Top Digital Transformation Challenges and Their Solutions

As I chatted with my mom the other day, she showed me a social media post that caught my attention. It was a screenshot of a famous brand's logo with an unhappy emoji face slapped on it. She was disappointed with their customer service, and it showed.

She was struggling with the new app as part of their social media digital transformation that they released with much fanfare. She called customer service after repeatedly facing glitches during checkout and was put on hold for 10 minutes and then had to endure an hour on the phone with an agent who never solved her problem. To make matters worse, the agent ended the call with the cold, exasperatingly insensitive question, "Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

It made me realize how important customer service is in this digital age. With so many brands vying for our attention and loyalty, especially on social media and other digital and social channels, it's the little things that can make all the difference. A bad customer service experience can turn a loyal customer into a detractor in no time, digital transformation or not.

Customers don’t care about “digital” or “digital transformation” – they care if your business has one very human thing: a heart.

People have always wanted good personalized customer experiences. But now, no matter how big and complex your business gets, they expect two things:

1. Instant responses

2. A human being who truly listens and cares… and gets their problem fixed

Sure, implementing advanced AI in your digital transformation strategy can be a game-changer, but don't forget about the power of human connection. If you're not letting your customers feel the human touch, you're missing out on a huge opportunity to outshine your competitors and leave a lasting impression.

Leading with emotion – heart – is, strangely enough, the human key to transforming digitally. Focus on delivering warm, super-personalized experiences to happier customers, retention and growth.

3 steps to transforming your customer experience, with heart

What is digital transformation? It is like jumping onto a high-speed train that propels your business to new heights. It's not just about catching up with the times but embracing new digital technologies that can revolutionize the way you do business. From sales and marketing to supply chain management and customer service, it's all about giving your customers a seamless and effortless experience that keeps them returning for more.

Think about it — your customers are already digitally transformed with a phone in the palm of their hands, ready to make purchases, leave reviews and connect with your brand at any moment. If you're not meeting them where they are, you're missing out on a huge opportunity to engage with them meaningfully. Here are three simple steps to digitally transform with your customers at the heart of the transformation.

Step 1: Use social listening to listen to what your customers are telling you and not telling you

Let’s focus on what your customers are not telling you. You may not be able to read your customers’ minds yet. But you’re closer to it than you ever imagined.

Thanks to AI platforms and social listening tools such as Sprinklr, you can easily tap into these conversations on 30+ channels, uncovering real-time customer insights and linking them to historical patterns. When combined with more traditional data from sources like surveys, focus groups or research, you can come closer than ever to knowing your customers on a deeper level and understanding and meeting their wants, needs and concerns. When combined with more traditional data from sources like surveys, focus groups or research, you can come closer than ever to knowing your customers on a deeper level and understanding and meeting their wants, needs and concerns. needs and concerns.When combined with more traditional data from sources like surveys, focus groups or research, you can come closer than ever to knowing your customers on a deeper level and understanding and meeting their wants, needs and concerns.

Step 2: Personalize and elevate your customer’s experience

As a CX professional, you already know that great customer experiences are the key to building a strong brand, right? Here are the golden rules to help you build a digital transformation strategy that's all about personalization.

• Align your digital strategy to the overall business strategy and focus on customer needs, data-driven insights and continuous improvement.

• Leverage customer data to send personalized communication that’s relevant to each individual. This might include targeted emails, text messages or social media posts based on the customer's location, purchase history or other relevant factors.

• Involve cross-functional teams and inspire a culture of innovation and experimentation.

By putting your customers first, you'll create better experiences for everyone.

Step 3: Watch out for digital transformation trends

You need to be aware that the digital transformation journey is not a “set it and forget it” type of deal but a continuous process of experimentation, learning and adaptation. It also requires a culture of agility, collaboration and innovation.

Here are the top digital transformation trends today that you must be aware of:

• The rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning

• The Internet of Things (IoT)

• Edge computing

These technologies enable businesses to collect and analyze data in real time, personalize customer experiences and automate routine tasks, and they will evolve with the times. It’s important to actively track these trends to keep your neck above the water.

Examples of forward-thinking brands that aced digital transformation

If you're looking for inspiration, there's no shortage of digital transformation success stories out there. Take Amazon, for example, which has disrupted the traditional brick-and-mortar retail model by using digital technologies to provide a seamless online shopping experience.

Here are a few more examples worth noting before you dive into the world of digital transformation.

1. Microsoft is often cited as a company at the forefront of digital transformation. Take, for instance, its handling of digital transformation when the pandemic hit. Customers relied on it for essential work functions. As CEO Satya Nadella famously remarked in his quarterly earnings call in 2020, the company had seen “two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.”

2. MGM Resorts is another brand that embraced the vision that “all companies are tech companies,” hiring a dedicated team to ensure a more agile and efficient environment and focusing on improving its digital touchpoints and marketing technology during the lockdown. “We know the puck is going in a direction where personalization, automated marketing and trigger-based marketing is the future,” Chief Digital Officer Kelly Smith told Adobe’s CMO.

But the more nimble a company hopes to be, the more they must depend on real-time customer input, which is where social listening rises to the top. That’s why companies like Prada and L’Oréal engage an AI platform like Sprinklr to increase customer satisfaction with more meaningful engagement. For example, L’Oréal’s “Listen-to-Engage” model uses Sprinklr’s platform to personalize customer interactions at scale – listening to various social inputs to channel real-time insights through a 360-degree customer vision.

A quick guide to overcoming digital transformation challenges

While the benefits of digital transformation may tempt you, you must be aware of its challenges before embarking on this journey.

• Resistance from customers and employees who are comfortable with the traditional way of doing things

• Digital skills and expertise may also be lacking, and infrastructure may be inadequate

• Security concerns are always a top priority when it comes to digital transformation

• Monitoring the effectiveness of your digital transformation

But don’t let these challenges discourage you from embarking on the digital transformation adventure. You can complete the journey by following these preemptive steps at the outset:

• Align everyone’s goals and objectives to ensure all hands are on deck

• Ensure that your customers have been proactively informed about what and what not to expect from this digital transformation

• Empower agents with the necessary digital skills and knowledge base to handle the transformation right

• Benchmark revenue growth, customer satisfaction, employee engagement and other metrics to measure the success of your strategy

Finally, embrace digital transformation as an opportunity, not a threat

You already know that to thrive in today's digital world, you need to prioritize your customers at every turn.

Rest assured that the possibilities are endless when you put your customers at the center of our digital transformation strategy. In the end, it's all about customer-centricity. By building stronger connections with your customers, you can achieve genuine progress and create personalized experiences that foster loyalty and growth while starting a more prosperous and sustainable business.

Don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you wish to know more about Sprinklr’s various tools and capabilities to get your digital transformation off the ground in an effective manner.