The Four Wheels that Drive Modern Digital Experience Architecture
BY NICHOLAS BILODEAU | INSIDE SALES, BETACH SOLUTIONS
We are in the digital era, and we have been here for quite some time. This is not one of those “new normals” you often hear about in the media; this was not caused by the Pandemic. We have long replaced: postal services with email servers, the mall with online shopping, even the way we socialize, has become more and more digital. This was all happening well before the Prime Minister’s “Ides of March” press conferences and you were being sent home from the office without a clue when you were coming back.
However, the Pandemic has in many ways been a magnifying glass. Not just because it has magnified our individual digital footprints, but it has also exposed that digital maturity varies greatly among businesses. This was clear as some businesses already had systems in place to meet consumers online and offer them the digital experiences they desired, and others, clearly did not.
There are so many reasons for this. We know, naturally, 14% of people are early adopters (business leaders are no different). It was not that they predicted a pandemic, but rather they foresaw the value of the digital experience. So, there was a personal influence. However, digital experience maturity also differs between industries; keeping up with industry trends and the pressures of industry forces can also dictate the likelihood a business is to adopt new technology. So, there were industry specific influences as well.
We are at a point in time now, in the digital era, where all businesses need to rethink how they are interacting with consumers. We know that when driving, objects in our side view mirrors are “closer than they appear”, and in this case those objects—or competitors—are now ahead in offering enriched, digital, customer experiences. Keeping up or overtaking competitors in the digital era, now relies heavily on architecting effective and insightful digital customer experiences.
This article identifies the four wheels that Betach has identified as being critical in driving an enriched digital experience for consumers.
Wheel 1: You have to know your business
Simply put, businesses exist to satisfy the needs and wants of consumers. To grow your business, you need an overall strategy, and to understand how well the strategy is performing, you need business goals. To meet business goals and by doing so drive the success of your business, understanding how you are satisfying these customer needs and wants is imperative. So digital customer experiences need to be designed in a way that aligns with business goals, to capture key metrics, but also to allow customers to engage with your business in a meaningful way. This will allow you to not only monitor business performance, but also gather valuable data on customers’ behaviours.
The insights gained from gathering data on customers, enables you to continue honing your digital experience architecture, allowing you to deliver deeper and more personalized experiences to customers. Which garners higher customer loyalty and satisfaction.
For example, if your business goal is to expand to a new market, your digital experience should take into account the cultural norms/habits of that geographical region. Especially if it is a foreign market.
Therefore, digital customer experience architecture begins with understanding your customers and knowing your business.
Wheel 2: Securing your Data
Data collection can be a doubled edged sword, it is not necessarily a high-risk high reward situation, unless you make it one. Customer data collection enables effective customer experience architecting, but if handled without proper due care, can open you up to unwanted risk. Handling customer data must be done with the utmost security and with great respect to their privacy. To mitigate risk and ensure ROI, an investment in security needs to be made
With the major uptick in digital interactions, the supplementary customer data created is useful not only to businesses, but also to hackers and ransomware attacks. In recent years, we have seen more and more major data breaches and these attacks will only become more and more frequent as we continue to grow our digital footprints. Regulatory bodies have also taken note and they are introducing more and more data protection regulations—take GDPR in Europe as an example—to ensure digital customers are protected. Decision makers need to ensure they are complying with the laws and regulations where data is being collected.
Having a security solution in place is one thing to securing data, but it is also a good practice to clarify exactly how data is being managed through its lifecycle when architecting digital experiences. Ensure customers are well informed on the data collection process, as well, allow them to have the option to consent to or reject to it; give them the ability to manage cookies. Transparency will only increase customer’s trust propensity in your business.
Wheel 3: Frictionless customer experiences
The greatest customer experience is one where the customer can satisfy their need or want in a meaningful way; the process is painless (quick & easy) and is aligned with their preferences, but also exceeds their expectations (ex. Maybe you offer options that are better than what the customer was initially looking for). Your digital experiences should offer this. People hate wasting time, especially digitally, where the expectation is “digital is more convenient then going into the store”. This wheel should be your focus if your goal is to drive conversions.
Consider what you are currently doing. Are these quick and meaningful personalized experiences being delivered with the status quo set-up of your digital store front or is it time to invest in a new solution. The goal is ensuring the user experience across all channels of your business is optimized. The customer data will let you know.
Marketing automation platforms like Dynamics 365 allow for the orchestration of the customer journey, but the data it retrieves, also gives insights into how well customers are navigating the experience you have created for them (highlights areas of bottlenecking, click through rates, preferred delivery of notifications, bounce rates, etc.). Honing the optimal experience for your customers requires ongoing tests of the customer journey, to identify speed bumps and inefficiencies, that are preventing these quick, easy, and meaningful experiences.
In addition to architecting efficient customer experiences, and data collection, Dynamics 365 also has tools to automate processes in the delivery of your experience which can significantly decrease costs. Which leads to the next wheel…
Wheel 4: Existing tools and resources
All businesses face constraints whether its budget related, capacity related, technology related, etc. These constraints will influence how you invest in your digital experience architecture. As the tools you use need to scale to the reality of your business capabilities. It is important to understand areas of focus and the current investment in the tools first, before cutting or investing further into a solution.
You should consider the following:
Do you have the labour force that can use existing or new tools effectively?
How efficient is your current technology spend? Are there subscriptions, applications or technology that are not being fully utilized or used at all?
Are you seeing an ROI or even have the tools to calculate an ROI?
Does your current platform have the architecting capabilities needed?
At the end of the day, you need to have the tools in place that allow your business to execute an efficient and meaningful customer experience. The solution does not look the same for every business, nor should it. What matters is not what is on the backend, as that is not known or felt by the customer. What matters is that a dilapidated, antiquated, painful digital experience is all too visible, and you want to ensure you have the solution in place to avoid this at all costs.
Putting the Wheels on and driving forward
You need the wheels before you can drive the car, but how do you drive the car? It is one thing to identify that in the digital era all businesses need to architect efficient and meaningful digital customer experiences, but how do you execute? Start with evaluating how well you currently have these wheels in place and plan to prioritize the ones that are not. In order to execute you need to be capable of executing. From there it is about determining the next steps that make sense for your business. Betach is here as a resource, to help at any moment: from identifying gaps, evaluating which wheels need to be prioritized, implementing the digital platform needed to execute, or to provide our expert advice into the best next steps, we are here, so you can drive your business forward in the digital era.
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