Happy customers are the best business strategy. It is difficult to keep customers happy and engaged in a constantly changing business environment. Digital technologies are now mainstream. This has led to an explosion in the number of channels available. It is now difficult to manage collaboration across all these channels and improve the customer experience during the entire customer journey.
In response to changing customer preferences, enterprises have needed to rethink how they engage customers. In response to changing customer preferences, many garment manufacturers are now selling directly to their customers through online channels. Manufacturers are now required to rethink not only their marketing strategy, but also their supply chain and distribution in order to provide a consistent and better customer experience.
Creating an Effective Customer Experience
Companies must address these key elements to create a memorable experience.
Responsibility and Visibility: Customers must be able to find businesses through easy-to-navigate interfaces and user-friendly communication channels. Customers expect companies to be more responsible for sustainability and health. They might also ask about the origin, manufacturing process, and whether child labor was used in its manufacture before purchasing it.
Superior Delivery Experience It is common for a company to lose its image at the last mile. Therefore, it is important that they are equipped to provide a superior experience in delivery. Not only are they important for modern customers, but also essential to ensure timely delivery.
Continuous Engagement: Customers need to be engaged even after sales close. Social media channels provide a wealth of insight. These insights need to be analysed, fed back, and used for process, product, and service improvement through active listening programs. To maintain high service standards in the consumer durables industry, it is vital to actively listen to customers and honor their claims.
These practices can be difficult in reality. It can be difficult to provide a consistent experience due to the number of channels and the large amount of data available.
Each business should have a customer service department that is well-trained and has clearly defined objectives. It can make a huge difference in how customers experience your business. Technology plays the largest role among these. Companies need to be able to use a wide range of technology capabilities to enable them to deliver customer service. Cloud apps play a crucial role in the adoption and deployment of these capabilities.
Cloud apps can be used to help companies achieve:
Greater Agility
Cloud computing provides the ability to scale quickly, respond quickly to market demands and improve customer experience. Cloud apps have the advantage of being faster to deploy. A traditional ERP can take more than a year to make sales, but a cloud-based sales app can be deployed in as little as three to four months.
Cloud apps are a great way to build robust systems that are lightweight, simple to maintain, and optimally perform as global companies become more multi-brand and omnichannel. It is possible to have one catalog and index, with data synchronization, and a central view to facilitate faster Go-to Market and reduce overheads, as opposed to maintaining multiple catalogues for each country or brand. This agility also allows for greater customer responsiveness and real time visibility, which enhances the customer experience.
One of the largest energy utility companies in America decided to change from a legacy system that had hundreds of applications to a tightly knit sales platform with a mix of service and sales clouds. The company can now run highly targeted and customized marketing campaigns to better engage customers, in addition to greatly improving its call handling capabilities.
Robust Governance
Data can often pass through multiple platforms and applications, including those owned by the company and those of third parties. It is crucial to have consistent data governance mechanisms for managing customer data. To order food delivery apps, for example, the customer must first move to the payment provider’s website. Cloud apps are API-based, and conform to international standards. This allows for easy integration across the ecosystem. Designing a positive customer experience is only possible if you protect your customers’ data.
Comprehensive Listening Mechanisms
In order to ensure a great customer experience, enterprises must create a culture that listens to customers. Better service can be achieved by having a platform and a method to listen to customers. A mechanism could be developed to collect customer feedback at every stage of the service lifecycle, including delivery and purchase. These capabilities can be easily deployed and used with cloud apps. To provide real-time customer experience across all business areas, the solution must combine customer data, machine learning and microservices technology.
Major seeds company redesigned the way it interacts with customers by using a cloud feedback mechanism that captures key stakeholder sentiments during delivery. This allows for continuous improvement in customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
The ability to adapt to changing customer requirements is crucial as the paradigm of customer engagement evolves. As cloud apps play an important role in helping organizations navigate this change, organizations will continue to face challenges.