Key Points
- Modern enterprises recognize the importance of customer experience transformation to gain a competitive edge. But many struggle to get it right.
- Driving digital CX transformation requires omnichannel experiences; flexible expenditure models that don’t require high upfront capital investment; modernizing and integrating new solutions with legacy systems; real-time, data-driven insights; and front- and back-office systems that work together.
- The right approach, and the right strategic partner, can help businesses implement effective customer experience transformation while minimizing disruption.
Businesses of all sizes and across all sectors speak of the critical need to invest in customer experience (CX) transformation as a strategic edge. But what does it really mean? Let’s look at a practical example.
Take Rajesh. He and his wife have arrived at their hotel in Bora Bora for the holiday of their dreams. But he’s just been told the overwater bungalow they were meant to be staying in has been double-booked, and there aren’t any other free rooms available.
The hotel offers to send the couple to a sister hotel on the island, but it doesn’t have the same level of facilities so he opts not to go.
He starts a live chat on his travel agent’s website to get help. After answering several of his questions, he’s asked if he would like to speak directly to an agent to expedite the issue. This agent already has access to the chat history, so can respond to Rajesh’s issue rapidly.
Less than an hour after first logging onto the live web chat to troubleshoot the problem, the agent has resolved the issue with the hotel and Rajesh and his wife are sitting by the pool.
That’s customer experience transformation: using advanced technologies like AI, real-time data, and modern platforms to deliver personalized experiences across every touchpoint, delighting and exceeding expectations.
Done right, it can improve customer satisfaction, build loyalty, and drive sustainable business growth. However, it doesn’t happen by chance. Brands need to build the right technological foundation to make it a reality.
Let’s look at the top five factors driving true digital customer experience transformation and what companies should be focusing on.
1. Omnichannel Customer Experiences Are Now the Baseline
Customers today are digital-first – and more specifically, mobile-first. As just one example: more than half of consumer retail spending took place online last year, with mobile devices accounting for 60% of those transactions.
Consumers don’t just expect convenient, seamless experiences on the channels and platforms of their choice. They demand it.
No matter the industry, companies need to adapt to their customers’ changing behavior. And that means providing best-in-class experiences where they want to interact and transact.
However, many brands still lack omnichannel CX capabilities, and the underlying technologies that enable it. This acts as a barrier to digital transformation initiatives, and hampers growth and competitiveness.
To successfully implement an omnichannel approach that elevates the customer experience, organizations need to create intuitive, seamless journeys across multiple channels and touchpoints while also delivering personalized and tailored offerings.
That requires a smooth transition between different touchpoints without losing context – which is where data integration comes in. Brands need to collect, combine, and analyze customer data from various sources for insights into their behavior and preferences. Investing in a centralized data management framework will help achieve this.
Leveraging cloud architecture to support the sharing of data across online, mobile, and on-site systems will further enhance omnichannel capabilities and act as a solid foundation for customer experience transformation.
2. Rapid Transformation While Avoiding Extensive Capital Expenditure Is Critical
The clock is ticking for companies to deploy the latest customer experience technologies as part of their digital transformation efforts.
No organization can afford to fall behind – and building the solutions they require, which meet their unique business and customer needs, will take years if they go it alone.
This means they need to consider partnering with solution providers who can accelerate the transformation process with cloud-based, scalable solutions. Harnessing powerful compute capacity that can dynamically adjust in response to real-time demand supports the rapid deployment of resources while lowering operating costs.
Another important aspect of working with a strategic partner is flexible ‘pay-as-you-go’ operating expense (OpEx) models that do not need high upfront capital investments. This approach enables agile execution that solves specific business challenges and needs, while also prioritizing the customer experience.
3. Maximize the Value of Existing Investments
Most organizations have already made significant investments into their customer experience transformation strategy. And technology investments, like CRM systems, form a critical part of this.
In many cases, enterprises may have separate technology providers for different channels, such as websites, applications, social media, and email. Many companies even have multiple providers for their contact center support operations.
All of this drives the need for an interoperable CX platform that interacts and integrates easily with existing technologies and support providers.
Modernization Can Help
Application modernization helps enterprises adopt new customer experience technologies and solutions without having to start over and fully replace legacy systems.
They will need to evaluate the current state of their customer experience tech ecosystem and identify potential obstacles to success with legacy systems, including compatibility with modern technologies and the cost of ongoing maintenance. Companies will then have to prioritize critical areas to modernize and focus on those first to help mitigate disruption and spread out costs.
Integration Across Providers
Working with multiple providers for various operations – from contact center support to digital CX initiatives – can be more cost-effective for enterprises. However, it is essential to ensure that systems are interoperable so data can be shared quickly and securely. Investing in an API-led infrastructure will make it far easier to integrate these disparate systems and minimize disruption.
4. Turn Insights Into Actionable CX Improvements
Customer experience and engagement strategies rely on data. Quality data is, after all, at the core of driving innovation, solving business problems, and enabling insight-led decision-making.
For many modern businesses, the challenge is not a lack of data – it’s that the data they hold is siloed, inaccurate or incomplete, and not easy to access. They need a robust data strategy and governance framework to centralize data from all areas of the business into a single, unified platform. It then becomes exponentially simpler to unlock meaningful and actionable insights.
Real-Time Analytics
Real-time analytics powered by AI equip enterprises to analyze data about their customers so they can better understand them. This, in turn, allows them to tailor their marketing, products, and services, and the overall customer experience to each individual customer’s needs.
Insights-Driven Approach
Advanced AI models and predictive analytics help companies segment customers based on demographics, behavior, preferences, and history to create targeted customer personas and profiles. Harnessing these rich insights means that enterprises can create hyper-personalized experiences for each individual customer. An example of this would be a real-time product recommendation based on browsing history – such as a sofa recommendation based on the furniture search the individual carried out and the other items they browsed in that category.
5. True Transformation Requires Integration With Front-End and Back-End Systems
To fully understand today’s consumer, brands need customer insights from automation and analytics that access the data residing across all their underlying systems across the entire business.
But, without the right solutions and approach, they will continue to struggle to generate a unified customer view. And that will put them on the back foot when it comes to providing the experiences and support that will exceed their customers’ soaring expectations.
As companies look to implement their customer experience strategy as part of their broader digital transformation, they will need more than just a third-party systems integrator.
They will require an end-to-end partner that can help design, build, operate, and enhance their customer experience capabilities. A partner that has the market-leading technologies, business process excellence, and expertise to reinvent experiences.
Sutherland Can Help Improve Your Digital Customer Experiences
Customers will increasingly measure companies by their ability to provide exceptional experiences time after time.
To consistently deliver on this promise, brands will need to strengthen their omnichannel offerings, while simultaneously integrating the data, solutions, systems, processes, and technologies that enable their customer engagement and support. Not only that, but they also then need to take it a step further to harness data-driven insights so that they can customize and improve their offerings.
Getting this right is no easy feat. But the right strategic partner can help simplify the transformation and make customer experience a differentiator.
Want to explore how you can achieve true customer experience transformation? We’d love to talk.
