Digital transformation is no longer an option. Rather, it’s a prerequisite to success, resilience and relevance. And the prevalence of technology, along with its unprecedented growth, acts as a catalyst to digitisation – ultimately driving customer experiences.
There’s no doubt that this necessary shift in technology and service will disrupt businesses in the most positive way:
- Digital transformation investments are set to amount to almost £5,23 trillion, between 2020 and 2023 alone.
- Enterprises that have digitally transformed are forecast to account for £39.6 trillion of the global nominal GDP in 2023.
While there are an abundance of benefits that can come out of digitally transforming your business, the impact that it has on customer experiences should be of major interest.
Why? Because roughly two-thirds of a company’s competitive edge comes from its customer experience!
Data Sits at the Heart of Digital Transformation
Data. The lifeblood of digital transformation. The reason why recommendation engines, the IoT and, essentially, all of technology works.
While intuition is great for creative endeavours, practicing empathy and even preventing a nuclear war, data is critical to our decision-making processes.
Just look at how DeepMind’s AlphaGo beat the world’s best players through pattern recognition. Or how their AlphaStar project beats 99.8% of all Starcraft 2 players. Even OpenAI’s Dota 2 AI whipped an Esports team – over and over again.
Each one of these games are highly technical and while players all have heavy reliance on intuition, artificial intelligence wins purely through data-driven decision making.
With the never-ending mass of information that floods in every day, companies are now able to leverage data to enhance customer experiences, create opportunities in new markets, improve employee and process productivity, and guarantee competitive advantage.
Digital transformation is more than simply upgrading to smarter phones and sleeker displays – it’s about the blending of intelligent data into all that we do.
The Effect of Digitisation on Customer Experience
Without customers, there is no business. So most transformation efforts need to center around the experience that a business can offer a customer.
And if you treat the customer well, then you can bet your business will get fine treatment in return.
Get this: Digital transformation with a distinct focus on customer experience can produce a 20-30% increase in customer satisfaction and result in economic gains of between 20-50%.
Cost Reductions and Revenue Growth
According to a report by McKinsey, among all of the businesses that face declining revenues, 45% have begun increasing their focus on transformation efforts.
We don’t blame them.
Digitisation has a tremendous benefit on decreasing expenses through its ability to collect, collate and handle petabytes of data.
With new digital toolsets, you have ease of access to many different datasets and the infrastructure to process and glean that data. Insights flood dashboards and help steer your business towards optimised workflows and better customer experiences.
- A study done in 2016 saw tech-driven B2B companies report 10% to 20% cost reduction and 10% to 15% revenue growth by transforming their customer experience processes.
- On top of that, within the same year, the revenue growth of B2B digital leaders was five times more compared to their peers.
- Companies that have higher digital maturity reported 45% revenue growth compared to 15% for lower maturity companies.
Better, More Confident Decisions
By understanding your data, you’re able to understand your customers.
A well-architected digital transformation results in much better data, and as a result, far richer insights. With that, data-driven decision making becomes a breeze.
Gone are the days of thumb-sucking and solely relying on intuition to make meaningful and impactful decisions for your business and its customers. Every choice that you make and every action that you take requires the data to prove it.
Whether your decision is to launch or terminate a product, trial marketing campaigns, or something else entirely, it’s easier to reach a confident decision about any business challenge once you collect, analyse and understand your data.
Stats:
- Digital-first companies are 64% more likely to achieve their business goals than their peers.
- Data-driven organizations are not only 23x more likely to acquire customers, but they’re also 6x as likely to retain customers and 19x more likely to be profitable!
- 62% of retailers report that the use of information and analytics is creating a competitive advantage for their organization.
Improved Culture
Because organisational culture has such a profound impact on your employees, it comes to affect the relationship that you have with your customers, too.
And a happy employee means a happy customer. Employee engagement and satisfaction play a massive role in customer satisfaction.
According to Harvard Business Review, “A happier workforce is clearly associated with companies’ ability to deliver better customer satisfaction — particularly in industries with the closest contact between workers and customers.”
And with the beneficial data that comes flooding in from a well-orchestrated digital transformation, accessibility should be a priority. If your information is siloed and isn’t shared with your staff, prepare to deal with resentment, failed strategies and hurdles.
Stats:
- A study found that engaged employees can drive a 21% increase in profitability, and a 10% rise in customer ratings.
- According to Forbes, 70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated.
- Companies with stronger employee retention are found to have much higher levels of customer retention.
Prioritise Your Customer Experience Today!
Digital transformation is inevitable. For most businesses, it’s simply a matter of ‘when’.
Don’t worry about the how. Leave that to us.
