The onset of the pandemic has proven the value of digital agility for business continuity. Even before the pandemic, two-thirds of CEOs had plans to focus on digital transformation strategies to improve the customer experience according to IDC. Yet, while the pandemic has forced companies to speed up new digital transformation initiatives, many are still lagging.
Digital agility refers to the ease and speed at which an organization can adapt their processes. With digital transformation, innovation is happening more quickly than ever before and companies need to adopt new strategies and technology to become more digitally agile to stay ahead of the competitors. Digitally-agile companies can improve internal operations and processes to help empower employees to deliver a great customer experience.
This will be a defining year for digital transformation, and companies that don’t have the agility to keep up will fall behind, and eventually fail. Today, it is imperative that companies close the digital agility gap to empower employees with the tools and knowledge to keep delivering superior digital experiences.
Using intuitive solutions that solve real problems
Most organizations consider that digital agility is just implementing new digital tools to improve processes and operations. While that’s part of it, technology isn’t magic—organizations have to do the legwork to identify key pain points and find the right technology solutions to help solve them. A major misstep organizations take is putting the cart before the horse by getting the fancy new tech to keep up with trends then figuring out what issues it will address afterward.
Before making any new technology purchases, start by asking: ‘What can my organization do better?’ Do we struggle with internal communications and want to help employees stay more connected? Do we want to move customers through the funnel faster? What new challenges have been experienced as a result of COVID-19? A great way to go about this is to conduct an employee or customer survey to get a better understanding of any potential issues that exist.
Once the research is done and pain points are uncovered, look for user-friendly solutions to address these issues. Organizations will also need to spend some time training employees how to use any new technology to ensure adoption. If a new tech solution is too difficult to use, organizations will waste key resources on unused tech. Low- and no-code tools are great options for both technical and non-technical employees because they can help them adapt to tech more easily and empower them to tackle new challenges for their customers. When employees are empowered, they’re better able to make critical changes and keep up with ever-changing customer expectations.
Streamlining customer processes
With effective digital transformation and an agile mindset, organizations can help employees streamline processes with automated workflows. This, in turn, frees up time in their day to focus on customer interactions and experiences.
Digital transformation initiatives can streamline the customer pipeline to ensure fast, personalized responses, with increased efficiency. With the right tools and an integrated workflow, the customer funnel can be automated from initial awareness all the way through to purchase. When an agile, digital-first approach is taken from the onset, customer onboarding is seamless and the process for intake forms, documents, quotes, and even eSignatures is completely frictionless. Keeping customers pleased and consistently meeting their expectations creates an improved overall experience and helps with customer retention.
In addition, by using these tools consistently for customer communications, organizations ensure the experience remains smooth while freeing up employees’ time to focus on building better customer relationships and solving higher-level challenges. Most importantly, employees will be able to continue providing these exemplary experiences from anywhere—in the office or at home.
Bolstering the bottom line
Ultimately, it is every businesses’ goal to bolster the bottom line, especially during a trying year. Digital agility is key to achieving this as it gives organizations a competitive edge. By empowering employees to offer better experiences and build strong rapport with customers, businesses can foster loyalty and satisfaction to ensure customers keep coming back. Building loyalty can go a long way in growing revenue: according to Bain & Company, just a 5% increase in customer retention can result in a 25% increase in profits.
In the pandemic era, businesses have had no choice but to adapt. Those who prioritized new tech adoption quickly were able to benefit from ongoing business continuity with little to no impact on the customer experience. By becoming more digitally agile, organizations won’t just survive—they will thrive.
Moving forward, it’s essential that organizational leaders take a step back and ask the tough questions about what more can be done to create more robust experiences for employees as they continue to delight customers. If organizations can determine their key pain points before implementing the right tech to help solve it, they are setting themselves as well as employees and stakeholders up for long-term success.
