Are your online customers satisfied? Key takeouts from DigitalDisrupt NZ 2017

Business leaders recently gathered to share the progress and challenges New Zealand organisations are experiencing as they attempt to transform their organisations to leverage digital technologies.

CXOs from leading New Zealand businesses discussed how digital disruption was affecting their businesses. Presenters and panel participants offered their views on:

  • Digital technology and what it means for their business strategies
  • Techniques to drive digital innovation and business agility
  • The role of digital in omnichannel customer experience
  • How people and culture can develop to support digital transformation

Where brands are falling down and how it’s costing them

Data from SAP’s 2017 Digital Experience report shows brands are still failing when it comes to creating digital experiences that meet customer expectations.

Further, the report illustrated the strong correlation between good DX and customer advocacy and loyalty.

By understanding what areas are most important to DX customers, brands can leverage their digital investment effectively. The top three digital experience attributes (in terms of importance to customers) were:

  • Safe and secure
  • Cohesive, integrated and
  • Allows me to interact anytime
Yet, consumers surveyed rated theses attributes a poor 56%, 24% and 32%, respectively, in terms of their current satisfaction.

Many New Zealand organisations will need to invest to win over their customers and to draw near their international competition.

(Comprehensive survey results will be available shortly from SAP. Survey results compared consumers digital experiences provided by leading brands across multiple industry sectors and show changes from the previous report released in 2016.)

Let’s get up to speed: transformation starts with the CFO

The pace of today’s digital change requires organisations to update the way they plan and govern digital programmes and projects. This also means financial governance models need to support today’s digital ways of working.

With new players changing the marketplace and the rules of engagement, taking six months to create a business plan that defines a complete set of product feature requirements for an 18-month delivery roadmap is no longer a suitable approach to drive innovation.

Effective governance provides flexibility while maintaining a degree of control over business investment, KPIs and metrics.

Digital products and developing customer-centric digital experiences requires iterative development, data-driven decision making, rapid feedback loops, user experience testing, and agile development.

Because digital investment is a component of achieving wider business objectives -- revenue, retention, acquisition, loyalty, etc. -- CFOs should assign a percentage of the overall budget to achieve digital development goals, step back and let the digital teams carry out the work. 

 

Remember the importance of your data

The ability to gather and manipulate data is a massive challenge for any business to get right.

In many cases, data is still often held in silos across the organisation making it difficult to respond to the market. However, it’s time create effective data management. Otherwise, your business plan will be based on minimal data or limited customer product interaction, leaving teams delivering a list of features that customers don't want.

Digital native business hold the advantage right now as they’ve built data structures and customer platforms from the ground up. For other organisations, the game changer is getting the board of directors and executive teams to prioritise data management as product teams need multiple sources of data to inform product direction.

 

Use your insights to drive experimentation

Experimentation is the key to delivering better digital experiences as we move forward.

Lack of focus in the face of competing priorities is a key reason that large organisations fail to gain traction and innovate effectively.

The “fail-fast” mentality has evolved to “learn-fast.” Tracking needs to be baked into every product design and implemented effectively. In turn this means businesses need to be prepared to kill projects that can’t be or aren’t delivering against agreed KPIs. 

While it’s hard to pull the plug on pet projects, data should drive the decision to invest further in or shut down new initiatives.

 

If you want to stay in the game, respect and retain consumer trust

With consumers allowing businesses greater access to their data, there is a strong temptation for businesses to commercialise their data. 

One of the advantages that incumbent businesses do hold over their start-up competitors is that they have built up a large degree of trust with their customer base. This is especially so in financial services where many of us have had relationships with our banks for decades ...

Businesses that are in this position need to be respectful of the value of this trust. No revenue upside would be worth erosion of trust from a breach of data. Data security remains critical! So while there are opportunities for incumbent organisations to monetise data, it’s essential that your customers’ right to data privacy is upheld at all times.

By investing in better ways to control and manage data, businesses can satisfy customer demand for innovative products while providing data compliance.

 

Keep your eye on AI and ecommerce innovation

In 2012, Amazon patented predictive modelling. They now believe that they can predict what their customers will order within 97% accuracy before they’ve actually ordered it. 

Combined with drone delivery, this presents a real challenge to all other retailers, ecommerce and bricks and mortar alike. Read more on how e-commerce giants are leveraging emerging technologies.

It’s not just within ecommerce retail that AI is driving change. Within the insurance sector, for example, AI continues to drive product innovation that will ultimately radically change the way we transact with our insurance providers.

Current live examples of change in action include: Metromile who offer a pay per mile insurance, Trov that enables consumers to insurance single items on a pay-as-you-go basis, and Sure that uses AI to deliver a truly mobile-centric customer insurance experience.

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Solnet sponsored OmniChannel’s DigitalDisrupt 2017 event held at the Stamford Plaza on November 22 in Auckland. If you want to know more about us and what we do, download our whitepaper on Digital Transformation.