Is your Digital Transformation Strategy gambling with your Customer’s Loyalty?

Digital Transformation, Virtual Agents, Omni Channel Contact Centres, Self Service and Business Process Automation are all headline grabbing trends in the world of Customer Experience.  The question is, are organisations running on a knife edge gambling their hard earnt brand reputation and customer loyalty as they fight to differentiate and improve profitability against the disruption of a global pandemic?

Providing a positive customer experience is core to most organisations across the globe from a sole trader to the biggest global firms.  If you could define the perfect customer experience outcome regardless of sector it would be – If the customer enjoys a great experience their loyalty will naturally increase, they will tell their friends and more customers sign up.  This should then result in an upturn in sales growth, an increase in profits and greater market share.

“The key is to set realistic customer expectations, and then not to just meet them, but to exceed them – preferably in unexpected and helpful ways.” – Sir Richard Branson.

In the desire to gain competitive advantage, organisations are always looking for new innovative ways to offer improved customer engagement / experience.  Technology is now seen as the new preferred channel of choice to engage with customers, while personalising the engagement and gain valuable data insights.

Data Mining, Insights & Power BI

Mining this engagement data should then form the basis of ongoing development of new services, identify areas to reduce the cost to serve, and providing copious quantities of data to support informed led decision making at Board level, typically with PowerBI feeds.

Digital Transformation has become one of those classic buzzword technology catch all labels which means lots of different things to lots of people and encompasses a vast range of technologies all of which may transform your business.  It could even be said that the art of the possible is achievable through Digital Transformation!

Digital Transformation Market Growth

A recent study reported that the global digital transformation market size is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 16.5%.  Forecasts indicate the market value will increase from USD469.8 billion in 2020 to USD1009.8 billion by 2025.  This growth is driven by increased adoption of mobiles and social media, the maturing of cloud services combined by the disruption of the pandemic forcing a shift in consumer habits.

It is clear to see why Stakeholders are applying pressure on Senior Leadership Teams to include and implement Digital Transformation into the strategic business plan.  However, as organisations rush to jump on board to embrace the “digital” world, they are potentially stumbling into taking a huge gamble.  This gamble is very real and could potentially be jeopardising their precious customer experience and hard earnt brand reputation as they Digitally transform their customer engagement models.

With inflationary pressures eroding profit margins and the rapid swings in consumer buying habits driven by the pandemic, the need to reduce the cost to serve is extremely appealing especially to CFOs and FDs.

High Impact Digital Transformation

In the short term, the strategy should yield savings in line with projections and may even exceed them.  The sting in the tail follows often by stealth, unless the experience is truly shocking in which case it will be painfully clear.  If the customer used to speak to a real life agent and you remove a human and then force the engagement via a virtual agent or self-service portal, this may well leave the client feeling undervalued, unappreciated and less important.

These customers will simply drift away and most will do so silently, taking their services and money with them.  Some may shout, usually on social media expressing the poor experience.  Some may even complete your feedback forms impacting your Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) & Net Promoter Score (NPS).  If this trend is spotted and acted on quickly it can be slowed, however it is more likely to build momentum and take more time to stop, just like a huge container ship.

Clearly, shifting customer communication channels to a “digital” format can be extremely powerful for so many reasons which is why the market growth is at 16.5% CAGR and the value is huge globally.  The range of technologies available on the market is simply vast, which is positive as it gives choice and flexibility.

Golden Key to Digital Transformation Success

As experienced business technology consultants at Trig Point Consulting we have the enviable position of researching the latest technologies and working in partnership with our clients to deploy some amazing solutions which elevate the customer engagement to an exciting new level.

The key to Digital Transformation success rests in defining these foundation elements:

• Identify the customer engagement ideally aligned to digital delivery.
• Truly understand the customer journey, experience, expectations and positive outcomes.
• Analyse the financial aspects of the customer engagement.
• Monitor, measure, audit and review against your Key Performance Indicators (KPI), CSAT and NPS scores. This needs to be Realtime finger on the pulse.
• Be prepared to tweak the digital engagement quickly but be controlled.  An agile, control and measured approach.

But the golden rule for any such programme change has to be that you must speak to your customers.  Do your research, get their input, listen to their feedback and act on what they tell you.  If you choose to ignore your customer, you may well have just set sail in a very big boat with a forecast of choppy waters ahead.  Research is time consuming but critically important and ideally using a third party impartial consultancy will help discovery the full experience truth.

Plan for change – 4Ws Model.

Trig Point Consulting has extensive experience helping organisations align their people, processes and technology to offer a customer experience which exceeds expectations.  Our Lead Consultant’s 25 years of experience in Contact Centres, Customer Relationship Management and Systems Integration spanning multiple sectors has been influential in supporting clients realise positive change in their customer journeys.

To help achieve the project deliverables, realise change and importantly growth for our clients we have developed the Trig Point 4Ws model.  This model will mine and define your customer journey.   We will learn the reality of the customer experience and how this compares against both yours and the customer’s expectations.  We will investigate the reality of your customer journey and true cost to serve.

With these key Golden Threads we can then weave them into your Digital Transformation Strategy, building the business case, key measures and roadmap.  Trig Point clients can use this unbiased honest assessment to support their decision making process.

We want to help our clients develop a clear strategy, procure the appropriate technology and services, then project manage the change programme that will be required to deliver a Digital Transformation strategy.

As an independent consultancy our engagement, guidance, advice and delivery is impartial and honest.  Our success is 100% defined by our client’s success.

If you have any questions about your Contact Centre, Customer Engagement Process or Digital Transformation plans please do not hesitate to contact Richard and team on 0203 855 6325, or email info@trigpointconsulting.co.uk.