At SGS, it's essential for us to understand how the customer experience drives digital transformation.
Download your copy What is digital transformation and the customer journey concept?

Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, changing the way it operates and the value it delivers to its customers. It should also provide them with a consistent experience whenever and wherever they need it.

In fact, when asked about their decision to implement a digital transformation strategy, nearly half of businesses mentioned customer experience and customer satisfaction as their top reasons for doing so.

Case Study

As an example, at SGS, we created the SGS Online Store to digitalize some of our products and services in response to a demand for new ways of working and buying. One service offered in New Zealand has been particularly successful as an online offering - fleece flock testing.

Since its launch online at the beginning of the year sales of fleece flock testing have increased significantly. And, according to industry research these online customers are now:

  • More likely to try a new product or service from their preferred brand
  • Four times more likely to refer a preferred brand to their network
  • Twice as likely to buy from their preferred brand, even where a competitor has a better product or price

Furthermore, highly engaged customers buy 90% more frequently, spend 60% more per purchase, and have three times the annual value (compared to the average customer).

Customer Journeys: Their Importance & How to Map Them

A customer journey is the complete experience that a customer has with an organization. It encompasses all customer interactions across all channels, devices and touchpoints throughout every stage of the customer life cycle - from awareness to loyalty.

Think about the customer journey around one of your core products. What are the main steps, the touchpoints?

Companies use a wide range of channels to communicate with their customers, but often fail to connect each activity with the customer journey. Sales and marketing strategies become isolated from one another, which leads to a disconnected customer experience.

The customer journey is linked to each instance that the customer comes into direct contact with your company or product:

Map the 7 Phases of the Customer Lifecycle Interactions

The 7 Phases of a Customer Journey

  1. Out-of-market phase - In the out-of-market phase, the customer is looking to improve their business. They want their company, department, or team to be more productive and more efficient.
  2. Trigger - The trigger phase begins once the customer uncovers the opportunity to grow their business. It could be that sales are going down or that customer complaints are growing, but these indicators act as a trigger to changing the way they work.
  3. Initial brand consideration - Once the customer identifies a solution to their problem, they will begin their initial search. A project group, involving all stakeholders will be formed to identify the top brands in their market, to scope the project and to review key functionality and technical requirements - leading to a "long list" of potential solutions.
  4. Active evaluation - The long list becomes a short list once the initial brand review is complete. The customer will then contact each vendor and invite them to a meeting or demo. After the demo, the customer will review solutions based on trust, expertise and scalability.
  5. Purchase decision - The customer chooses a vendor, agrees on a solution and signs the contract. The implementation process begins and an internal "roll out" team is formed. With support from the solution provider, the customer outlines success criteria, KPIs and launch timeline.
  6. Experience - The customer wants to get the solution up and running quickly and for the launch to be as smooth as possible. This involves making sure all users are fully trained and have access to a consultant or account manager for support (when they need it).
  7. Loyalty - After the initial roll out, the customer is happy to see fast results. The provider continues to follow up, implements the solution company-wide and continues to help the customer reach their goals.

Connecting Data & People

Digitizing the customer journey drives new insights by connecting data and people. These insights can be used to:

  1. Automate: operations for efficiency and effectiveness
  2. Digitize: existing products and services
  3. Create: new solutions and business models

Do More with Data - Turn Insight into Action

It's not the collection of data that's useful, it's what you do with it. Emerging capabilities in data analytics, data modeling, machine based learning and natural language processing no longer just filter data into insights but interpret it too.

Customer Experience

If the products and/or services offered are a commodity, it allows you to compete on the user experience.

Digital products and services no longer compete on features or pricing alone. Today, the user experience is a key component in enhancing digital maturity. In a commodity design market, in which your features and price are matched by your competitors, you need to find new ways to build a connection with your users.

Now more than ever, commodity designs need to create emotional connections with users to keep them connected to the brand. If appropriate, add some memorable copy and subtle animations, that reward users for completing tasks, to your marketing materials. Use color and typography in ways that create stronger associations.

Customer Experience Management

Service design drives a holistic understanding of the customer experience. It is the process of creating touchpoints, defining how they interact with each other and the user. Using design tools and methods can deliver an in-depth understanding of user behaviors, their likes and their needs, which can enable new solutions to be developed.

Service design makes you a pioneer of customer experience management.

CX, CEM and Service Design synergies

Digital Life Cycle

Service design uses four phases: prepare, understand, create, develop. You can work through all or some of the phases, depending on what suits your project.

Conclusion: Engage, Meet Expectations

Digital transformation offers organizations an opportunity to engage buyers and deliver on their expectations of a seamless customer experience regardless of channel or place.

That said, digitally transforming your business can be quite complex but SGS Digital & Innovation has many solutions in the pipeline:

  • Innovation Factory - our quick validation machine, doing Problem Fit, Solution Fit and Market Fit
  • Innovation Lab - to help create an innovation thesis and ideate around it
  • Incubation - our venture build mechanism based on Lean Startup methodology
  • SGS Innovation Fund - our investment vehicle for startups
  • Partnerships - our vehicle for partnerships and open innovation

We already offer solutions including:

  • Online Store - our e-commerce store uses online channels for new sales and transactions
  • Tech Centers - IoT Center & Cybersecurity Center
  • Viima Ideation Platform - an idea challenge mechanism which allows employees to submit ideas and get funding
  • SGS Academy - enabling client sot select and book training courses online

Ambition

Our ambition to map 30% of customer journeys by 2023 means digitizing existing products and services and improving the customer experience.

How to get started:

  1. Think cloud - Instead of purchasing on-site solutions, think cloud solutions first. They enable you to be agile and meet customer demands quickly. In addition, you're automatically updated to the latest features.
  2. Personalize - Customers expect a personalized experience. Use the data in your CRM to evaluate previous correspondence, purchase history and their behavior to give them just that.
  3. Integrate - Customers want seamless experiences regardless of channel. Consider how you tie all the digital channels you have in your company together in order to provide a single, integrated, user-friendly customer experience.

Focusing on these three factors, will help your organization to embrace the new digital landscape, exceed customer expectations, and improve the overall customer experience.

Want to understand and digitalize your customer journey?

SGS's Digital Innovation team can help you analyze and improve the customer experience.

For all enquiries and information:

Siddi Wouters
Senior Vice President Digital & Innovation at SGS Contact us

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Disclaimer

SGS SA published this content on 28 September 2021 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 28 September 2021 12:41:03 UTC.