The global pandemic has changed the world we live in.
It has forced organisations across the globe to suddenly respond to years in the making of digital transformation, but it has happened to manifest itself into a digital disruption and come all at once.
Companies everywhere have therefore been faced with making unprecedented decisions amongst the haze of uncertainty, many of us for example have had to scale our infrastructure to support working from home and social distancing new government rules.
Almost coming to a year later post COVID-19, global evangelists at Salesforce are sharing their frontline perspective on how their customers have seen their customers behaviors, sentiments and values change.
We hope that sharing these insights will help other salesforce executives within your team make better and meaningful decisions now and in the future.
1. Experiences above product
The need to provide an experience to end customers is the biggest change in behaviour companies have seen, and is it any wonder that this is the case, whilst people are at home they are indeed looking for a stimulating experience whether this takes form in e-commerce for example.
We need to remember that customers are evolving employees and so the customer journey and experience needs to reflect and meet their expectations in order for businesses to now compete within this new ecosystem.
According to the Salesforce report on the State of the Connected Customer report 2020, 84% of customers said the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services.
Furthermore, 73% of customers revealed that one extraordinary experience raises their expectations of other companies And, 66% of customers are willing to pay more for a great experience.
The future of online business and e-commerce will need to start connecting these dots to involve customer experience into their business models.
This can start with inspiring customers to want to be loyal because of brand ethics to the user experience being innovative, embracing virtual reality and continuing to invest with AI tech incentives.
2. Customers are digitally savvy
We are in the mist between the digitalization and modernization of systems, processes and customer journeys rapidly changing.
Because customers are showing businesses that they demand an acceleration into digital initiatives, businesses who choose to not listen will not even get the chance to survive into this new ecosystem.
The need to therefore transcend digital into an organization centered around their customers, with a 360 view and real-time engagement models, throughout the customer journey and lifecycle, is the purpose, and vital mission, of digital transformation into 2021 and the future.
We have already seen this demand grow from customers wanting to get their products and services from new digital platforms to wanting an expanded engaging customer journey experience to emulate the instore shopping experience at home.
Organisations that innovate and build their models around the digital-first customer, will see the true 360-view of their customers and will drive growth.
3. AI, AI and AI
When we talk about the new or next normal, the best way to imagine what the world will look like is to look at data points.
For everyday organizations, specific AI solutions can be built from existing data processes to analyse what outcomes we can expect.
The study of new datasets especially through these disruptive times will augment human capabilities to analyse data points from scenarios including economic, health, and tech outline trends and guide executives within the team to consider these possible future scenarios they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to be exposed to.
For example, algorithms can be developed to model how COVID-19 and future unknowns can potentially affect markets, supply chains, productivity, sales, etc to then focus considerations and investments for the best possible outcomes while mitigating risks.
We hope these trends help you consider where the focus of your business models needs to be, and please do share your thoughts on any other customer behaviour shifts you saw last year too.
To that, we wish everyone a less disruptive but more innovative and prosperous 2021!
We are excited to share that Savant Technology has partnered with CloudGaia, a Worldwide Platinum Salesforce Partner who releases the potential of the most qualified Salesforce Professionals to build the next evolution of your business.
Savant Technology offers a range of recruitment and search services across Transformation & Change, Analytics & Data, Security & Architecture, Development & Testing and Infrastructure & Operations. For more information please visit www.savantrecruitment.com or contact Peter Kyriacou directly on peter.kyriacou@savantrecruitment.com.
