Digital Transformation for Improving Customer Experience

Improve Customer Service With Digital Transformation

In today's highly digitalized world, digital transformation is indispensable as it integrates digital technologies to create or improve business operations and customer experiences. It has significantly improved Customer Service by enhancing cost-effectiveness, speed, personalized customer experiences like data-backed insights, modified recommendations, and better accessibility with 24/7 customer support to get digital assistance anytime. Due to digital innovation, labour-intensive tasks have been shifted to automated ones, which provides better efficiency in managing complex issues and higher customer satisfaction across all domains. This post describes various ways through which digitalization can boost customer service. 

What is Meant By Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation means including modern technology in most business operations to improve efficiency or change the traditional method of providing services to people, such as customer data analytics tools, interactive chatbots, social media platforms, artificial intelligence, and more. The transformation has utility in various sectors, providing customer services like digital marketing, Business Process Outsourcing, hospitality, healthcare, personalisation, customer service automation, entertainment, retail, etc. 

Nine Ways to Enhance Customer Service Through Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation can enhance Customer Service in several ways, as it revisits the relationship between customers and businesses. A few notable ones are as follows: 

1. AI-Powered Chatbot Technology: According to a few predictions, the chatbot industry will likely experience significant growth, i.e., 1.25 billion U.S. dollars by 2025. Chatbots are primarily used in services like the retail sector, sales, marketing,  booking and reservation, online delivery updates, technical support, and social media engagement. It has the feature to converse in various languages, allowing companies to reach global customers without any language barrier. Another significant advantage of chatbots is that they are always available to resolve customer queries, which is essential for collecting valuable data, behaviour, and question patterns for better client engagement. 

2. Social Networking Services: The increasing use of social media and smartphones has significantly digitized customer experiences (CX). Customers share feedback in apps or on social media platforms. Companies also use this technology to promote their products and services online, reaching customers worldwide regardless of geographical location. Social media plays a significant role in popularising a brand, product or service that would influence a larger customer base. If any discrepancy is found in the goods or services, then the customer, via social media, can raise the issue, bringing the matter to immediate attention.

3. Cloud Computing: It is an IT service delivery that provides software, databases, servers, and analytics over the internet. For example, Gmail, Outlook, file storage like Google Drive, Dropbox, cloud-based software, e-commerce websites, etc. There are several benefits of using a cloud-based system, such as cost-effectiveness, as the company can avail of the benefits at a lower operational cost. This allows employees from anywhere to access files and apps, increases productivity, and enables them to access customers' data for enhanced service. Therefore, it offers greater flexibility and continuity of service and is highly accessible for the overall customer experience. 

4. Flexible Customer Portal: An online portal is vital for providing better service as it enables customers to access detailed information about the product, tutorials, make appointments, FAQs, organize licenses and other documents, providing instant feedback, place orders and tracking, posting grievances, provide advanced security like encryption which allows for a significant self-service experience. The portal should be accessible to all devices, like laptops, mobiles, and other gadgets, to acquire the required data. This would improve coordination and make paperless documentation easier for customers and companies. 

5. Personalised experience: According to a report on 'Excellent Customer Experience,' 81% of customers prefer companies that offer personalised experiences. To meet this requirement, companies should change their knowledge-collecting systems digitally by locating the website a customer visits frequently to make purchases and tailoring their offerings accordingly. 

6. Providing 24/7 Service: When companies provide all-time service to their customer, this enhances engagement without any time barrier across different regions. This reduces the burden on employees to be available 24/7 to resolve the customer's generic doubts. As per the survey, 90% of consumers prefer instant responses from the service provider for immediate problem-solving. 

7. Tailored Marketing: The core aspect of developing targeted marketing is understanding the customer's dynamic needs by thorough research and tailoring the products according to demand. The end goal should go beyond selling the product or service; it should also influence the customer to continue to prefer the brand in the future and recommend it to others. Be it from buying large items like cars or houses, or a minute product like a needle or a pen, people usually prefer online services rather than visiting stores for initial inquiry. The reports of the Gartner study showcased that business-to-business and business-to-consumer provided evidence of an increase in buying frequency of 1.73 times more if companies find something new about their requirements or needs. 

8. Utilising 3-D Graphics: Shoppers currently prefer to go contactless. To meet the requirement, companies can improve their services by using advanced technology like 3D virtual objects and virtual dressing rooms so that customers can make better purchasing decisions. For instance, brands like GAP provide a virtual fitting room in their app where a 3D model is selected to try different outfits as per their choice. Another example can be given from Lenskart as it also offers the option to choose their glasses virtually by capturing the image of our faces, where we can try alternate spectacles that go well with our facial structure.

9. Augmented Reality: Therefore, following a customer-centric approach, digitalisation has increased. The logistics suggest that 61% of customers are more interested in retailers offering an augmented reality (AR) experience. Planning the interior design of our residence, buying home decor items like furniture, or deciding on the correct wall colour can be troublesome. However, with the introduction of AR, which integrates virtual characters or digital information with the customer's real-time environment, the confusion regarding making efficient decisions has been solved.

Therefore, Digital transformation has alleviated customer satisfaction in various ways, specifically by using fundamental technologies and strategies like Data Analytics, Cloud Computing, AI, Machine Learning, chatbots, and personalised content, which has been validated through several reports. In this highly globalised and technology-driven world, bringing digital transformation to providing customer service is a prerequisite for companies to grow in this dynamic environment.