5 best practices for a successful business transformation

Change can be scary. For businesses especially, a radical change that impacts people, tools and infrastructure can have adverse business effects if it is not executed properly, resulting in increased cost, lost productivity and potentially lost revenue.

Embarking on digital transformation is a transition that spans all aspects of an organization, including technology, strategy and culture. Because of this, it is not something that happens overnight, but rather takes thoughtful planning, preparation, coordination and support from all business stakeholders.

Only through approaching the stages of digital transformation methodically from the ideation phase through realization can this process result in cost savings, increased scalability and enhanced agility for the organization.

Here are five of the most important best practises that you shouldn’t miss when taking your business into the digital spectrum.

1. Embrace the cloud

The first step in any successful digital transformation is to embrace the cloud and what it can do for your organization. For example, according to a DMG Consulting report, the Cloud-Based Contact Center Infrastructure (CBCCI) market has increased its number of seats by 20.1% between 2017 and 2018. This means that if you haven’t started looking to transition your contact center platform to the cloud, you are most likely already falling behind your peers and competitors.

Why should you care? Studies show that businesses that build or migrate their contact centers to the cloud present a 83% higher likelihood to have a formal process for assessing agent productivity, as well as a reduction of 27% in costs and 35% in downtime. Additionally, they have a 4.5% customer abandonment rate in comparison to a 6.2% experienced by organizations with an on-premises solution. These results free up valuable resources for organizations to invest in where they are going, versus sinking more cost into obsolete technology and broken processes that hinder innovation.

Overall, migrating to the cloud not only translates into cost savings and better customer experience, but also an improved scalability and flexibility, as well as easiness to adapt and update whenever needed.

2. Focus on customer experience

Today’s customers demand that every interaction with your brand provide them with real time, quick, accurate experiences, whether it be speaking with an agent, in store, through your mobile app, on social media or any other channel. Studies find that companies with a customer experience mindset drive revenue 4-8% higher than the rest of their industries.

If customer experience is a top priority for your organization, it is important that your digital expansion strategy begins with identifying the right type of interactions to direct to the most appropriate channel to handle that request. You only have one chance to execute on a digital channel before customers leave or escalate to another, more costly channel.

Start by analyzing the urgency and emotion attached to the issue your customer is experiencing, and then direct them to the best channel for them to solve their problem quickly. Then you can ensure your customer has a positive and fast experience with your organization with the lowest level of effort.

3. Pay attention to metrics

Leading organizations in every industry are wielding data and analytics as competitive weapons. Leveraging data to identify which areas of your customer experience need to be improved and understanding the impact of those improvements is essential for maintaining a competitive advantage and adapting to shifts in industry trends.

Having the ability to scale these insights with automations and embedded Artificial Intelligence can exponentially enhance your access to the right information at the right time, leading to reduced costs and improved performance throughout your customer service organization.

Enterprises that embrace the rich offerings in the data analytics realm for their support organization will be in the best position to take advantage of these efficiencies and have enhanced insight to act on important business decisions while others are scrambling to keep up. Data analytics clearly witness improved productivity, which in turn enhances important business decisions.

4. Do not neglect security and compliance

While a successful digital transformation project requires innovation and change, the importance of security and compliance should not be disregarded in the pursuit. In 2018, Gartner predicted that 60% of digital businesses would suffer major service failures by 2020 due to the inability of security teams to manage digital risk. According to a survey by Fortinet, 85% of chief information security officers view security issues related to digital transformation as having a somewhat to extremely large effect on their companies.

These statistics show how investments in transformative technologies and strategies, such as a digital expansion, are meaningless if the organization cannot protect the business, its customers or other vital assets. The challenge and concern for security teams should always be on how to add security at the speed of digital transformation and ensure that it covers every new digital process.

5. Take it on the go

The average person spends more than four hours a day on their phone. Additionally, for most generations, three of those hours are dedicated to social media and messaging applications. The same study also tells us that nearly half of mobile users switch to a competitor instead, after a bad experience with a company’s mobile site.

Social media and mobile interaction are currently primary elements of a successful digital transformation. No longer do businesses need to stick to bi-directional interactions that usually take longer than expected and lower the experience for the consumer.

Social media means that businesses have an easy, fast. accessible and available presence with their users, while mobility means that the consumer can interact with businesses whenever and wherever they want to.

You will notice that all recommendations covered above have one thing in common: competitive advantage. Digital transformation is not an option or a fashion anymore – It is actually a way for organizations to survive nowadays and make customer service exponentially better. After understanding how and when your organization should transform and what it means in terms of customer experience, you can then start thinking on how to fit technology into it – And you’ll be glad to know Talkdesk will be there for you all the way through.

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