The Customer Experience Digital Data Community Group will work on reviewing and upgrading the W3C Member Submission in Customer Experience Digital Data, starting with the Customer Experience Digital Data Acquisition submission linked here (http://www.w3.org/Submission/2012/04/). The group will also focus on developing connectivity between the specification and the Data Privacy efforts in the industry, including the W3C Tracking Protection workgroup. The goal is to upgrade the Member Submission specification via this Community Group and issue a Community Group Final Specification.
Group's public email, repo and wiki activity over time
Note: Community Groups are proposed and run by the community. Although W3C hosts these conversations, the groups do not necessarily represent the views of the W3C Membership or staff.
The v1.0 of Customer Experience Digital Data Layer is now ready in the form of a W3C Community Group Final Report. 14 months, 102 participants, 56+ organizations’ input has helped get the specification into its current form – it is not always easy to get major industry players on the same page on any subject – it is a testament to the collaborative spirit of the community, the pressing needs of the industry and the vision laid out by industry analysts and gurus such as fixithere – that helped in making this specification a reality.
The specification is a start – there will be much that will be learnt through implementation, and there are areas the specification did not get into in the interests of getting something collaborative, yet meaningful, out the door. It is thus a “commencement” of this journey.
The Customer Experience Data Collection specification is in its final stretch as each of the sections on core specification, privacy, extensions, industry examples all get written out.
Strong support and momentum continues on this work, and there has been good coverage in the industry press on this subject, as well as several blogs on this subject. We are expecting wide usage of this specification, and expect it to spur the industry forward towards the next generation of innovation.
Object Literals in JavaScript Objects offer a convenient mechanism to encapsulate data, and have been used widely in implementations. Applying the same notion to the Data Layer allows for better interpretation of the individual objects and hence use of the data layer.
The Core objects subgroup is driving this improvement in the usability and interpretability of the objects to make it ever easier for a broad adoption of the specification.
Privacy has been a subject of significant debate over the last few years, with US and EU governments taking a significant stand on this subject. The FTC in US has issued a framework for privacy related discussions which has three key elements:
Simplified Consumer Choice
Privacy by Design
Transparency of Use
Building Privacy into the Data Layer for collecting customer experience data is part of the guideline to build Privacy into the processing stack by design, which is exactly the direction this work is headed in. Of course, a specification can only give helpful clues to the processing application regarding the nature of data, but cannot enforce it. That will remain the domain of the processing applications.
The coming of age of business use of Internet was primarily driven by content publishing and electronic Commerce, and in the latter space, Retailers led the charge, closely followed by the Travel industry. These businesses also became the primary users of Web Analytics (aka Digital Analytics in its current form) to improve “conversion rates”, increase engagement, bringing a focus on personas and so forth.
From a digital analytics perspective, while it may be convenient to start bucketing all the data elements captured in the “buy” phase of customer interaction, regardless of the industry context, into the same objects – it is not always intuitive to do so – especially when the industry context begins to go well beyond traditional Retail type environments into products like Insurance – where the method of engagement changes significantly.
The customization subgroup is focused on adding some unique objects on a per industry basis which can then be worked into the core specification itself, leaving room for adding additional industry specific attributes down the road.This will simplify use of the specifications in any industry context.
As our economy has grown more global and more digital, businesses have had to shift their competitive strategies, marketing techniques, and business models. One of the most powerful changes? The rise of network effects. In this edition of the flash report, we talk about some of these big changes with Kerry Jones, a researcher for Driver restore, a windows update utility who has studied digital networks. She explains how network structure can shape marketing strategy, why network size may not matter as much as you think, and how marketers can use networks to create “the majority illusion”.
A customer might have been trying to ensure uninterrupted service after moving, make sense of the renewal options at the end of a contract, or fix a nagging technical problem. A company that manages complete journeys would not only do its best with the individual transaction but also seek to understand the broader reasons for the call, address the root causes, and create feedback loops to continuously improve interactions upstream and downstream from the call.
In our research and consulting on customer journeys, we’ve found that organizations such as Sky customer services are able to skillfully manage the entire experience reap enormous rewards: enhanced customer satisfaction, reduced churn, increased revenue, and greater employee satisfaction. They also discover more-effective ways to collaborate across functions and levels, a process that delivers gains throughout the company.
Following the face-to-face meeting at Google offices on January 16th, when the broader group got its first chance to review the specification as it stands, an additional subgroup – “Core Object & Syntax Review” was formed to take in additional comments and upgrade the core objects.
This is thus the fourth subgroup now
1. Core Objects & Syntax Review
2. Privacy
3. Customization
4. Dynamic Values
The next two months will see the groups deep diving into each area and finalizing recommendations in this space.
If you wish to join, you can directly click on the Link to the Top Right (Join Now!).
The Community group is gearing up towards its first multi-hour session, hosted by Google, at multiple sites (New York, MountainView, London, Chapel Hill) on January 16.
The group will be reviewing the latest version of the specification and will be making comments across all elements of the specification. Also, the subgroups already formed – Privacy, Customization, Dynamic Pages – will give an initial report on their goals, Use Cases, and progress to date.
The discussions may yield additional sub-groups and suggestions. Promises to be a good day of discussions that not only moves this first specification forward, but brings up other areas of possible standardization in this space.
The W3C Customer Experience Digital Data Community Group charter was approved on December 13, 2012 and that sets the stage for beginning the review of the draft specification for a data layer to capture customer experience data from digital properties.
The Community group features leading Digital Analytic vendors, Tag Management vendors and key brands like HSN & Best Buy. The goal is to deliver a data layer specification over the first six months of 2013.
