Getting to know the ‘Digital You’

In the past, organizations primarily resorted to face-to-face interactions to engage with their clients.

As more and more consumers embraced online shopping using computers, and recently, smartphones and tablets, organizations had to revamp their strategies to cater to shifting shopping and commerce patterns.

Digital enterprises, organizations whose entire operations run online, don’t have brick-and-mortar establishments to physically interact with clients. Their customers are the “Digital You:” our digital footprint, the virtual persona each of us have across all channels—including digital communications and access, digital finance and payment, digital commerce, social media and browsing history.

In such an environment where the entire interaction happens digitally, the Digital You’s journey in the virtual space is the only thing that matters.

It is the only factor that determines if the consumer will ever avail himself of the digital enterprise’s products or services, either now or in the future.

Digital enterprises must be sure they can deliver the best customer experience throughout the Digital You’s journey.

They need to be “customer-obsessed” and focus on improving the user interface of the billing and commerce system, the single system that has the most significant impact on this journey, to optimize the customer experience.

You’re probably saying, “What’s new about that? We’ve been obsessed with our customer experience for years.” But oddly enough, research shows that this obsession has not yet impacted the customer experience enough.

In a recent Forrester Consulting research paper commissioned by Amdocs Optima, 300 IT and business professionals—20 percent of whom came from Asia—provided insights on their current and future billing systems.

According to this research, 58 percent believe that customers want more flexible billing and commerce options.

In addition to meeting customer needs by implementing these options, 45 percent anticipate improving the customer experience; 39 percent expect improvement in customer service and 35 percent predict an increase in customer loyalty and retention.

Moreover, 43 percent believe that a more flexible billing and commerce system will increase operational efficiency and business agility.

These results reinforce the significance of billing and commerce systems in the customer lifecycle. They also show how current systems fail to deliver customer expectations.

In most organizations, billing and commerce systems have traditionally been relegated to the back office, managed by IT professionals who lead ongoing processes and define requirements, scope and capabilities. Sales and marketing teams have limited involvement in defining their desired requirements or in the platform selection process.

This is all changing, with the realization that billing platforms are not merely business support systems, but rather business enablement platforms. Marketing executives should leverage Digital You behavioral data from the billing and commerce platform to improve decision-making processes, enhance the customer journey, and consequently, drive sales in real time.

Predictive analytics not only has the ability to improve customer experience, but also directly impact sales.

In this fast-paced world, we, the Digital Yous, want to connect anytime, anywhere. We insist on real-time interactions, and we expect immediate satisfaction.

Given that Digital Yous are reluctant to commit, often merely engaging in one-time transactions with digital organizations, customer loyalty, and recurring engagements should be digital enterprises’ top priority.

As organizations become “customer-obsessed” and billing and commerce platforms take center stage, digital enterprises will increasingly rely on marketing and sales professionals’ insights, guidance and participation in the system selection process.

By leveraging on these sales and marketing expertise, digital enterprises can optimize the customer experience at every contact point and turn single consumer engagements into an ongoing relationship. —Contributed