The arrival of COVID-19 in the last few months of 2019 has hit businesses hard and has entirely overachieved in terms of everything that a pandemic is capable of doing. With millions filing unemployment claims, thousands of businesses closing their doors, and consumers becoming very thrifty, it begs the bigger question – What’s the recovery plan and how can businesses engage with customers to increase consumer confidence?
There exists a common notion that a nicely designed online experience with a half-decent UI can drive consumer engagement – nothing can be further away from the truth. Customers are constantly looking for unreal customer experiences – experiences that dig deep into the customer’s preferences, past behaviors and his/her overall emotional state. Businesses must always be looking at innovative ways of creating best-in-class experiences while decreasing the massive operating costs within the middle and back office functions.
What is Digital Transformation?
Put simply, digital transformation is the digitization of certain processes within an organization that may have been manual or inefficient. Digital transformation is not a one size fits all process and can range in complexity depending on the organization. It can be the rollout of a digitization strategy in a single department or it can be an enterprise-wide change.
A transformation is entirely based on where a company is within its’ digital lifecycle. Some companies are at the very beginning and others are more advanced. Most often, digitization includes the implementation of a whole new suite of applications or improvements to older systems.
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In-House vs. Digital Consultants
For those companies ready to invest in digital transformation, it is vital to ensure that you are entirely confident in your in-house team’s ability to implement a digital transformation strategy. If you are not 100% confident, you may want to explore working with a partner to help with the job. This digital partner should have the ability to support with the end to end digital transformation strategy, KPI analysis, requirement gathering, digital engineering, UI creation, testing and more.
The general processes outlined above allow businesses to assess customer pain points and business goals. From a consumer perspective, through effective segmentation of their online visitors, these steps can allow businesses to speak to consumers in a more meaningful way, drive further ROI and allow for significant cost cutting. To ensure a business is ready for such a process, internal stakeholders must have confidence in its internal team’s expertise to implement solutions or leverage that of a consulting partner for the job. In any event, the company must execute a thorough gap and requirement analysis of the company’s pain points and digital goals. Following this, a complete customer journey map is created to ensure customers get what they need seamlessly with the least amount of friction. Companies must inevitably be able to create a digital map of their services and channels, while integrating data analytics and insights into everything they do. This process is intended to give more visibility and insight into what is going on with customers and make better / more insightful decisions.
Data & Digital Transformation Go Hand-in-Hand
There’s a plethora of data present online, waiting to be used by businesses. However, only 7% of businesses are using their data effectively. Unfortunately, most businesses miss out on 90% of the dark data, which most organization classify as useless. Consulting firms, specialized in digital transformation and data intelligence can help to uncover dark data, decipher customer pain points and take action to improve the customer’s online experience. Through the effective use of data and predictive modelling, businesses can drastically improve a customer’s experience and increase the ROI and LTV of their customers.
Don’t Settle for Mediocrity
In the past, disruptions have stymied digital transformational movements across industries – this was seen post the 9/11 attacks as well as during the 2008 financial crisis. Post the recession, companies fell back into safe mode – a traditional ecosystem – resulting in the lack of digital growth and innovation. In these times however, when the global economy is seeing a major shutdown, companies cannot settle for mediocrity … they must innovate as many of their competitors will not; thus allowing them to leapfrog over competition.
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Final Thoughts
Digital Transformation massively impacts how consumers respond to a company and its’ offerings. Companies with exceptional digital experiences can survive economic volatility and adapt more quickly than those without. All in all, it depends on how far companies are willing to go to fight complacency and invest in solutions that drive excellent customer experiences. If you are seeking a partner to support with your digital transformation, Transcend Digital can support you on this journey so long as you’re willing to take the leap.
