Has your Customer Experience Made it to the Digital Era?

Times have changed and so have your customers’ needs and behavior. They are now going through omnichannel shopping experiences, where they are solicited online by many companies. Moreover, they are omniscient, as they can easily educate themselves on a product by consulting reviews and comparing prices on several websites. In this regards, how can you make your customer experience remain ahead of such increasing competition?

The Digital Transformation

Digital transformation has driven a modification in the nature of business. Indeed, modern technological elements have led to change the traditional linear customer relationship model, which is now obsolete, for example:

• hyper-connectivity;
• unlimited computing power;
• cloud computing;
• proliferation of sensors;
• mobile devices;
• advances in cybersecurity.

The customer journey doesn’t have a clear structure anymore. It thus seems that consumers have more control on the market, because they can now easily get what they want. With the rise of E-Commerce, consumers can now switch from one company to another, searching for a new product’s best deal in real time. As such, their expectations are higher: they are looking for convenient and fast ways to purchase. It is then crucial to adapt your business to the new market in order to thrive despite this shift of influence.

Being Customer-Centered

Businesses must be timely responsive to those empowered customers. It is crucial to be consumer-driven rather than sales-driven by providing your customers with joyful and seamless shopping experiences. If you fail at it, someone else will acquire your prospects.

« Customer and consumer engagement will play a key part in new product development and nurturing. It can extend beyond just the product to the consumer’s entire experience with the product »

Thanks to new technology, better business processes can now be enabled, which can help your business grow and retain customers by, among others:

• Tracking goods, as well as promotional efforts’ responses in real-time;
• Enabling the layering of services as a complement to products;
• Leveraging higher levels of customer intimacy.

Consumer Products: Small and Midsize Consumer Products Firms Are Using Technology to Sharpen Business Practices and Improve Customer Engagement, IDC

If you want your business to grow - while delivering the same level of high-quality service - you're going to need the right technology. Download the IDC Brief: Improving Customer Experience and transform your customer relationships.

Can you imagine entering a huge store, without any limits nor walls? As you are walking in, you realize that you can get a multitude of products from anywhere in the world. Then you sit down like a king and salespersons are coming to you with products. These meet your needs so exactly that you feel like they have been knowing you for years. Plus, they will even get you good prices because they care. Moreover, you are astonished with some products they suggest, which you didn’t even know even existed. “This is a dream”, you’ll say. We’ll answer: “This is shopping in the virtual world!“

Both customers and salespeople behaviors are not the same as in offline shopping experiences. Therefore you need to adapt to survive.

But first, it is worth taking some steps before considering any digital shift.

1. Have you started to identify customer and account types that would benefit from self-service and basic process automation?
2. Are you planning to roll out standard online self-service features to a subset of customers migrating targeted segments to low-cost digital channel?
3. Have or will you put in place commerce technology that will grow with you?

Download this Q&A should you wish to get relevant information about going digital.