Three tips to maximize the impact of your digital modernization program

After a digital modernization program is in place, companies must implement effective mechanisms to measure its impact. Here are some ways you can measure and maximize the value from your program:

1. Enable anywhere, anytime, anyplace access.

A frictionless omnichannel user experience should be the primary goal. To be successful in the Digital Age, customers should have the same brand experience, access to data, and ease of operability across all channels – physical stores, online channels, traditional desktop applications, and mobile apps.

2. Be a good listener.

Companies should leverage social media and mobility effectively as an integrated part of their customer engagement strategy. It’s important to emphasize that this doesn’t require shutting down your existing communication channels. Some organizations have closed their call centres and started responding to customer queries through Twitter, just to look cool OR cut costs. Unfortunately, in effect, many questions and requests go unanswered, which is the easiest way to lose customers.
Instead, organizations should leverage all channels available to maintain a continuous conversation with their customers. The cost of implementation should be carefully weighed against the cost of losing your customers. Moreover, a concrete digital marketing strategy and social media analytics help companies listen to customer opinions, elicit insights and act on them proactively.

3. Get personal.

Companies should strive to use artificial intelligence to create a hyper-personalized experience and deliver compelling customer service. This is easier said than done, and it may not be cost-effective for all organizations to provide a personalized product or service. However, there are a few touchpoints where creating a personalized experience will give short-term as well as long-term dividends. Some examples include monitoring driving habits to provide customized insurance or offering an unexpected freebie to a customer who is expecting it. A personal touch is still the best way to earn customer loyalty, and digital technologies provide ways to accomplish this.

Just be cautious, personalized touch doesn’t mean intrusion in somebody’s personal life. It should be limited to a genuine effort to connect with your customer, not bombarding them with emails and surveys. Collaborating with third-party channels is an excellent way to interact with customers, but when working with external aggregators to provide an omnichannel experience, executives and strategists should always be sensitive to brand dilution.

In the world of Alexa and Siri, it is very easy to be mistaken for a service provider instead of an experience generator. This is where your branding and partner management team must stay focused to ensure that the organization’s interests are negotiated well when trying to provide an integrated digital experience through external ecosystems. Digital adopters must be methodical in their approach and keep evolving themselves at every step to compete with born digital competitors.

Watch this space for the next in this blog series, where I will be discussing the critical pillars of digital modernization.