CMSWire: The Link Between Digital Transformation and Customer Experience
This article was written by Greg Kihlström for CMSWire. Click here to read the full article.
Companies have many reasons for prioritizing digital transformation initiatives. While operational efficiency and streamlining of processes are clear benefits, improving the customer experience is the most outward facing and even internally visible because of things like customer complaints, lackluster sales and customer attrition. Because of this, organizations need to ensure their digital transformation efforts put at least an equal focus on customer experience as any process or operational gains and improvements.
Even if improving customer experience isn't your primary goal in a digital transformation, it is important to understand how CX connects to the other aspects of your initiative. Let’s explore the link between customer experience and digital transformation a bit further.
Customers Feel When There Is an Internal Disconnect
How many times have you, as a customer, tried to resolve an issue with a product or service you have purchased, only to get the runaround? In the vast majority of cases, this is not because anyone at that company is intentionally trying to be difficult or waste your time. Instead, there is almost certainly an internal disconnect between one part of the organization and the one you are dealing with.
This could be anything from lack of data or systems connectivity, to a lack of communication between teams, departments or divisions. Regardless of the source of the issue, you as a customer feel the disconnect, and it detracts from the customer experience.
Even if the primary objective of your digital transformation is to improve internal processes or the flow of data from one system to another, how you implement this can have a dramatic impact on how customers experience interactions with your business. Remember this as you plan your transformation initiative so you can fully realize the gains that are possible from a more seamless experience.
Better Data Integration Means Greater Personalization
Customers not only reward companies that personalize their marketing and communications, they have come to expect a high degree of personalization in the interactions they have with brands. Often, the reason why companies don’t offer greater personalization to their customers is because they are lacking the alignment, systems and data integration, and streamlined processes that enable it.
When you are able to see and understand more about your customers because your digital transformation has made it possible to do so, you can enable greater personalized messaging, offers, and customer service, to name a few of the benefits. This creates a better customer experience, builds more customer loyalty, and is likely to increase repeat sales.
If your digital transformation doesn’t have greater personalization as one of its objectives, you should consider the opportunity cost of failing to offer this increasingly important customer benefit.