Your customers don’t just compare your business to competitors; they consider interactions with experiences they’ve had elsewhere. That could include everything from making an online purchase from big retailers like Amazon, to how they’ve received timely updates from a small service provider.
For many smaller businesses, frustrations arise, not from poor quality products or services, but from slow manual processes and disconnected systems which impact customer experience. Digital transformation helps to break down these barriers so that you can provide a faster and more consistent experience.
Good customer experience gives competitive advantage
We all spend a large amount of time online, whether this is making purchases, booking an experience or interacting with services. We expect things to work smoothly, be convenient and for service levels to be high. It is not just price that is influencing decision making, when things don’t work as expected it is quick to switch to a competitor as the options are easy to find.
Common customer frustrations include:
- Waiting days for a quote or response to an enquiry
- Having to repeat information to multiple staff members
- Having to chase for progress updates
- Receiving inconsistent updates.
With digital transformation, you can make the experience better for your customers to keep them returning to you.
The hidden challenge
Many businesses don’t realise that issues with customer experience stem from their own internal inefficiencies. This includes outdated processes, data management and systems. For example:
- Information held in spreadsheets
- Customer records spread across multiple systems
- Manual approval processes causing delays
- Staff switching between different platforms to answer simple questions.
Customers rarely see the process itself but they always feel the impact when it is slow.
Three ways you can make an impact with digital transformation
By taking the time to review your current processes and systems you will be able to identify areas where improvements can make a big difference to your customer experience.
1. Customer enquiries and response times
By updating your systems you can make significant improvements to your customer enquiry process and response times. For example, we recently implemented Cue Desk integration to a customer’s CRM system. Their set up means that the submission of customer enquiry form on their website creates a lead in their CRM. A personalised email is then sent from the CRM to the customer and a WhatsApp message update is also sent. This type of integration bring significant benefits as the lead is automatically sent to the correct staff member or team, manual admin is reduced and the customer receives good communication. The first few interactions with a customer can set the tone for your future relationship, making improvements right from the start gives a professional and efficient impression.
2. Streamlining approvals processes
Many small businesses are still reliant on manual approvals for processes like data changes, compliance related actions and sales authorisations which can cause delays if someone is unavailable. With automation, you can create approval functionality to streamline these processes, providing structured governance, improved efficiency and a complete audit trail.
Improvement ideas include:
- Automated quote generation
- Workflow approvals
- Digital signatures.
We recently implemented a new Power Automate process for a customer which embedded approvals into an end-to-end process. From a user experience this is incredibly simple, they just click the process, review the generated document and approve or reject it. This made a previously multi-step manual process something that can be completed in just a few clicks. Read more about the project.
3. Customer Service and Support
By reviewing the systems your teams are using you may find that information is being stored in multiple places. By reducing the number of systems and introducing integration you provide teams with a complete customer history allowing them to track cases more effectively, resolve issues faster and communicate proactively with timely, relevant information. This reduces the workload for your team and means that customers can access assistance more easily.
Working together
Digital transformation is not simply an IT initiative. It is a customer experience strategy.
When you remove slow processes, automate routine tasks and connect systems, customers benefit from faster responses, smoother interactions and more personalised service. These improvements can be the difference between retaining customers and losing them to competitors who are easier to do business with.
If you would like help identifying the processes where you can make the biggest difference to customer experience, book a call with our team to discuss how digital transformation and the Microsoft systems you might already be paying for can help.