It seems everyone's talking about Digital Transformation. In fact many reports indicate that digital transformation is now a top priority for executives worldwide. But this buzz phrase is still unclear to many.
To keep it simple let's define Digital Transformation to be the change organizations need to make in order to rise up to the expectations of digital age customers.
It's true that not all digital transformation projects are customer focused, but in many cases they are and in the end it's all about the customer.
A connected customer who can easily compare prices, buy anywhere and criticize publicly. Digital age customers expect a different level of experience from their service providers; they expect organizations to know what they did on previous interactions and deliver immediate resolution with as little effort as possible on their side regardless of the service channel.
Here are some of the things organizations typically do as part of any customer focused digital transformation:
- Identify initial customer experience focus areas, plan the project accordingly and invest the right organizational resources to support the transformation
- Apply new technology to improve customer understanding , use the new data and insights to improve the customer journey
- Streamline and automate customer related processes to save precious customer and employee time
- Provide relevant customer context to employees along with training and on-going guidance on how to utilize it.
- Set a customer experience vision and goals, making sure the message is crystal clear especially at the frontlines
Customer-focused digital transformation is not to be taken lightly, but most companies can't afford to wait on it. A recent Gartner survey found that, by 2016, 89% of companies expect to compete mostly on the basis of customer experience, versus 36% only four years ago. Companies that won't invest the necessary resources to drive the customer experience will lose the most important competitive advantage in today's business world.