Johannesburg, 22 Apr 2020
For Dimension Data's customer experience executive Nompumelelo Mokou there is an urgent and severe disconnect to the real assigned value organisations in South Africa and across the Middle East and Africa give to customer experience.
"I saw a particularly relevant meme the other day. It posed the question: Who is responsible for digital transformation in your company? There were three possible answers, the CEO, the CTO or COVID-19?"
As amusing as that is, Mokou points out that it raises an important question about the experience of an organisation from the customer's point of view. And the stark reality is that no one anticipated a pandemic like COVID-19, and never did we think we would find ourselves in the position where this is the problem we would need to solve.
Unfortunately, this is our reality, and we must acknowledge that COVID-19 will be the most significant and fundamental change agent for how businesses interact with customers – and more pointedly, how to do long-term, sustainable and mutually valuable business with them into the future.
Disrupted operations
Mokou adds that businesses will continue to do what they do, but what will profoundly evolve is the how. "Pandemics like COVID-19 highlight the value that organisations have traditionally assigned to customer experience in their businesses. This so-called 'assigned value' implies that client-centric thinking lives beyond framed statements in boardrooms and reception areas, but rather that the customer (and their experience of the organisation and its products and services) is deeply rooted in everything – from systems to processes to culture and even product or solution design."
She adds: "The business is the customer. So, the value (or assigned value) that companies place on their customer experience today will set organisations apart more than ever before. It will also, and here is something especially worth paying attention to, define which organisations and products customers choose to disengage with."
The new, new
From banks to spaza shops, customer experiences are being reset. Companies are being pressed to consider (and deliver) customer experience beyond the business as usual, and with this, deeply assess the assigned value and investments they make in customer engagements. Business leaders will need to invest time and resources in ensuring businesses are responsive and ready for these changing times.
What COVID-19 has created is a new normal. In this new normal, businesses will see accelerated customer experience challenges:
- How do your customers continue being serviced by you?
- How do customers access your services in real-time and with no service interruption?
- How do companies incorporate self-service, especially as they question which part of their businesses are considered critical and have a more prominent need for customers to service themselves?
- How do organisations' operating model, systems, processes and culture transform rapidly and what technology is available to complement this transformation?
It's then particularly alarming that research in Dimension Data’s annual Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report highlights a very serious gap in organisations' in South Africa and across the Middle East and Africa reaction to customer experience. The research shows while almost 82% of organisations agree that customer experience offers a competitive edge, only 14.4% have included it in their actual organisational strategy.
"Let’s not mince our words here. There is an urgent and severe disconnect to the real assigned value organisations in South Africa and across the Middle East and Africa give to customer experience. So, while it is encouraging to see that 58% of companies recognise customer experience as a strategic differentiator, it is in the overcoming of this gap that we will see any measurable improvements in the survival rates of businesses."
There is a difference between knowing customer experience matters and enabling this at scale in your organisation. Customers expect effortless, on-demand and intuitive transactions with hyper-personalisation to be the norm when engaging with organisations, and, if anything, COVID-19 amplifies this demand in a way that – hopefully – drives action and change from companies across the region and improves overall organisational resilience.
It’s not impossible to do. Businesses need to assign the right value to customer experience and then make the shifts this requires.
In reality, the tools to improve the survival rates of businesses and improve customer experience exists. Functionally, we have examples like WhatsApp for Business, video enablement or even cloud-based platforms.
What we need is the will, and it is in the doing.
As we move through the new normal that COVID-19 creates, the questions CEOs should be asking is clear. What is the voice of our customer? Are we assigning real value to this, and doing something about it?
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