Digital Transformation Strategy Essentials Part 2: Digital Customer Experience

In this second part of our Digital Transformation Strategy Essentials blog series, we’ll look at how digital customer experience has influenced different industries of today and why it is central to becoming a digital business of the future.  

We are at a time when customers have increasingly become the epicenter of most business success in this booming digital environment. Not only are we in the midst of a massive technological revolution, Forrester suggests that we are also in the age of the “Empowered Customer.”

To prove that this is not just another hype, Forrester ran two separate surveys to find out whether customer experience (CX) does, in fact, matter to business advancement. In these studies, they compared revenue growths of different companies and their competitors. They found that companies with more superior customer experience generated higher revenue growths than their competitors.

In another report where Forrester studied the evolutions of customer behavior, analysts found that people engage more with brands that deliver what they need, when they need it, regardless of the channel or platform. According to the study, more than a third of all online adults in the U.S. want new and engaging digital experiences. And if these are not satisfied, consumers are quick to switch companies to find these experiences.

These are just some of the examples that show the kind of power customers have today over businesses. While customer experience may not be the primary factor that drives all the profits, companies should acknowledge that it is a significant element in an organization’s strategies that ensure future growth.

The Impact of Customer Experience to Digital Business

Forrester predicts that “the next wave of customer experience will have a profound impact on a firms’ profit and loss,” presenting new challenges and sustained risks to a company’s survival. As digital transformation continuously alters the way industries operate, factoring in digital customer experience can further cause significant disruptions for most companies that are working their way to becoming a digital business.

Needless to say, customers have become major drivers of this new customer-led market. “In this environment, being customer-obsessed can be your only competitive strategy,” Forrester adds. They further predict that more than one-third of businesses will restructure to shift to customer-obsessed operations, paving the way for a new generation of technologies that will remake industries and customer experience in the years to come.

Digital Customer Experience Calls for More Customized Solutions

IDC complements these predictions, stating that “50% of the Global 2000 will see the majority of their business depend on their ability to create digitally-enhanced products, services, and experiences.” For Gartner, these products and services stem from digital technology platforms, which facilitates digital business transformation.

One of these platforms is the customer experience platform, which enables the interaction and commerce of an organization with its customers and citizens. This technology building block ensures that the company’s business and operations model are aligned with the growing needs and ever-evolving journey of its internal and external customers.

The customer experience platform has the following components, which call for more customized solutions to provide high-quality services and experiences:

• Multichannel interaction and commerce – allows customers find information, request services, and perform e-commerce activities across many different channels
• Social networks – enables companies to support community interaction and transactional functions within social networks for improved experience
• Customer analytics – enables organizations to access customer data from all internal and external sources, which are then fed to other parts of the technology platform for use in analysis and enhancement of customer engagement and operational efficiencies
• Customer portal and apps – allows customers to gain information, get customer service, apply for services, place orders and transact, and view status – no matter when they want and where they are
• Back office systems – includes the digitization of vital back-office systems to optimize their functions and capabilities and better serve internal customers

Riding the Next Wave of Digital Customer Experience with Custom Applications

Focusing on people and the way you engage, serve, and empower them, matters now more than ever as a strategic imperative for your business. The key to driving more revenue for your digital business is aligning all parts of your organization and ecosystem with the optimization of your customer experience.

While digital technology platforms can help you do that, the actual challenge is building and managing the specific functional needs of these platforms while continually improving their digital customer experience. This is where low-code application platform comes in.

Low-code development platforms, like Caspio, offer a unique approach to application development. Caspio’s visual development tools simplify the complexities of building and managing custom applications that satisfy the diverse solution requirements for your digital business while creating value for your employees, customers, and partners.

To know more about low-code platforms, read Your Low-Code Questions Answered.

Read more on our Digital Transformation Strategy Essentials series: