An authentic brand resolves problems, supplies exceptional customer journeys and has a strong voice. But what is to be done to retain a strong voice and an exceptional customer journey when the linear customer journey disappeared with the analogue world?
There are many aspects to take into account, but McKinsey has suggested five questions that should be asked in order to get started with your digital transformation:
- Are you thinking customer journey rather than touchpoints?
The starting point for being able to deliver value is to understand the entire customer journey and not just individual touchpoints. The customer’s journey from first contact with the company to purchase and support is often complex. The customer moves freely between website, shop, social media, customer service and other interaction points, which often also means that there are many different departments in the company that are affected by the customer’s journey. It is not uncommon that these different departments have no check on each other and consequently have no information on what the customer has been doing on these occasions. The customer on the other hand, who is neither affected by nor cares about internal structures, expects the company to present a uniform image. The challenge for the employees is to learn to consider the overall picture and obtain the right tools to move beyond silo thinking, which many are currently grappling with. This is to enable delivery of uniform, timely and relevant content as a part of a complete customer journey. - How useful is the data you have?
The amount of data is rarely a problem for companies. The problem is rather, as stated, that the data is often located in different places and owned by the different departments. The overall picture of the customer is therefore not complete. Instead companies need to focus on creating a 360 degree view of customer data which will become the holy source of customer insight. The key is to gather in data from employee and customer surveys, social media, order history, online behaviour and advertising. This is so that there is agreement within the company on a common picture of how the customer is to be viewed. - Do you understand why your customers do what they do?
Data provides enormous opportunities to gain access to how the customer acts and to understand what will generate additional purchases. Using smart AI-based tools which enable advanced analyses of, for example, free text responses in a customer survey, gives the employees access to data packaged in a more user friendly format. This enables a move away from generic data such as geographic distribution, age and gender, which has long been the information available. In today’s fast-paced society, it is also important that customer surveys are conducted more frequently as customers’ behaviour is constantly changing. - How relevant is the communication and interaction?
The art is to subsequently convert the insights which all data generates into communication. In order to actually have an impact, specific activities, implemented at company level have to be produced. How do we want to communicate with our customers? In which channels do we encounter them? How are we to launch innovations most effectively? So as not to risk ending up in silo thinking again, automated tools that are programmed to activate different actions when the customer acts in a certain way can be used to advantage. The company can thus work proactively with coherent communication in relation to customers.
- Have you got the right person in the right position?
To be able to break silo thinking and work uniformly with the customer journey, companies need to ensure that they have the right persons in the right place. It is becoming increasingly common to work cross-functionally between different departments. I.e. that persons from different departments, with different skills, are put together in new teams which have to work together to ensure a more precise customer journey. Talent analyses are just one of numerous tools that can help to identify employees’ strengths, what motivates them and what drives their willingness to perform, and thus be able to put together successful teams.