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Three reasons why digital experience is the right customer experience
Why a personalised experience is key to thriving and surviving in today's world
Customer Experience (CX) has become the primary focus in delivering services to your employees and customers. Digital natives are rapidly growing as a proportion of the workforce and consumer market – and they want to be able to transact with your organisation digitally. They are also quick to identify, judge and publicise less-than-excellent experiences – which can damage your brand with their peers.
With all this in mind, we’ve determined the three most valuable attributes of a digital experience – and how you can build on them to reduce your own operational costs while creating a more engaging and rich experience. In the end, learning how to improve customer experience makes it easier for people to deal with you.
1. Be mobile first
Everyone today expects that they can execute almost anything they need to do from anywhere, on any device. Employees applying for leave or submitting timesheets, students getting course results or accessing timetables, residents requesting a new wheelie bin or pet licence – they all want to do it via a user-friendly device and interface.
That device is undisputedly the smartphone. According to Deloitte research conducted in 2019, 88% of the UK population owned a smartphone, and 95% of respondents had used them in last day.
This makes a smartphone app or mobile-optimised site integrated with your core operational systems the best way to serve and reach as many of your stakeholders as possible. It’s all about efficiency and speed – they can get in, perform their transaction then get out, fast. While your organisation, systems and processes may be complex, the interaction needs to hide this complexity by delivering a simple and familiar experience.
That said, the digital experience cannot entirely replace the human element – it is just one channel of a multi-channel service offering. There will always be transactions (and people) best suited to a phone call or face-to-face interaction.
2. Offer personalisation
To create a truly excellent customer or employee experience, personalisation is essential. A well-designed app will recognise them from the time they upload and register with it and, as a result, provide them with a smoother experience customised to their specific needs.
For example, you can provide different options for full-time employees versus part-time contractors. Local governments can identify between business and residential ratepayers and tenants – then present the options most relevant to each.
When integrated with your ERP system, users can have access to relevant data and make changes or requests. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used to navigate knowledge bases, so you can provide answers to their questions faster. Requested actions can be set in train immediately, and automatically advise status.
Another aspect of personalisation is the ability to track how they feel about the service you are providing. Natural Language Processing (NLP) can be embedded within digital apps to gain feedback and sentiment analysis. If frustration is sensed, a human can be alerted to act and respond.
The best way to describe the effect of personalisation is that you are using technology to create a smooth and satisfying experience for the vast majority – but without being entirely dependent on it. While the technology is ‘humanising’, the triggers are firmly in place for a human to step in, armed with the transaction history, to solve knottier or more sensitive problems.
3. Show proactivity
The digital experience is not all one way. A mobile app gives you a highly cost-effective and timely way to alert stakeholders to news, events and any new information specifically relevant to them. It’s a way to deliver information to all or just some staff immediately, whether or not they are on duty, or logged into corporate email. A change of classroom or meeting room, closure of a road or a local community event are just some of the examples in education and local government.
To maximise the value of and improve digital experiences, integration with your core business systems is essential. Uber knows your pickup address and can predict some of your movements, while Just Eat knows you like pizza and Thai food. However, most organisations have many more opportunities to anticipate or meet your specific needs because of the data they hold.
Integration with your ERP solution can give you a 360-degree view of your stakeholders that enables you to proactively communicate with them – and the more you customise and offer a personalised customer experience, the more pertinent and useful the information will be.
By integrating employee and customer apps with your core operational systems, you have the ability to automate regular communications with unexpected ones – making every communication highly relevant. Excellent customer experience is only achievable if you have the right digital platform. But you must also be agile and innovative in your approach – and have an integrated SaaS ERP platform a your foundation with built-in capabilities for delivering agility and innovation.
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