Unifying a Taxonomy to Reduce Customer Pain with Content Silos Chip Gettinger, SDL @cgettinger April 4, 2016

Talk today Taxonomy and content design Content silos User experience Emerging trends Best practices

37% Call customer support if they can’t find the right information online

23 % Email Customer Support when they can’t find the right information online

By 2020 Customers will manage 85% of their interactions with a company without talking to humans

How to deliver engaging global digital experiences Language Digital Marketing Content Management Translation Technology Technical Content Management Localization Services In this digital age, organizations are all trying to figure out how to deliver engaging digital experiences on a global scale. Since you’re working on localization, you know all about that. Now let’s take a look at what’s really needed. <<click>> One hand need, your organization needs to manage all digital content – both the marketing content, and the technical support content – for your products and services. <<click>> On the other hand, that content needs to be adapted and localized to suit specific markets. <<click>> Moreover, to streamline the processes between these, ideally the systems and workflows that are used on either end are linked together

Taxonomy in user experience Content tagged with centrally managed taxonomy provides a rich experience on delivery Navigation and discovery Customer Intuitive Product Groupings Search Indexing Preferred Terms (PT) Type ahead (classification driven recommendations) Non-Preferred Terms (NP) Indirect implied tagging & late binding Tagging Content with features that represent large sets of products Contextual filtering Customer Context is modeled and captured by the Ontology Semantics Content Conditional rendering using same Taxonomy values/ID’s Content Rendered to the customer’s specific product context and profile

Existing systems lacked business agility Lack of collaboration and coordination continues a siloed content approach Customer Portals Partner Portals Agent Portals DAM LCMS CCMS DMS CMS Translation Management Product Documentation Product Classifications Content Supply Chain Analytics

Taxonomy coordinates user experience Classification Navigation Search Vocabulary Taxonomy

Taxonomy for product content customers Understand need & value? What content is relevant? What topics & products are of interest? Global and language impacts? Describe their problems? in their words with their concepts

Sharing a taxonomy is a key driver Customer Synonyms Enterprise Search Media Management Systems Support Knowledge Product Content (CCMS) Website Navigation System Coordination and Synchronization Someday all systems will share the same view of a Taxonomy

Towards a unified ecosystem Product Catalog Merchandising Management Purchase Funnel Customer Behavior Brand Assets Campaigns Product Manuals Online support Product Satisfaction

Key requirements for a unified experience Open Content Delivery Architecture Open and pluggable architecture Taxonomies-based Navigation Dynamic Experience Mashups Mobile from the start Real-time Contextualization Retail-like Search Not just for commerce Standards-based API Highly Scalable Co-exist with Customer Services Solutions

Inside out customer experience view Awareness Information Gathering Evaluation Selection Traditional State Future State “Shaping Demand” Awareness Information Gathering Evaluation Selection Marketing Technical Content and Product Management Sales Marketing Technical Content and Product Management Sales Identified “Opportunity Gap” Identified “Opportunity Gap” Marketing has traditionally driven awareness and thought leadership at the top of the funnel. However, the wealth of information available to customers has crowded out traditional marketing messages. Customers have applied filters to the information they consume granting access to few sources. Sales can earn the required access to customers in this state, helping them think differently about their business in ways traditional marketing collateral cannot. Marketing must provide worthy contributors that enable sales in gaining access to customers in the awareness (or learning stage). Source: Marketing Leadership Council Research

Emerging taxonomy best practices Collaborate within your organization Look at industry standards Learn and observe user behaviors Findability, discovery and navigation Knowledge Componentization Design real-time relevance for dynamic delivery Practice and preach strong governance Agility to design and build ongoing relationships

To Enable Customer Self-Service …we need to treat customers as a shared business asset