Building Your Digital Foundations to Meet Growing Customer Expectations

On Black Fri­day 2015 in the Nordics, the num­ber of parcels sent increased by 48 per­cent when com­pared with 2014. Nor­way expe­ri­enced the biggest increase, with an 83 per­cent increase over 2014. Online com­merce seems here to stay, and pur­chas­es were up 23 per­cent last year, mak­ing Nordic e‑commerce a EUR 15.6 bil­lion indus­try. In the first quar­ter of 2015, Nordic region shop­pers spent SEK 365 bil­lion, a 7 per­cent increase over the same peri­od last year.

Cus­tomers are shop­ping more online with all their smart, con­nect­ed devices and demand­ing more. Cus­tomers every­where are real­is­ing that they want their dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences to be:

• Per­son­alised. They want the brand to know their buy­ing his­to­ry and inter­ests and to do its best to pre­dict what it is they are look­ing for. This has to be done care­ful­ly, sat­is­fy­ing cus­tomer demand while also com­ply­ing with pri­va­cy rules and cus­tomer com­fort levels.
• Rel­e­vant. While all cus­tomers may not yet be able to artic­u­late this desire, they want the brand to know every step of their jour­ney as a cus­tomer and to antic­i­pate their needs. If they are respond­ing to an email about a shoe sale, they expect to be tak­en to the shoe sale page, not the brand’s home­page. Mis­di­rect­ed links like that can cost you cus­tomers. The data is avail­able to show you all aspects of the customer’s dig­i­tal jour­ney, but care must be tak­en in using that data so the cus­tomer doesn’t feel stalked.
• Real time. Users all across the globe are com­ing to expect real-time and just-in-time encoun­ters, even those who are con­cerned about pri­va­cy. They want their apps to under­stand and even antic­i­pate their needs in a secure envi­ron­ment and they expect to be able to start a shop­ping expe­ri­ence on their smart­phone and then con­tin­ue it where they left off on their tablet or laptop.

Many cus­tomers still don’t under­stand the com­plex­i­ty involved in deliv­er­ing these lev­els of per­son­alised expe­ri­ences, nor do they realise the kinds of data that must be col­lect­ed in order to pro­vide this kind of cus­tomer dig­i­tal jour­ney. The more you can edu­cate your cus­tomer about the rea­sons you are col­lect­ing per­son­al data and mon­i­tor­ing dig­i­tal behav­iour, the greater accep­tance and trust you will get.

Nordic mar­keters and IT pro­fes­sion­als are encoun­ter­ing a seri­ous chal­lenge to make per­son­alised, rel­e­vant, and real-time expe­ri­ences that are con­sis­tent across all their dig­i­tal chan­nels and many are dis­cov­er­ing that hav­ing a con­sis­tent, end-to-end dig­i­tal foun­da­tion is vital to suc­cess in today’s world. They are real­is­ing that they need to tran­si­tion their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion from one of frag­ment­ed parts to a uni­fied foundation.

Usu­al­ly, the cre­ation of a dig­i­tal foun­da­tion starts with mar­keters and IT depart­ments doing lots of back-end work, rely­ing on mul­ti­ple ven­dors, groups, and prod­ucts. These sys­tems often have their own data for­mats, process­es, and pro­ce­dures, which requires a tremen­dous amount of inte­gra­tion work, chal­leng­ing resources, and the secu­ri­ty of their cus­tomer data. The result is often a frag­ment­ed, bug-prone, com­plex sys­tem that can affect your time-to-market.

Here are some fac­tors to con­sid­er as you plan your dig­i­tal transformation:

• Reduce com­plex­i­ty by using an inte­grat­ed platform.
• Use the right com­bi­na­tion of ana­lyt­ic tools. Don’t col­lect or study data you don’t need.
• Con­sol­i­date and opti­mise com­pa­ny infra­struc­ture and oper­a­tions where pos­si­ble to improve agili­ty, flex­i­bil­i­ty, and con­sis­ten­cy in the cus­tomer experience.
• Con­sid­er the needs of the IT and mar­ket­ing func­tions while design­ing your sys­tem. Cre­ate an envi­ron­ment that forms a part­ner­ship between mar­ket­ing and IT, using each department’s strengths appropriately.
• Under­stand your cus­tomers. How are they using your dig­i­tal assets and chan­nels? How is their use of devices chang­ing in your region? Does your con­cept of the cus­tomer jour­ney for your busi­ness account for all the pos­si­ble touch points and devices, both online and offline?
• Plan for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of con­tin­u­ing the customer’s dig­i­tal jour­ney in the store with dis­plays or a kiosk that knows what they have done so far.
• Under­stand your bar­ri­ers and risk factors.
• Cre­ate a sys­tem that is agile and can respond quick­ly to chang­ing direc­tions in cus­tomer behaviour.

To be able to dri­ve this change, it’s impor­tant to iden­ti­fy quick wins along the way. This will help build the momen­tum in the orga­ni­za­tion to sup­port these mind­set changes, as well as to cre­ate the moti­va­tion and the will­ing­ness to invest the time and effort.

Get help in areas you need it when design­ing and imple­ment­ing your dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and build­ing your dig­i­tal foun­da­tion. Be sure you use the best prac­tis­es to cre­ate uni­form, con­sis­tent, per­son­alised, rel­e­vant, real-time, con­text-based cus­tomer expe­ri­ences across all chan­nels and touch points for your cus­tomers that are secure and address cus­tomer com­fort levels.

The effort is great, but the rewards can be sol­id loy­al­ty to your brand, sat­is­fied cus­tomers, and a for­ward-look­ing design that can adjust to a fast-chang­ing, tech­no­log­i­cal world.