Delivering at the moment of service

Marne Martin at IFS explains why the moment of service is driving business transformation globally

 

In today’s age of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA), enterprises can no longer afford to stand still.

 

Most are going through a process of continuous evolution as they battle to remain ahead of the pack in an increasingly competitive marketplace. As a result, many are urgently looking at how they can transform, innovate and modernise to adapt to these macro-environmental factors that are forcing change.

 

More organisations have come to recognise that service is the key to creating differentiation, adapting their business models, and increasing future growth and profitability. But to do this successfully, a business needs to orchestrate its people, customers, and assets to be able to deliver in the “moment of service”: that moment when the business gets judged and either delights or disappoints its customers depending on the way it engages with them.

 

The road to business transformation  

Delivering on this goal requires organisations to undergo a process of business transformation. Typically, from the enterprise’s perspective, this will involve the strategic adoption of digital technologies to improve processes and productivity, deliver better customer and employee experiences, manage business risk, and control costs.

 

Enterprises are increasingly putting this digitally-driven transformation into practice.  According to the latest analysis from Reportlinker.com, the global digital transformation market size is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.1% between now (2022) and 2027, reaching USD 1,548.9 billion.

 

To deliver on this goal successfully from a vendor perspective, however, organisations need to first understand their customers and what their problems are. They must know exactly what its customers want, and what as a business they need to change to deliver it.

 

This has to be the starting point of business transformation projects and the end goal must be improving the customer experience and understanding the outcomes that customers will pay for. That is the lifeblood of any customer-facing business as it is key to RoI and future growth.

 

Using customer experience to focus business transformation

To truly improve the customer experience and deliver on the Moment of Service, organisations must listen to the voice of their customers. It makes sound commercial sense. According to Gartner research, collecting feedback can increase upselling and cross-selling success rates by 15% to 20%.

 

This is feedback organisations can use to map transformation outcomes to what their customers value the most. Without that insight, they are investing significant amounts of money, resource, and time that will have little to no impact on their business, let alone the customer experience.

 

It is also essential that businesses never think of transformation as a one-time project. Instead, it needs to be an ongoing process that evolves as they continue to innovate and adapt to growing customer expectations.

 

Those expectations have changed in the wake of the pandemic, which caused the biggest shift in the experience economy in history as customers became more accustomed to digitally-facilitated remote interactions. Businesses had to accelerate their digital adoption to meet these shifting customer mindsets.

 

But by stopping and listening to their customers, businesses can begin to strategically transition those temporary fixes into long-term investments, driving efficiency and growth.

 

Understanding and improving customer experience in this way is one key to the success of business transformation, but the other vital element businesses need to be aware of is stakeholder engagement.

 

Why stakeholder buy-in matters

Achieving buy-in from internal stakeholders is a crucial step of business transformation but one that many organisations overlook. Traditionally, when a new technology enters the workplace, it doesn’t fundamentally change how the workforce operates, it merely digitises an existing working practice.

 

That might involve the business moving away from paper-based processes, which is an excellent first move. However, for buying cycles that are part-replacement and part-new technology, it is embracing the process and business model change that really matters.

 

Business transformation provides an opportunity for organisations to fundamentally change the way they operate, and people are just as essential to that as technology.

 

The bigger picture of business transformation

Many organisations do, in fact, listen to their customers, employees, and the wider ecosystem in which they operate, in order to gain insight to fuel their transformation efforts. Unfortunately, however, many still don’t look at the bigger picture and are instead implementing ‘quick wins’ that don’t impact the customer experience or the long-term goals of the business.

 

The macroeconomic disruption of the past few years should have taught businesses that customers’ expectations can change significantly in a short space of time. Organisations must therefore resist the temptation to focus solely on quick wins.

 

Instead they should be continuously listening to customers and concentrating on delivering the Moment of Service to stay ahead of the competition and grow their business for a successful future in the digital world.

 

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Marne Martin is President, IFS Service Management Business Unit (SMBU)

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com