In today’s digital era, organizations are no longer competing against the guy down the street. They’re competing with every other experience a customer has.
It is no longer enough to be customer focused. We need to be ready to take the next step and become assertively customer proactive. But at a time when many of us are trying to do more with less to fight strengthening economic headwinds, the costs of providing white-glove customer service versus forcing customers to rely totally on a website, portal or app can feel prohibitive. No wonder many leaders are eschewing more personal touch points.
To what degree might call volume be reduced if the customer is informed up front, instead of waiting for an after-the-fact irate customer-initiated call? Are your customers automatically and proactively notified of updates to their order? It stands to reason that your customer would feel far more satisfied if your organization let them know a pallet was missing from their delivery before it arrived, while also addressing that the missing pallet would be arriving by another carrier the next day.
By leveraging your SAP investment and getting the basics right, you can easily add value and position yourself to be ready for the future evolution of automation. That is particularly important now as we journey to S/4HANA with its advanced analytics capability.
Remember, in the long arc of time, we are only relevant if our customers love us. And the key way to make that happen is to become increasingly more proactive and reduce customer effort in problem resolution. By focusing on SAP’s quick-win tactics, we gain a roadmap to building organizational resiliency and taking our place as a customer experience leader.
