Digital transformation gives a personalized look into the customer’s purchasing habits along with their likes and dislikes. Making it easy for brands to provide a tailor-made premium customer experience based on personal preference & unspoken need.
Ever since smartphones became a part and parcel of human life, people have been a part of a digital network that connects them to friends, businesses, colleagues, and peers.
These branched interlinking connections have tuned people to the rhythms of a technologically connected society.
People don't just buy products now, they connect with brands, register on their web portals, use their application, give email addresses, and phone numbers at cash counters.
They expect brands to understand their individual needs & answer back when they complain. This has encouraged brands to embrace digital transformation and reinvent customer success.
How Does Digital Transformation Drive Customer Success?
The customer-centric approach essentially means understanding customer needs, delivering quality service, and providing support. Technology has proven to be very successful in hitting all these checkpoints. We've outlined a few reasons below as to why:
1. Information Availability
An omnipresent information base works really well for users who want to know more about brands, products & pricing.
This online repository of information makes it easy for customers to filter out things they don't want and pinpoint exactly what they do.
Brands like Amazon, Ikea, etc. allow users to track orders, cancel, initiate refunds/returns, and re-order an item with just a few clicks.
It has become the new norm for e-commerce, retail, and certain other industries but for many other industries like healthcare, real estate, etc. these things are still far from common.
This online pathway sidesteps human communication and makes the process faster, easier, and available 24*7. In fact, 91% of customers prefer an online knowledge base, if it is easily available and understandable as per a Zendesk survey.
2) Automation Refines Experience
There are unique benefits of automating different legs of a business. Here's a look at the top 4 automation advantages for improving customer experience:
a. Automating Email Workflows
Defining the customer journey and creating email workflows to send out personalized messages as per the buyer's journey is a successful strategy of increasing conversions and this also acts as a personalized guide for customers educating and leading them towards product purchase.
b. Support Tickets Automation
Assigning priority to customer tickets can help in automating the customer support process. The CRM can filter tickets based on that priority and help in resolving high value/urgent tickets first.
c. Automating Customer Satisfaction Survey
Organizations measure their customer service through CSAT (Customer Satisfaction score) & NPS (Net Promoter Score).
Automating surveys and customer engagement programs can make it very easy to collect feedback, identify common problems and fix them for a better experience.
d. Automated Alerts for Customers at Risk of Churn
User behavior is carefully mapped on a company's portal and this can help AI in identifying what customers are at risk of deleting their account.
Specific response automation can give an alert to the human retention team that can step in to retain the customer by understanding and resolving their problem.
Some key identifiers for aggravated customers are:
- High bounce rate
- Irate emails
- Bad NPS or CSAT score from the customer
- Reading FAQ for "cancelling account"
3. Tailored Content as per the User's Taste
Machine learning & Artificial intelligence has evolved to understand user behavior and personal preferences. Digital transformation gives organizations an option to use this knowledge in delivering a tailor-made experience.
This helps in suggesting content based on the user's purchase & browsing history. It engages and interacts with customers and helps them in finding what they really want. Artificial Intelligence takes much more into consideration before suggesting products/services, such as:
- Search history on the app/platform
- Browsing history
- Items in shopping cart
- Purchased items
- User's geographical location
- On-screen time
- The buyer persona
4. Data-driven Customer Experience
Through the application data collected, companies get a look into their customer's spending habits. The sheer amount of data is very large. Making sense of this big data helps in identifying pain points and improving overall user experience.
As per a Deloitte global survey, more than 80% of companies feel that improving customer experience is the number one priority for them and is an important strategy and investment drive for contact centres. User data also allows organizations to selectively market products based on user preferences.
Along with the organization's benefit of increased sales, this selective product pitching also gives more value to customer needs & desires.
A PWC study pointed out that 43% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience. This sentiment can also be observed in the hospitality business where customers pay big bucks for premium service.
5. A Mobile-friendly Experience
More than 51% of internet traffic comes from mobile phones, this is not a surprising figure at all but it does highlight the importance of mobile applications.
Mobile apps are the most effective digital transformation tools at the disposal of any business.
They offer more control over customer experience with an interactive user interface.
Here are a few reasons as to why:
- Easier to create a purchase funnel
- Many integrated payment methods
- Ingrained brand information
- Better & faster customer support
- In-app notifications & Push notifications for targeting customers
While the list above is not exhaustive, we can see why it becomes easier for companies to initiate changes on an app and further enhance customer experience by reading into user analytics.
6. Multi-channel Service
Digital transformation gives organizations multiple channels to interact with customer's - app, website, social media, emails, etc
.
This omnichannel support makes it very convenient for customers to contact any brand. A customer doesn't have to seek out the company, it's always close by, accessible through their preferred method of communication.
Conclusion
Technology has always been a driving change in the way companies interact with consumers. This tsunami of digital transformation is progressing more rapidly than it ever has before. Non-technology sectors have also embraced digital solutions to improve reach, sales, and retention. Brands like Chipotle, Nike, Home Depot etc. have made a huge comeback with their successful digital transformation strategies, increasing market share by more than 50% in many cases.
Brands that were previously sceptical of the cost involved in restructuring business operations have realized the invaluable need for such transitions. This has pushed even successful offline businesses to embrace digital transformation, to offer an improved customer experience & in turn increase sales and customer retention.
Companies are now competing for a better customer experience. 2020 has further punctuated the importance of an online presence. Faced with a global pandemic, people across the globe retreated to their homes and explored online purchasing options.
This digital transitioning is giving brands a perfect setting to get to know their customers better and customize tailor-made experiences & support, with AI, ML & data-based decisions.