The last 6 months has not been anything short of a complete upheaval as far as commerce is concerned. Ways of working changed overnight, and the workplace was transformed in ways never anticipated. Some businesses (non-essentials) came to a grinding halt while some (essentials) set of on a sharp upward trajectory. Supply chain came under pressure and fulfilment became the womb of innovation.  Consumer priorities changed and their mode of engagement pivoted around digital. What however did not change was the importance of customer experience (CX) – brands that delivered exceptional CX in these muddy times, came up trumps. Not surprisingly, CX will remain the key strategic differentiator in the days to come and going Digital (for enterprises; both on the outside and the inside) is a non-negotiable.

This Hackathon – Crack the CX Code – being held as a part of the very popular Internet Commerce Summit (ICS), is intended to surface innovation from the vast business-technology community in this country. This is a challenge for all the young, bright minds in colleges and jobs – to come up with innovative ideas that will deliver exceptional customer experience across a customer’s journey of engagement with a brand.

Food for thought – While you exercise your gray cells to come up with the ultimate idea, keep in mind a couple of things:

1. You have the entire digital customer journey (from research to advocacy) you can straddle – either completely or in strategic parts.
2. You can also focus on employee experience since it has been proven beyond doubt that usually, incredible employee engagement almost always delivers incredible customer experience!

Rules of the game

1. Your innovation can manifest itself in either
   1. A Research Paper or
   2. A Working Prototype
2. You could either be
   1. A fiercely innovative individual or
   2. A passionate group (min of 3 and max of 5 brains) of disruptive innovators
3. If you are the leader of innovation at an educational/vocational institution and feel more than one individual or group of individuals have it in them to envision exceptional customer experience innovations, then register as many individuals/teams as you want.
4. The world would like to see innovation in the following areas:
   1. IoT
   2. Artificial Intelligence
   3. Machine Language
   4. Computer Vision
5. The evaluation will be done by a group of accomplished CXOs and would broadly be based on the following parameters:
   1. Originality/Uniqueness of the innovation
   2. Relevance of the innovation
   3. Viability of the innovation
   4. Ability of the innovation to deliver clear strategic advantage
6. The Top 5 in each category (individual and group) will have the honour of presenting their innovation at the ICS – in audience will be an eclectic mix of business and technology professionals from the world of internet commerce businesses
7. The grand finale will be on 9th Oct on the 2nd day of the ICS!