Digital Transformation and Customer Experience

Digital transformation is critical

Companies embark on digital transformation projects to reimagine customer experiences. Organizations need to focus not only on reimagining customer-facing front end processes but focus equally on transforming backend processes such as order management and inventory management.

The relationship between the customer and the organization no longer ends with the sale of products and services. Organizations are focusing on laying the foundation for a long term partnership with the customer that is built on trust and transparency. This provides the opportunity for enterprises to possible product and service upselling and cross-selling. Companies can also collaborate with customers at every stage of a product’s or service’s lifecycle. The early customer feedback can help firms in fast-tracking an offering that resonates well with customers or may lead them to freeze or even cancel work which doesn’t excite the customers.

To improve customer engagements, enterprises can apply machine learning and artificial intelligence to their customer information. This can help to gain deeper insights into customer behavior, which companies can then use as the basis for reshaping the customer experience. Organizations need to be more transparent about how they capture and then use customer data. Firms need to protect customer’s data privacy so that they can trust companies in sharing their data.

When rethinking customer experience, organizations need to start from the perspective of the customer since they will be the primary consumer of the experience. Customers anticipate a personalized experience that’s tailored to their individual interests and needs. Consumers anticipate that they can start their engagement with firms from one channel and one device, and then carry it on via another channel and a second device, and perhaps complete the transaction through a third channel and/or device. By having empathy for the customer and approaching the experience as though you’re in the role of the customer, firms can make sure that the engagements will be customer-centric and not treat the customer as an afterthought.

When redesigning customer experiences, enterprises need to have a single identity for each customer so that they don’t have to re-enter the same data every time they engage with companies. To provide consistency of experience, companies need to take a hard look at their current business processes, both customer-facing and support operations. They need to identify any areas that may at present act as bottlenecks or obstacles to providing consistency and efficiency in the customer engagements.

Digital transformation enhances customer experiences

As firms use customer data to anticipate what their customers may do next, they need to continually refine customer experiences. So, digital transformation becomes fully customer-centric only when enterprises know about customer purchasing intent and then provide experiences that benefit and enhance that behavior.