One of the keynote speakers at ReTechCon 2013 – Sanket Akerkar themed his address around the three dimensions of customer centricity: delivering Personal, Seamless & Differentiated Service.

Personalized service: Service which “remembers” customer preferences (e.g. Domino’s   online ordering platform prompts the customer with past orders for customized “toppings”).

A second dimension of personalized service is the ability to start a conversation with a customer in one channel and close it in another. (e.g. banks which allow you to use an online tool to project your retirement fund, but update that in a face to face discussion with a branch manager, where the fund projection is converted into product consumption).

Seamless Service:  For customers this means trying in one channel, buying in a second, and delivery in a third channel.

Differentiated Service:  Delivering value to the customer is not always about price – for many customers its about relevance and on delivering on any stated promise. For example – sending customers emails on uncomplete transactions (e.g. Jet Airways, Make my Trip) and holding the contracted prices open for a period of 6 hours after the failed transaction has value to the customer. Similarly, when a customer buys furniture, being able to deliver to the customer’s residence / office within the state time frame has value to the customer.

For Retailers, Microsoft looks to deliver not just customer centricity (i.e. Consumer Insights & Customer experiences) but also Employee engagement and Efficient operations.

To create employee engagement – Modern Office – has moved to integrate social media into existing products.  For example integrating social media into knowledge management was enabled via the acquisition of “Yammer” – which is often described as FB and Twitter rolled into one. Integrating video and providing cross platform  support via Skype helps with employee engagement as well as making collaboration easy.