The Role of Customer Experience in Digital Transformation

There is an undeniable truth that nobody can unsee: 2020 accelerated the digitalization of the world like no other time in the past. Individuals shifted en masse to interact, shop, play, learn, and even go to the doctor online. On the same note, organizations migrated internal and customer-facing operations to a digital realm, regardless of their size, location, or goals. In both cases, the reaction to this shift ranged between willful acceptance to blunt denial, with many dragging their feet at first until we all quickly understood that this new digital omnipresent reality was here to stay.

Now, change is change, and everyone has different ways of dealing with it. Individuals and organizations on the acceptance side of the spectrum have it easier, going at it with an open mind to embrace new technologies or innovative ways of doing business. Meanwhile, those on the other end struggle to keep up. The question here isn’t just how well or how quickly can these individuals and organizations adapt by themselves, but more importantly, how that adaptation influences each other.

Adapt or die?

The truth is that not all organizations are the same and there is no one-size-fits-all solution for the way they go about a digitalization process. Having no rule book is obviously a double-edged sword, though. Sure, you can make your own path but there is a higher chance of failure when there’s no successful example to be found. We all learnt in 2020 that no team -or individual, for that matter- was fully ready to tackle a global challenge like the Covid-19 pandemic. We are even still adapting to its never-ending, seemingly all-encompassing effects. However, enterprises that identified opportunities in digital transformation early on, or even continued digitalization processes in 2020, have endured the storm in a much better shape than those that didn’t. So the rule book might not exist, but the trend was confirmed more than ever: organizations that don’t digitalize their operations and mindset will eventually collapse under either the competition or the pressure of their own clients.

This is not the first time that transforming a business’s operations to be as digitally-driven as possible has been discussed. Organizations have been working for some time on relying less on physical factors, which includes going paperless, implementing an e-commerce platform, or having a heightened social media presence. However, the paradigm shift that brings digital transformation has a much deeper impact in an organization. Now, processes that used to be stand-alone projects within particular teams transitioned to a holistic approach. This translated to digital enablement being at the core of every decision, consequently increasing the operational efficiency across the entire organization.

Make it efficient, but also pretty

And why do cross-functional teams need to be more efficient you ask?

Because the way they work is reflected in their product or service. Think about organizations that are a product of digital innovation, those born and shaped by online processes and that are mostly not bound to a geographic location. They tend to have developed a strong product or service built on the thinking of how the end user will interact with it. Meanwhile, enterprises which traditionally relied on a physical interaction with the end user had to eventually adapt. And not just for the sake of profitability, but also to better understand the user or customers are no longer the end goal; they must be the focus of every business decision.

Putting the user or customer first in this context sounds quite obvious: the ethos of every organization is to generate an exchange from which both parts will be benefited. If there’s no end user, there’s no reason for an exchange, and everything comes crashing down. The interesting point is how well the organization knows the customer to determine a higher benefit for both parties, especially in the long term. And here is where an in-depth analysis of who a customer is and why they look for a particular organization comes into play. For instance, studies show that regardless of how sleek the technology and design of a product or service is, 80% of the end users may not come back if there’s no apparent convenience and efficiency during the customer experience.

Traditional organizations, not too long ago, relied fully on face-to-face interactions with their customers. This created plenty of opportunities to ask them questions about their experience, actually seeing how they reacted to what the organization offered, and giving the organization every possibility to get their attention. This is no longer possible with digital-first customers. This means that every organization should -and must- adapt on how they create those opportunities, know what customers feel about a given product or service, and how to keep them happier for the longest as possible, all in a digital environment.

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Finders, keepers

So, on the one hand we have customers that continue to migrate from traditional consuming patterns to an online-based model; on the other, traditional organizations that have struggled to tap on innovative internal digitalization strategies. As consumption is less and less tied down to a physical environment, many of these organizations are increasingly struggling when dealing with their customers. It is essential for these organizations to progress to a customer-based approach. This will enable them not only to know where they stand in the eyes of their customers, but also to make the customer journey and their satisfaction one of the main building blocks that goes into every decision. Every customer demographic is affected by this fast digitalization, so now more than ever, teams must identify or even predict pain points, analyzing and breaking them down into data points. Having a 360-degree view of the customer powers-up the output of every team and creates a cohesive response to creating and delivering better services or products.

It’s only logical: a customer experience-centered approach needs to be guided by customer intelligence. Businesses need to focus on the right tool that allows them to listen to their customers, which includes analyzing the customer’s journey throughout each touchpoint and each interaction with the organization. Only by finding all the information necessary, decisions can be truly well-informed, and customers can be kept happy for the longest time.

Product Analytics with Superpowers

Thanks to the powerful insights, adaptable features, and digital innovativeness of its product, Countly offers a state-of-the-art tool to streamline and ease digital transformation processes for any organization and help them build better customer journeys. Click here for a demo or here to contact us.