Are your digital interactions helping or hindering customer engagement?
According to McKinsey, organisations that successfully leverage digital products to improve the customer experience are able to increase customer satisfaction by up to 20 percent, reduce the cost to serve by up to 40 percent, and boost conversion rates and growth by 20 percent.
However, to truly impact and improve the customer experience, organisations need to go beyond simply purchasing a product.
Customers are the most important part of a digital transformation. Compelling digital experiences must start with knowing how to support what customers are trying to achieve in the first place. Data-based customer insights help organisations better understand the behaviour, sentiments, and motivations of their target audience and build a digital strategy that ensures the customers' actual desires are the central focus.
What is the essence of digital transformation if, in the end, it's not adding value to the customer and business?
To create a more experience-led business, leaders must constantly adapt their people, processes, and technologies to align with the evolving needs of the customer. Yet, few organisations have the tools, expertise, or customer understanding to do so on their own.
Innovative, human-centred solutions to digital challenges can't be developed without diverse expertise and capabilities. Digital expansion spurred by the pandemic sped up the pace of innovation - fintech apps enabled contactless financial transactions, digital platforms brought learning into the home, and collaboration tools gave remote workers an opportunity to work and engage together in a virtual format. These digital solutions require a speed-to-market that can only be achieved by bringing together diverse teams of professionals with the necessary skills.
A technology partner who combines technology with personalised services can deliver digital solutions that bridge the gap between where the organisation stands currently and where they want to go.
Does a technology partner make sense for your customer-forward strategy? Start by asking the following questions:
Providing a superior digital customer experience is often at the heart and soul of technology partners. They have the customer understanding and expertise needed to navigate the evolving digital landscape and can guarantee your project has the greatest chance of success.
Digital services and operations raise the competitive bar across every sector. According to customer experience research from PwC, 73 percent of global consumers view customer experience as a key influencer in their purchasing decision. What's more, 43 percent are willing to pay more for greater convenience. Today, businesses are leveraging technology partners to dramatically improve the digital customer experience.
Here are some ways in which third-party partners are helping organisations accelerate customer-centric digital strategies:
One of the most immediate advantages of business partners is that they can take care of activities that the organisation doesn't have the bandwidth or resources to address internally.
The manufacturing industry is a great example of a business sector that relies on partnerships to deliver quality digital customer experiences. DuluxGroup, a manufacturer and distributor of consumer and construction products, saw a need to enhance its digital offering for customers. "We're relentlessly exploring ways to enhance our customers' experience, and better understand how technology can help them realise their goals. It gives our innovation ambition a very specific, sharp focus," notes Eglantine Etiemble, Executive General Manager of IT and Digital at DuluxGroup.
Improving the digital experience and attracting more customers required DuluxGroup to transform its digital assets. Through partnership, the team was able to consolidate their assets under one site structure, modernising their legacy technologies and driving brand consistency in the process. The result? Increased traffic to the website through an enhanced user experience.
Technology partnerships have become an increasingly valuable way for businesses to deliver more streamlined and efficient digital experiences for their customers. Through partnership, organisations can improve the customer experience by automating basic activities or simplifying interaction with the company.
One great example of this comes from Freewill, a technology company that provides digital solutions to address global and social issues around the globe. In 2019, Freewill set out to "make society a better place" by creating an ecosystem of applications that connect with one another. Building an integrated application ecosystem introduced a number of technical complexities. Working in collaboration with NashTech, Freewill was able to make its vision a reality with the launch of its In-house Services division. "In the past, we tried to do things really quickly, but when we implemented everything on production, it wasn't in a state where we could market it," said Julian Payne, a service system engineer with Freewill. "Through our partnership with NashTech, we've been able to increase quality through planning and testing, allowing us to maintain our speed to market," he added.
Building capabilities that durably change customer behaviour has never been easy, and the pandemic has made it harder. Technology was already changing the nature of work before the pandemic took hold. Innovations were redefining the basis of competition in more industries and consequently, the talent companies need to support in the long term.
A new business partnership can quickly become a necessity when an organisation's own internal efforts aren't delivering a suitable standard for their customers. Not only does outsourcing the work to a partner have the potential to improve a product or service, but it can also lower a company's operating expenses.
Even large enterprise organisations rely on technology partners to make up for what might otherwise be an internal deficiency. For instance, a multinational automotive manufacturer may have a highly skilled in-house IT team, but they may lack the expertise needed to develop and maintain their own software systems. To address this deficiency, they partner with a technology firm that specialises in developing software for automotive manufacturing companies. This partner helps the manufacturer to create custom software systems that improve their production process, reduce costs and increase efficiencies which ultimately leads to the best digital customer experience.
Having the right strategic partner creates true win-win outcomes for organisations. Not only do great partnerships benefit both companies, but they also help improve digital customer experience by making products or services more convenient or easy to use.
Collaborating with a technology partner to bring in creativity and spearhead agility provides a number of bottom-line benefits to organisations including skillsets and solutions as you need them, cost and labour savings, risk mitigation, and greater process efficiencies.
With a shared goal, the right partner can help solve real problems to deliver a digital customer experience that stands out from the competition.
To learn more about the NashTech approach to the digital transformation customer experience, contact us.
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