When looking into digital transformation as we see it today, we can notice five critical drivers over the past few years. These drivers are contributing to digital transformation in their unique ways. They are also bringing specific results that continue driving the change.
Customer Expectations Continue Growing
Compared to only a decade ago, today’s customers are much more empowered than they used to be. They are becoming increasingly savvy and expect a truly personalized experience from businesses and organizations. More importantly, this personalized experience needs to be consistent across all used communication channels, from the website and social media to direct messaging tools.
Today, customers prefer to spend their money with brands that understand the importance of a personalized shopping experience and will get frustrated when their identity and action have been loo when switched to another communication channel.
The reason behind these growing expectations lies in companies that dared to be the first to create customer-centric platforms, such as Amazon, Uber, and Netflix. Every time a customer interacts with one brand more engagingly, their expectations will immediately grow and be applied to other businesses as well.
A more radical view of these digital transformation drivers names today’s customers “digital predators”. Because they have the power now, customers can change the markets as we know them by leveraging the power of technology to raise customer expectations to an even higher level. For companies, this means that digital transformation must be a high priority if they wish to avoid becoming “digital prey”.
Speed is Crucial
One of the customer expectations that need to be improved is speed. Companies must prioritize becoming faster in interacting, serving, delivering, and re-engaging their customers because the digital race can only be won by the fast ones, not the big ones as used to be the case before.
The biggest obstacle to velocity is the current mindset the companies have. Digital transformation is not linear, and providing solutions with a linear perspective will not bring the desired results. To be faster across all phases of the customer journey, businesses have to change their linear approach. Once they have determined their perspective or the way to respond to an opportunity, things will change again, and they will need to restart the process. The major challenge is learning to move rapidly toward the future without stopping when any digital disruptors appear.
Recommended ➜ Read about the challenges of digital transformation.
Strong Focus on Customer Insight
The ability to respond rapidly to all customer expectations will always start with a firm focus on customer insight. Those companies that are considered successful are inventing and designing to demonstrate how deeply they understand their customers and their needs. To develop this intuition, they will spend an immense amount of energy on studying and understanding the relevant aspects of the lives of their customers rather than the basic information they get from superficial surveys.
Customer insight needs implementation at several levels, from understanding the entire customer base to understanding the relevant needs of each customer to ensure they get a personalized experience when interacting with your company. However, achieving that level of insight takes a lot of work. Companies need to develop customer intuition, gather anecdotes, and leverage data to continue being aware of their customers’ preferences.
Everything Revolves Around AI
Undoubtedly, artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the fastest emerging priorities. Siri and Alexa, the pioneers of the conversational interface based on AI, set an example for other companies to follow when implementing a solid AI strategy to respond to the demands of their customers. Yet, the meaning and the potential of AI still need to be clarified to many.
What value AI provides and how it could be applied will significantly depend on the industry and the nature of the business itself. Regardless of how a company decides to use AI to introduce improved customer experience, the successful implementation must be sensing, comprehensive, guided, actioned, and with great analytical features. There are already numerous Ai interaction models that serve as an inspiration to those considering implementing this technology.
Recommended ➜ Read about useful digital transformation tools.
Digital Transformation Equals Business Transformation
Those who see digital transformation as the fundamental shift in how a company delivers values and drives revenues are tomorrow’s industry leaders. Most digital transformations need the business perspective when evolving because the true digital value proposition goes beyond the digital. To succeed, it needs to reinvent numerous aspects of the business, including core technology systems, business models, and vital operating processes.
Digital transformation comes with consequences; sometimes, the positive ones will outshine the ones requiring additional effort. For instance, when Hilton created a mobile app that allows their customers to unlock doors on their own, besides facing a software development challenge, the company had to change dozens of thousands of locks at their properties and retrain the team on the repair and maintenance of the new locks.
Get in the driver’s seat of your digital transformation with Lumen Spei
Lumen Spei is here to help companies navigate the challenges and opportunities of digital transformation by providing expert guidance and support throughout the journey. Whether it’s understanding the needs of customers, implementing new technology, or rethinking business models, we are here to help you succeed. Reach out if you want to talk about your digital transformation goals!
