Revitalizing Customer Experience As The Compass of Digital Transformation

In today’s competitive and fast-changing business world, challenges are inevitable. Think about when businesses have to face the challenges of COVID 19. Not only it disrupts the way businesses operate, but how to deliver the brand experience.

The sudden shift empowers businesses to be one step ahead or closer to their customers. It means they must offer personalized recommendations at every touchpoint.

The challenge now is: how can businesses reinforce or strengthen this emotional or brand connection? After all, for most customers, their ongoing interactions and conversations have gone digital.

Here are a few propositions to revitalize or achieve this positive customer experience. Digital transformation means:

• Adding value to every interaction, not just to digital channels
• Empowering customers to choose their preferred path of engagement
• Positioning our innovative perspective into growth practice

Adds value to every interaction, not just to digital channels

The ease of doing business and convenience has always been important to customers. But now it has changed. Customers have redefined what it means today. For them, it comes with speed and agility coupled with authentic human interactions.

What does this mean, and how does it work? How can businesses improve the digital customer experience? Does it only mean that they must put in place relevant changes to improve the brand experience?

BCG notes that digital transformation is a [smart] wise investment choice to maximize competitive advantage, growth, profit, and value. It also needs to implement with discipline. In other words, the new customer experience must be dynamic, channel-conscious, and focused on improving service value.

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce says, digital transformation begins and ends with the customer. The change (or focus) is not just for the business or for the sake of implementing the changes. It is about the customers and how we can help them become better and add more value to every interaction. Otherwise, what is the point of driving change?

It is the idea of digital transformation. Not just to make changes to show customers that we are reliable, but to create a new competitive advantage, growth, and value creation. Why? Because it allows us to keep up with their needs, challenges and bring them closer to the success they want to achieve most.

Empowers customers to choose their preferred path of engagement

The rapid adoption of digital alternatives to processes done in person before has shifted to digital. For instance, people want to see a doctor in person. Other times, they want a consultation through a video session.

Empowering customers to choose their preferred path helps organizations to improve their efficiency. It also helps maintain transparency and gives customers a voice. The transition from personal to digital interaction reinforces that the customer experience is necessary for proactive engagement strategies and new ways to interact. That is the foundation driving this change or transformation.

We do not just ensure that transactions are completed across channels but to have a clear understanding of the customer environment and how it will likely change. With this insight, we must keep them by providing excellent service across all channels. Otherwise, customers are not afraid to switch to see if there is something better out there.

We can do this if we leverage the right technology. Matter of factly, technology play a vital role in helping customers adapt to a digital or a remote way of doing things. That means delivering a better and consistent customer experience is the foundational element of this digital transformation — where the customer finds sustainable value and reliable business outcomes.

Positions our innovative perspective into growth practice

In the digital world, human connection to business adds value. Hence, understanding the impact of digital transformation can open up some challenges or opportunities. But for some, it has become a valuable channel (and opportunity) to offer better service.

For those who consider this as an opportunity leads to rewriting or strengthening their engagement process. They understand that the heart of the digital transformation is that connectivity is the central theme. It leads them to be more human-centered, not just technology-focused.

The industry that sees the most potential for this change or transformation in impact is the healthcare industry. Digital transformation can pull and push the value of its service. When we leverage technology to enable human connections, it fosters customer loyalty and advocacy.

Now, changes alone are not enough. It is also necessary to ensure that these changes are well-aligned with the customer’s needs or challenges. Since change is about customers, how important is it to see these changes based on their lenses? How can businesses improve their relationships with customers?

Businesses understand that getting back to business as before is never going to come back. That means they must find new motivation to generate new ideas or insights. Customer feedback is one but, they should also come up with different ways to put their perspective on growth practice through:

• Community — giving customers an opportunity for dialogue and conversation not just with the brand but with each other.
• Co-create or sponsorship — empower customers to participate in fundraising events, social or project events that matter to them.
• Listen — strengthen customers’ voices so they can be in a sustainable and lasting relationship. To deliver on this promise, we should treat customers as assets that will grow in value.

Building great customer relationships is a long-term game. We can only improve their experience when they work with us on this journey. They should guide and lead us to this change. Otherwise, we cannot create the best for them.

Feedback is one of the many forms that we can leverage to understand their sentiments or challenges. But, to have a meaningful and lasting impact, we must also empower customers to participate and guide us on how to design the experience they expect.

Being able to capture every aspect of the customer experience will open up an insight into how we should set up any digital capabilities or innovation. In other words, revitalizing the customer experience should put our innovative perspective into growth practice.