

Every company looking to enhance their digital products and experiences would like the work to be three things – fast, cheap, and great.

Unfortunately, no such product exists. Fast and cheap go together nicely, but quality requires an investment, not just in the tools, but the talent as well. Elite digital products and experiences are built by people who understand both the human challenge they aim to solve and the business case in doing so.

Brands who simply outsource the work for the quickest, cheapest, out-of-the-box solutions are left with products and experiences that fail to meet customer expectations, especially in a world where those expectations are influenced by all digital experiences, not just those of their traditional competitors.

Greater competition requires greater focus on the customer journey

The evolution of Mobiquity mirrors the evolution of the digital space over the last ten or so years. In a distant land called 2013, we built apps. Over the next several years, we got good at building apps at scale. In recent years, we’ve become true product engineers - we build connected digital experiences that serve a purpose. 

Building apps is important, but it’s not enough to just build apps. It’s easy to cobble things together and simply make them work, but creating immersive experiences is complex and requires deeper understanding.

With customers experiencing an explosion of digital touchpoints, every product and experience has become make or break for brands. People who make products have to understand where that product fits in the customer journey and the role it plays in the overall brand promise.

Putting it all together creates brand gravity

To eliminate disjointed experiences and create immersive experiences that attract customers towards a brand, we need to be equally strong in the upfront customer experience strategy, the creation of the actual digital products or service, and digital branding & marketing that supports the final product. These immersive experiences are crucial for brands to stand out and earn loyalty in this increasingly digital world and everyone involved must understand the digital space and the customers they’re trying to pull through it. 

Cliche as it may sound, we really are operating at the intersection of business and technology. Brands can’t afford to underinvest in the experiences they deliver to their customers, and we can’t continue to talk to engineers like they’re too technical to understand business. Selling them short will short change the products they create and the ultimate user experience – a result that neither the engineer or the business will be happy with.