Three ways to beat your “born digital” competitors -- with enterprise communications and more.
The enterprise communications industry is undergoing a silent, invisible revolution. This time it's not being driven by a technology shift but by a fundamental change in the way business gets done. Every business process has been completely re-imagined to work in a digital world. Mostly the imagination and innovation in every sector has come from companies that didn't exist five years ago -- companies that were "born digital."
In financial services, for example, banks are struggling to deal with an explosion in digital currency exchanges driven by Bitcoin. Uber and Airbnb use software to connect customers with service providers directly, transforming the taxi and hospitality industries, respectively. Entire functions have been disrupted. Software from marketing automation companies like Marketo and HubSpot have turned marketing from an art into a science. The born digital companies are turning entire industries upside down, voraciously taking share and market cap from their traditional competitors.
Many traditional businesses are struggling to adapt by simply adding a digital veneer to their old processes. But as Gartner has said, "A digital business is not the decade-old concept of e-business in a new wrapper. It is a radically different and more disruptive change." In this context, if your digital strategy is simply to add new channels to the contact center, you are probably doing the digital version of Titanic deckchair reconfiguration.
The contact center in many cases delivers an analog experience in a digital world. Time and time again, when analog and digital technologies collide, digital wins and analog dies. We have seen this in telephony, in music, in TV... and now in every sector. So what does digital transformation mean for enterprise communications? Here are three suggestions on how you can help your business compete against born digital companies.
1. Help build your company's digital business architecture
If your business is to survive and thrive, you need to start with imagining how to build new digital processes that remove customer friction and increase productivity. Work across the company to define the business outcomes you want to achieve. Then take a digital-first approach to achieve them. Map out your customers' digital journeys and focus on removing seams and friction from interactions.
Literally start with a blank sheet of paper. That is what your e-commerce and born digital competitors are doing. Think about customer journeys that start with Web and mobile, and only then decide how voice, video, and chat communications may help on those journeys. Allow your customers to choose how, when, and where they communicate with you. Build context with an objective of knowing what they want before they want it. The convergence of machine learning and real-time communications makes this possible, bringing us to a new age of predictive communications.
2. Innovate on a born digital technology stack
At Altocloud, our customers in e-commerce and inside sales are not building traditional contact centers. They are integrating our cloud-based services into their digital business processes using lightweight APIs. There is no IT project, no server, no computer-telephony integration. They expect one-click integrations with the rest of their digital stack such as e-commerce platforms like Magento and WooCommerce as well as digital marketing platforms like Marketo and HubSpot. Similarly when Uber wanted to connect passengers and drivers, it didn't build a dispatch contact center, but rather used Twilio's API for telephone numbers and SMS to connect them directly. Partner with your digital business colleagues to build services quickly on a born digital tech stack. If you don't, they will do it without you.
3. Connect your best people to your digital business architecture
Technology is analog but people are digital. Digital businesses are laser focused on providing the most relevant content to the right customers at the right point in the funnel. But your best (and most expensive) content is your people and their expertise. By integrating your customer communications into your digital strategy, you can make the right communications offers to your Web and mobile customers at the right time. In addition, you can deliver Web and mobile context to your employees so that they are empowered to help your customers achieve the desired outcome. No waiting, no queues, no friction.
Around the world customers and prospects make 45 billion calls each year to businesses. That's 45 billion customer interactions that have a huge impact on metrics that are critical to a digital business: customer acquisition cost, satisfaction, conversion rate, churn, and Net Promoter Score. By taking a digital-first approach, you can ensure that every customer journey is a positive experience -- leading to positive business outcomes for your company.
For more of Altocloud's thoughts on the customer journey, catch Lawrence Byrd, software technology evangelist, at Enterprise Connect 2015 in Orlando March 16 to 19. He'll be participating in a panel session, "Managing the Customer Journey." You also can find Altocloud in the expo hall.
