Why customer experience is the stake in digital innovation

Customers are the reason we innovate. We want to streamline our processes and delivery-to-market to facilitate a more enjoyable and seamless experience. This creates the glue businesses need to ensure customers keep coming back.

Because although people may initially come for the product (if they hear and believe it’s effective), the relationship between provider and customer is what creates longevity. I think this is because customers, whether they're conscious of it or not, invest in the experience that surrounds the product or service, rather than the object itself.

Key to an improved customer experience is deploying the necessary technology to shorten the design cycle - the time between original thinking and market delivery. This ensures there are fewer barriers between the customer and the outcome they’re seeking.?

Digital upgrades shift perspectives

For every digital upgrade or process refresh, the customer is on the receiving end of the business that is transformed by it.

As an example, let’s look at the emergence of embedded banking within the fintech industry. By incorporating traditional banking tools like credit cards and checking accounts into non-financial platforms like a marketplace or retailer, embedded banking enables businesses to manage customer data more securely.

This replaces the need for an army of insecure data-collection touchpoints and caters to the new reality where customers now rely on their smartphones for payments and other banking services. Both the business and customer are saved valuable time and resources, at the hands of digital innovation.

Technology can therefore streamline data collection processes to enable greater customer experience. This, in tandem with improved efficiency across the supply chain, helps shift a company’s perspective on future innovations. The company has a newfound understanding of available technologies as well as how they affect delivery processes and customer experience.

Attitudes towards innovation

It’s apparent that not everyone innovates or takes the time to reflect on the effects of digital transformation.

In fact, research from McKinsey shows that while 84% of CEOs believe innovation is essential for growth, only 6% are satisfied with their innovation performance. Believing in the merit of something and taking the actionable steps to see it through are two different things.

I think a key barrier to a company being able to innovate comes down to P&L. For instance, a company may be dealing with a key shareholder who wants out because targets haven’t been met or they may be struggling with supply chain shortages.

What I think is even more interesting is the fact that there are companies that want to improve and deliver the best product possible but can’t because of a lack of congruence around where priority spending should go.

In my experience, a company’s appetite to innovate is often driven by the “creators” in a business, be it scientists, engineers, or designers. The people responsible for creating the tangible product are often where the original thinking for innovation starts.

But their creativity and ambition are likely reeled in by the CEO, COO or CTO, who have conflicts of interest as to where company spending should be directed.

Then, there are companies that have the financial capability, but don’t see a need to innovate because there is a lack of competition in their market vertical.

Companies in this situation are often not as concerned about innovating to improve customer experience because they know their target consumer is without a wealth of choice. This comes back to why I believe customer experience is the key stake in digital innovation. If there is no pull or push to improve it, digital innovation slips in the list of priorities.

Tasks made easy

If companies don’t deploy new technology, or embrace technology, they’ll become obsolete. The Harvard Business Review found that 52% of companies between the years of 2000 and 2017 became ineffective due to a struggle to keep pace with digital developments.

Customers are forever seeking faster, better and cheaper ways to get tasks done. Even if a small business like a grocery store doesn’t have self-checkout, it will likely lose customers to the shop next door that does. Why would customers want to wait around in a queue when there is a much more efficient option available?

Artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithm-based technology are other key players in enabling greater task efficiency. Today, such innovations are often used to identify shipments of packaging, geographical whereabouts (e.g. Google maps) and curated recommended content on social platforms - to name a few.

In all these examples, the innovation is the action that enables a consumer’s task to be easier and more seamless. They don’t need to live in the dark on the progress of a postal delivery, be expected to remember the quickest route to a destination or go to a great deal of effort to find more content creators similar to what they’ve been enjoying. The task is made more efficient with technology.

With worldwide spending on digital transformation expected to reach $2.3 trillion in 2023 , I’m excited to see how digital innovations continue to improve lives by making day-to-day tasks easier.

In everything a business does, the customer is somewhere on the other end. Even if, on the surface, digital innovation is implemented to smooth out internal communication processes, the customer will be affected by the businesses’ ability to unite and deliver a consistent output and experience.

Customer needs are the petrol that powers the original thinking for innovation and the technology deployed to act on it is what enhances customer experience.?

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