Alana Matos: Driving Media Subscriptions through Customer Experience.

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CX-Centric hosted an online event (Driving Media Subscriptions Through CX Transforming from Print to Digital). With two epic speakers, Alana Matos (Experience Designer @The Economist) and Ali Lichtenstein (Head of Customer Experience @ The Wall Street Journal), this was an event not to miss. As usual, we gathered a crowd of those interested in Customer Experience from every continent. Driving results through Customer Experience has proven to be a mammoth task to tackle for many media companies. And if it is mismanaged this leads to loss of customers, fewer referrals, and overall a decrease in brand value.

Furthermore, the transformation from print to digital media is the zeitgeist capturing the contemporary world of the media business. However, this transformation process is a necessity for business survival. it is also complex and intricate to carry out. In 2020 many organizations rushed the digital transformation, and for those that designed without the customer at the center are now in a position where they must revisit what they have produced.

Alana Matos is an experience designer and worked largely on designing digital products at The Economist in London. She has a penchant for product design and creative problem-solving. Alana also has variegated skills in her name including amongst others: 

• User testing 

• Prototyping 

• User journey maps 

• User research 

• UX copywriting 

• Mobile UX 

• Front-end (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, bootstrap) 

Alana began the keynote speech where she concentrated on her achievements and challenges at The Economist. She explained the transition from print to digital media - and how the business model also changed. The Economist is known and respected as a truly global media outlet.  Alana mentions that the company has experienced subscription cancellations (because customers feel like they can't get through the print publication every week and they feel like they have to cancel) which has led the company to go digital which has helped them to tackle most of the problems the organization faces. 

Alana mentions that the Economist moving from print to digital media has helped the company in letting people access digital editions, so that way they don't have to keep all of the magazines. Going digital has also allowed for the Economist to create a new tool to connect with its readers (i.e., the creation of iconic covers) thus allowing for a much stronger and engaging customer-to-organization relationship. The company has surely leveraged digital to create a new experience that they couldn’t be able to do with their print edition.