Examples and Types: A Definition of Business Transformation

Key Points

Improving every point of customer interaction with your business and every experience that a customer has is the best way to increase loyalty and revenue. CX transformations include hundreds of changes that you can implement to increase revenue for your business. This post discusses some of them and highlights the following points: 

• What's the impact of digital transformation on customer experience?

• What are some examples of successful digital transformations that improve customer experience?

• How do artificial intelligence and machine learning support business transformation?

• What's the impact of cultural change on business transformation?

Business Transformation and Digitalization

Next, let's take a look at digital transformation. We continue to see disruptions in the form of e-commerce, changing communication patterns, and social media marketing. 

Digital transformation is basically an umbrella term that covers current and future changes in technology that must occur to remain up-to-date with your customer's preferences and needs. It refers to changes in your businesses because of the changing behavior of consumers. 

For example, more and more clients use social media platforms. Therefore, for many businesses, the best way to reach potential clients is through social media. Social media helps them to accurately target and market their products to the right audience. To do that, a company has to switch from traditional, local advertising to online advertising. 

What’s the Impact of Digital Transformation on Customer Experience?

According to research by PwC, 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. This makes a lot of sense. A better customer experience can turn one-time customers into loyal customers and improve the ROI for companies. So, how can you improve customer experience through digital transformations? 

Here are some very basic examples of customer centricity: 

• Interacting on social media platforms provides users with an easy way to communicate with your brand at a place where they're most comfortable.

• Adding a chat option on your website can increase conversions between your brand and your customers.

• Automating all customer communications with a customer relationship management (CRM) platform lets you keep track of relevant customer data for all of your day-to-day customer interactions.

• Providing an online knowledge base rather than having customers call into a company's support line helps retain customers — 91% of consumers prefer an online knowledge base to calling a support contact.

• Providing a seamless mobile experience in addition to the desktop version of your website helps retain customers: 50% of customers stop visiting a website if it's not mobile-friendly, even if they like the business.

Examples of Companies Improving Customer Experience Through Digital Transformation

Here are three examples of companies that aced their digital business transformation to improve customer experience. 

Comcast

This is an amazing example of a media company that used digital transformation to enhance the consumer experience.  

Comcast adopted a machine learning algorithm that suggested programs and movies according to a customer's past viewing history. By helping users chose a movie to watch, they increased customer satisfaction because users wasted less time searching for movies they might like. Furthermore, they've added device integrations that allow users to watch videos on multiple devices, like laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Users can even start watching a movie on their laptop and later switch to their mobile device to continue watching from where they left off. This type of integration between devices has become the norm for digital broadcasting platforms.  

Netflix

Another interesting example is the competition between Netflix and Blockbuster. Blockbuster was renting movie DVDs and didn't change their business model over time to keep up with changes in their customers' behavior. They limited their use of technology to analytics to improve their revenue. Netflix, on the other hand, worked on consumer experience. They provided an online alternative to going to stores and physically renting movies.  

In addition, Netflix implemented machine learning that suggested movies and shows to users, and the rest is history. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010 when it couldn't compete with the CX vision of Netflix. 

HD Supply

HD Supply, an industrial supply company, is another company that realized the importance of CX. They made efforts to improve the way customers searched for products on their website. 

The majority of HD Supply’s customers didn't use the search field because it didn't have enough filters to help users quickly find the products they needed. In fact, users accessed the search feature of the website less than 10% of the time.  

Thus, the company focused on improving navigation of its website, adding features, and increasing filters. This led to an increase in revenue from search of 16%. 

How Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Boost Business Transformation

AI is at the forefront of digital transformation and currently powers the algorithms of almost all large corporations. 

The price you see when you book a train or airline ticket online depends on your online behavior and data history. The recommended items you see on Amazon are all a result of AI. This technology brings in enormous amounts of revenue for businesses by recommending more and more things you might like to purchase. Just look at Amazon's upselling and cross-selling. 

However, AI and ML enable many other types of business transformation. 

Uses of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

For example, sentiment analysis is now a hot topic. Companies monitor the customers' sentiment towards their products and services. Brands can monitor what users tweet about their products and which opinions they share on Amazon. Companies can then analyze customer sentiment and adjust their products or marketing based on the results. Customer sentiment analysis helps organizations to better understand the needs of their customers. It can also help detect products that lack quality. Negative sentiment towards a certain product often indicates that the product doesn't deliver the promised value to your customer. 

Perhaps machine learning is most often used to support users' decisions. Decision support refers to recommendations and predictions of future activities your customers might engage in. Machine learning is the technology Netflix uses to predict which shows customers might prefer to view next. 

Personalization can be taken to a whole new level. Every major online company uses it to predict which products and services you may like or need. It's the same technology that shows you ads based on your past internet browsing activity. As a user, you often benefit from this technology. It saves you time searching for products. However, often, you'll end up spending more money than you intended to. 

Don’t Forget the Role of Cultural Change in Business Transformation

Do you want to get started with transforming your business? 

Culture plays a big role as you transform from a product-centric to a consumer-centric business. You must promote and encourage innovative ideas and change traditional ways of doing business. 

For example, you have to teach your employees how to gather sentiment data. You need to teach them how they can leverage sentiment data to gain insights about product perception and product value. Educating and promoting changes within your organization is important to successfully transform your business. 

Wrapping Up

We are currently experiencing a revolution in the way we operate businesses. As we discussed in this article, you should expect to see more use of AI and ML tools and also more use of data analysis tools, such as Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, or Xplenty. These tools help companies better understand consumer needs. It's important that your organization understands the value and benefits of a consumer-centric focus to stay competitive. 

It's not an easy task to shift from a product-centric to a customer-centric business. Here are some questions to ask that address how you can improve your business's customer experience: 

• How can you personalize each interaction a consumer has with your company?

• What algorithms can you use to enhance recommendations and make the decision process simpler for customers?

• How can you effectively use sentiment analysis to better understand consumer needs?

Want to start your digital transformation? Check out how Plutora helps you measure and track business transformation goals and enables continuous improvement while integrating governance and compliance checks. Plutora's tool detects inefficiencies in each phase of product development, from ideation to product delivery, and provides you with analysis tools to quickly improve those processes.