Digital first strategies

I had great fun today with @NeilDavey from MyCustomer and fellow guests Neel Davda and Faran Niaz discussing "How to ensure your digital first strategy is also customer first".

Thanks for your kind comments afterwards @RichardBrimble @TimHughes which encouraged me to write up some of the Q&A to go with my article https://www.mycustomer.com/service/channels/how-to-overcome-the-biggest-obstacle-to-digital-first-service-with-one-simple which explains the diagram you can see above.

These are just my comments - since I was concentrating, I didn't take notes of Neel and Faran's excellent points. Hopefully they can add them below.

Q1.???????We’ve obviously seen a tremendous push towards digital, driven out of necessity due to the pandemic, over the past 18 months.?What are the most common digital service shortcomings that have really become more apparent as the use of digital has increased??

My three points are: the war for talent, joined up strategy and assistance & reassurance built in.

The pandemic realisation that business depends on digital, be it grocery, automotive or home delivery, means talent is in high demand. Tech jobs and their variants in cloud software configuration, analytics and user experience particularly. But also through to front line staff in contact centres and operations. Attraction bonuses and gazumping salaries from head hunters have caused retention bonuses, every kind of perk including free food and every kind of working flexibility that a person can imagine. For the foreseeable future there will be an inability to simply add headcount - hence digital solutions are a hot topic.

Joined up strategy can refer to many aspects, but in particular to the "stairway to heaven" or at least the perfect journey. I refer you to the article link above for a fuller explanation. Essentially the customer's objective is to stay where they started, avoiding any problems, but solving them there and then if so. After all the "best service is no service"! Leaders are focused on staying up the stairway and intelligence from the contact centre is used to inform how to do this.

Whilst mountains were moved in the first few weeks and months of the pandemic, apps, sites and supporting channels need to be consolidated to include the necessary assistance and reassurance in situ. I don't want to have to email you or chat or call. I want the process to include relevant assistance and appropriate answers in situ, where I am in the process. If something needs to be confirmed then the app should confirm, follow up with email or text and be very clear.

Q2.???????Research by the Institute of Customer Service suggests that while customers were quite forgiving of digital problems during the early stages of the pandemic, they are now tired of COVID being used as an excuse for poor service. What are the implications for customer relationships if businesses are still struggling with elements of their digital customer service performance as we move into 2022?

My 3 points are: business continuity, revenues and being wiped out.

Customers have shown they are at least as willing, if not more than many businesses, to use good digital channels. The pandemic won't be over next year, so fuller & fresher business continuity planning is still a high priority so that seamless service will be provided in the event of the next issues, be they due to covid, brexit or other labour shortages.

Losing revenues to those who do have good digital solutions is self evident. But the number of perfect journeys experienced is still very small. Try buying anything online and your time is seldom the seller's priority. Cookie permissions, identity & access, search quality - the good sites stand out very quickly.

And add to that the rapid emergence of new players who take advantage of the technologies now available, plus consumer shifts in behaviour. You can't move but for seeing Cinch and Cazoo adverts in automotive for example. The new entrants have big marketing budgets and offer big salaries, share options and excitement to that scarce tech talent.

Q3.????Organisations were of course striving to achieve?a “digital-first” approach to customer service long before the pandemic. Could you tell us about some of the biggest benefits of a digital-first approach to service?

My 3 points are: scaling up, word of mouth and trust in the brand.

By the nature of getting digital to work well, the number of customers contacting you through any channel should grow smaller. Really focusing on contacts per customer has been core to Amazon's success over 25 years. Customers don't want to contact you any more than you want to grow a whole customer contact business. The management time, investment and talent searching required in growing and scaling up the contact part of the organisation is huge - to avoid it is highly valuable. As well as being ideal to the customers, they will then sell your services for you for free through word of mouth, saving a fortune in advertising. And if your brand is about differentiation, service, trust, ease of doing business - it's seldom not - then where you stand in the market is self supporting, again saving positioning and branding effort.

Q4. There were 3 questions about mindset, cultural/technical/structural changes required and obstacles to making digital first strategies work.

Whilst there are many factors in the complex system which is customer experience, my one start point is leadership. In 4 ways: "I don't know", detail, closed loop and stamina.

Getting digital to work is about designing the 'right answers'. Customers behave in strange and wonderful ways and the only way to find out what good looks like, is to test and learn. That culture starts with executives and managers being prepared to say "I don't know" the answers, we have to test and learn to find out. Good customer experiences are defined by customers, not companies. This requires attention to detail. Both in using the analytics available as well as understanding the data they produce. And what happens to customers dealing with your business. Some senior people are out of practice with detail.

Closed loop improvement cycles are common, but not always productive. It requires senior leadership to lead these cycles and keep the focus on those who cause contact, not just the people who handle it. And it takes stamina to keep on doing this year after year. Not just looking for silver bullets and the latest tech, but staying with the basics of continuous improvement through collaboration across the business.

Q5.?????? How can organisations ensure that if they decide to commit to a digital-first strategy, that it will also benefit the customers?

My simple point to a very broad question would be to treat money (costs and revenues) as the side effect of digital, not the objective. The primary objective is the perfect journey.

Do get in touch if you'd like to discuss the topic further or do a work out on the stairway illustrated above.