How Digital Technologies Are Transforming The Way Companies Do Customer Experience
You may have heard the term digital transformation or its abbreviation DT, but what exactly does digital transformation mean? And what does it mean for customer experience?
Digital transformation is defined by i-Scoop as “the profound transformation of business and organizational activities, processes, competencies and models to fully leverage the changes and opportunities of a mix of digital technologies and their accelerating impact across society in a strategic and prioritized way, with present and future shifts in mind.” In other words, the use of rapidly evolving digital technologies to dramatically improve how your business works.
This idea doesn’t only carry across to areas like production or marketing. It’s also important in regards to customer experience and getting a 360 degree view of the customer and their persona. Here are four ways that digital transformation is changing the customer experience.
1. Customer Journey Mapping Is Key To Your Company’s Digital Transformation
Customer journey mapping is viewed by many as key to an organisation’s digital transformation. Wharton University of Pennsylvania, together with Dell, have released a report entitled Customer Journey Mapping Is at the Heart of Digital Transformation. The report highlights how interconnected digital technologies are forcing companies to change, and that journey mapping is necessary in order to fully take advantage of this change. Raman Sapra, the global head of Dell’s digital business services unit, believes in journey mapping, saying “It is at the heart of digital transformation”. But why?
Mahesh Kolar, director of mobility applications at Dell digital business services has this to say about customer mapping in the report: “We think it is a powerful tool to understand the context of the users and to take them from their current state to a heightened state of customer delight.” He continues, “With advanced analytics, the value, effectiveness and cost of an investment can be understood early on and course corrections can be made to minimize impact.” Sapra adds even more weight to the importance of customer journey mapping as he believes they will become dynamic thanks to digital tools, which will enhance their value even further.
2. Customer Touch Points Are Changing And Growing
Customer touch points may be part of the customer journey, but they are also dramatically affected by digital transformation. One effect is the increasing number of customer touchpoints. In the past you may have had to call a customer service center or speak with a service representative face-to-face, today you can make a phone call, check a website or post a message on one of many social media channels.
3. Analytics Is Helping Companies Understand How Customers Think And Feel
Digital tools are giving businesses greater insight into the behaviour of customers through analytics. Thanks to the power of digital connectivity, analytics makes it possible to track how customers interact with different parts of your digital platform, whether it’s how often they log in, which products they’re looking at, which pages they are using on your site or how often a customer shares your products on Facebook, analytics provides insight into your customer’s behaviour.
Analytics also allows you to measure the success of your customer experience using KPIs such as changes in customer behaviour, and customer acquisition and retention.
At the end of the day, analytics can give you a better understanding of where your customers are coming from, or how they are engaging with different features on your website or social media pages. Capturing this information will provide deeper insight into your customer’s behaviour so that you can provide them with a better product or service.hat you can provide them with a better product or service.
4. There Is An Increasing Demand For Omnichannel Customer Support
Multichannel customer support, which allows a customer to contact your company via multiple channels, used to be the standard when it came to customer support. Today, digital transformation is shifting the standard towards omnichannel customer support. Omnichannel customer support doesn’t simply provide the customer with multiple brand touchpoints, but brings with it the added expectation of tracking where an existing or potential customer is in the customer lifecycle. This means a customer should be able to switch between communication channels and continue their conversation with a brand where they previously left off.
There’s no doubt that digital transformation is changing the way customer experience works, but do you have the necessary in-house skills to adapt?
If you are looking for a specialist who can assist you on your digital transformation journey, Merchants is a customer experience provider who can help by bringing all your touchpoints under one roof.