Customer experience is one of the primary competitive battlegrounds in today’s marketplace and organizations are scrambling to deliver meaningful experiences that will help them stand out in the eyes of the consumer. Ultimately, customer experience rolls up to a simple concept: that of empathy. In order to provide meaningful CX, brands need to understand where their customers are coming from, what their desires and motivations are, and the context surrounding each customer interaction.

Achieving empathy on a person-to-person basis isn’t that hard—nearly everyone is capable of stepping into the shoes of those around them and seeing things from a new vantage point. For major brands (and even not-so-major brands) however, achieving that kind of empathy across their entire universe of customers and prospects is impossible without the right technology guiding the way.

According to research conducted by IDC, in order to achieve empathy at scale, brands are investing heavily in CX initiatives and tapping tools like data analytics, social media, mobile apps, and customer relationship management solutions. Those tools often require additional bandwidth, real-time access to data, and new security measures, putting a strain on legacy networks and demanding faster more flexible, and more cost-efficient connectivity solutions. The IDC research also indicates that establishing the business systems required to deliver empathy at scale requires overcoming a few roadblocks, including competing for internal business priorities, legacy infrastructure, and siloed business units.

Meaningful customer experience management is about more than just website tweaks or social media post copy. Almost all of the technologies within an organization, both back-end, and customer-facing, contribute to CX. Supporting that technology and ensuring systems can work together requires real-time accessibility. That might happen between databases and systems that support direct human interactions such as a customer service desk or through back-end content management systems that provide tailored and personalized digital experiences. All of this depends on a fast and agile network.

Explore this animated infographic highlighting research conducted by IDC about the drivers for customer experience and the technology IT and business leaders think is imperative to achieve empathy at scale.