The world has changed. That’s a fact.
60% of businesses have adopted digital technologies in the first few months after the start of the pandemic. Overall, digital adoption has grown from 40% to a staggering 100% since the pandemic.
People’s lives, both business and personal, have been pretty much forced to migrate to online spaces, marketplaces, and platforms with Asia containing the highest number of internet users in the world, with approximately 2.8 billion users.
Way after the pandemic, 84% of businesses plan to continue remote work initiatives as remote work has actually proven to make people even more productive.
Time flies, and in a span of 2 years, things have evolved so quickly. Now, with everything changing, your customers’ expectations are also changing.
Are you ready for that? Or maybe a better question to ask would be: How do you plan on keeping up in terms of Customer Experience (CX)?
Actually, you may find yourself in a very fortunate position.
On one hand, things are moving fast, and people’s behaviours are changing.
But on the other hand, technology is also booming. The options that are available for you to leverage on are numerous.
Leveraging Tech of the Future
One famous quote, that arguably comes from the world’s greatest inventor ever, Thomas Edison, is this: “There’s a way to do it better. Find it!”
As things are changing, the whole product and customer landscape is also evolving. Not only in terms of how people behave and what they expect but also in terms of what’s out there.
If you really watch this closely, you’ll see that there is a massive opportunity for you to jump in on this and capitalize it.
Every now and then we hear about “Technology of the Future” or see articles about “Emerging Technologies”, or for most of us, we encounter the words “Metaverse” or “Cryptocurrency” or “Artificial Intelligence”.
A lot of these technologies that you see on the screen are those that we could not have even imagined decades ago.
One, people weren’t even digital a couple of years back.
Two, we didn’t have this much data points available that we could act upon.
Three, the machines to support us, the (speed of) networks were not there.
So, all of these are now coming together, and people are drastically opening to becoming more digital, to the point of even expecting it.
On one hand, people have, to a certain extent, become impatient. People have become more demanding. People expect things to always be on the move. Some people don’t even want to queue somewhere anymore.
On the other hand, there is (1) a big data component. (2) There is a distribution component. (3) There is a cognitive component where machines can easily learn now about your customer behaviour, almost like how a human brain can.
Additionally, there is also this spatial component where it’s no longer you and a screen which is kind of 2 dimensional. It’s actually you, coming into an environment which connects you to spaces.
Which is not only giving you a 3D type of experience, e.g., giving you that feeling of being much more connected to people beyond just a flat screen. But also, it surprisingly comes with a physical component meaning that everything you wear, everything that you do can be interconnected.
We’re talking about your phones, your watches, your rings, and all other devices that can be connected and can somehow make those data points available to enhance your overall experience.
And people expect that these kinds of devices are highly maximized.
So, if you are going to stay and be this kind of non-digital physical shop, where people come and go, your demographic is going to be very limited and eventually, you will be left behind.
This is all about transformation (or adaptation).
You can now transform your business and you can actually execute on it. Because there are very few times in people’s lifetimes where you can effect behavioral change. And that is now.
And we know this, because this is exactly how our company was formed. This is how Pro5, as a startup, was formed. We saw a change that was happening that we would have never been able to effect if it weren’t for the pandemic and everyone changing their behaviour which was going digital, remote work, telemigration, etc.
This is an example of an opportunity to jump on and if you ride that wave and do it well, you will most likely come out on top. If you don’t and ignore it, you will get left behind.
Now, if you would manage to find and look at all the moving pieces, pinpoint the right combination of technologies for the problem that you are trying to solve and boost the experience of your customers, the sky is really the limit.
Agile adoption
Now, it's all good and well to transform your business and go and automate projects to really take things to a new level, however, you need to be aware that 70% of all projects fail. And that’s a massive amount, right?
Massive but not deterring. Why? Because there is a scientific solution that is often overlooked.
It’s called the Agile Approach.
It's absolutely critical that as you choose to go on this journey, you take the agile approach.
In fact, it has been proven that an agile methodology increases your success rate by 71%.
In line with this, there are then two quotes that we’ll share with you.
First, is by Eric Ries, the best-selling author of “The Lean Startup” — what is pretty much known as the Bible of startups. And it goes, “The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.”
You are not expected to know everything when you start your transformation project, you just need to learn extremely fast.
The other is one by Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”
The point they’re trying to make here is: Don’t do this by yourself in an ivory tower and meticulously come up with this massive structure.
Go out there, go agile, go quick and work with your customers.
And do this in partnership with your customers. Get their feedback and immediately apply a scientific process to this. Where you go in, with critical hypothesis as we call them, really go in and try to define the problems that you’re solving and improving.
That’s the method that has proven to make a vast majority of projects way more successful than going for the more traditional waterfall approach.
Outsource to fuel innovation
Finally, there is another thing that is easily at your disposal.
There is a fantastic way to innovate and adapt to these evolving and changing times. One that enables you to focus on elevating your customer experiences.
One that allows you to focus on what you do best, because you can readily outsource the rest.
In fact, outsourcing in itself is a trillion-dollar industry for a reason. And it's growing at 9% because people understand the cost effectiveness of it. But also, it gives you the ability to execute projects that would currently be impossible for you to do in-house.
In a nutshell:
- The digital world has rapidly changed, but it doesn’t mean that you need to get left behind.
- Your customers’ expectations are changing but technologies are also evolving and adapting. Leverage these!
- Be agile in your approach and bring your customers along in the journey. In the long term, they will appreciate it.
Ultimately, there are two essential considerations for creating a wholistic, ideal and winning customer experience: Product and People. Focus on what you do best and outsource the rest.
Know more about Transformative CX Talks at cxtalks.tdcx.com
Did you like this article about Tech of the Future and Customer Experience?
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