Don't Fear the Digital: Embracing the Digital Transformation
You’ve heard the phrase Digital Transformation. It dominates our market as distributed enterprises find ways to be better and more efficiently engaged with customers and their team. From the network revolution in managed SD-WAN to digital signage solutions for customer engagement, transformation is happening all across the retail landscape.
In fact, we just launch we just launched a digital transformation podcast to talk about this very topic.
One of the first things that came up was the controversy around the implementation of Digital Technologies and whether or not this is good for the worker?
For example, we have all visited a do-it-yourself, home improvement store.I say very emphatically, “Don’t Fear the Digital”
These businesses employ women and men who are experienced carpenters, plumbers, electricians and other tradespeople. But when I need to talk to one of them about my project and how to best approach it, I can’t because they are busy telling 20 different people where to find things or where a department is located.
All of that can be handled by a self-service kiosk.
Let the associate do what the machine cannot, namely listen to me, understand my concerns and lack of confidence, help me understand what needs to be done and also, based on their experience, things to be aware of and things to avoid. The self-service kiosk might even be able to show me videos on simple how to projects like cleaning a drain.
The associate will be more available to help the customer and build a relationship to grow customer loyalty.
Take another example. We all like to be known as a “regular” in the businesses we visit. We long for Cheers experience where we walk in and everyone yells “Norm” and we take our place. This is known as the “customer-of-one” experience.
Digital tech can help with this too.
Some associates are born with that special ability to remember faces and names and they are certainly great assets. But for those of us who don’t have that ability, a digital device that can identify customers and help us remember key facts will increase the ability to serve and will build a brand loyalty.
Imagine the social media post that reads “Just finished visiting my local BrandName and Jeff was awesome, it was like we have been friends for years and he helped me so much.”
Digital transformation happens behind the front lines as well. Employee engagement tools, like remote training, ensure the same message gets across to all associates without the labor and expense of flying trainers out to each site. For employees, employee engagement tools like MediaTraining also offer the possibility of up-skilling, adding valuable skills to their own portfolio and enabling even greater customer service.
The engaged, informed associate building lasting relationships with customers based on knowledge is the relationship we seek, and this is the experience that Digital can support. So please, Don’t Fear the Digital.