In today's world, technology plays a crucial role in generating paradigm shifts and will continue to equip organisations to meet the challenges of meeting ever-evolving client demands
Customer expectations have been drastically altered since the pandemic. Today, businesses are being challenged to reimagine any known notions of customer service as we continue to embrace a digital-first approach to daily routines and activities.
In this new environment, the role of technology is pivotal in creating paradigm shifts and will continue to enable businesses to deal with the challenges of evolving customer expectations.
The era of quick commerce
Customer interactions with brands are more important and more varied than before. Many customer behaviours initially adopted as quick solutions to quarantine restrictions are now more permanent.
In India, D2C and quick commerce continues to grow with growing consumer demand. According to the State of Connected Customer Report, more than 90% of millennials engage with brands through social media and entertainment platforms. The unprecedented growth of online shopping over the past year has had an impact on brand loyalty too, as 72% of individuals have switched brands on grounds of better and more personalised experiences.
Majority of individuals also say customer experience (CX) has become more important to them now than a year ago. In a move towards adapting to ever-changing consumer behaviours, companies too have fast-tracked their digital transformation efforts from one to three years.
Pepe Jeans, for instance, leverages Salesforce Commerce Cloud to gain a unified view of its customer’s journey, in turn enabling a more personalised and tighter customer experience across its online and retail stores.
Benefits of a 360 view of the customer
The rapid adoption of online, mobile shopping, and more recently, social commerce has driven a shift in the way customers want to be treated by businesses. Customers today expect brands to recognise individual requirements, personalise the experience and enable seamless engagements, all while maintaining their privacy.
Connected products, supported by predictive customer service that anticipates customer needs, will require the right systems in place that can simplify mountains of complex, siloed data.
A single view of the customer that is accessible to all employees will enhance employees’ ability to deliver great customer experiences and enable organisations to plan differently and innovate around customer needs. Having this complete customer view requires implementing seamless ways to manage customer interaction and engagement, as well as having access to the tools to analyse business and customer data to drive smarter decisions.
At Salesforce, we’re creating customer success, together. Our products help companies save money, grow revenue, become more efficient, and be more productive. Across all our products, our customers report meaningful gains like reducing IT and support costs, increasing revenue and marketing ROI, faster time to insights, and faster collaboration.
The rise of real-time
Responding to customer needs in real time has never been more critical but will become more challenging as the amount of data created, captured, replicated, and consumed each year is expected to more than double by 2026. Additionally, 71% of customers expect every interaction with a business to be personalised.
With the launch of Salesforce Genie, every company can turn data into customer magic, delivering seamless, highly personalised experiences across sales, service, marketing, and commerce that continuously adapt to changing customer information and needs in real time.
Business leaders, too, are also increasingly focusing on the quality of customer service while evaluating their success metrics. A key part of achieving this success is to ensure employees are equipped with the right technology to deliver an optimal, seamless customer experience.
By investing in advanced technology, organisations can achieve greater customer satisfaction and support burned-out employees. Relieving service agents of mundane, repetitive tasks, freeing up their time to build truly connected customer relationships, and prioritising career development will go a long way to boosting efficiency, engagement, and revenue.
The author is VP, Solution Engineering, Salesforce
