ABSTRACT
Digital technology advancements have disrupted customer and other stakeholder expectations and behaviors. Owing to this disruption, customers increasingly expect dramatically higher personalization of experiences and interactions, anytime / anywhere responsiveness, any device / any channel service availability, respect for the value of their time in interactions with organizations, feeling valued at all times, and feeling like they are part of a community when they use the product / service or engage with the organization. Living up to these expectations requires fundamental changes in the nature of customer engagement, stakeholder engagement, and customer experience practices. Respectively, these transformed practices are referred to as digital customer engagement, digital stakeholder engagement, and digital customer experience capabilities. They offer the promise of organizations not only being able to live up to changed and rapidly changing customer / stakeholder expectations but also having important bases for building strategic differentiation, adaptability, and agility from state-of-the-art practice of the capabilities. In this chapter, we unpack each capability, the new or enhanced role of accountants in building / sustaining / optimizing each capability, and the subsequent new or enhanced competencies required by accountants.
