New technologies produce disruption
In a McKinsey & Company article entitled, "Discussions on Digital: The mobile present
and future", Mary Beth Laughton, Senior Vice President of E-commerce at Sephora and Kira Wampler, Chief Marketing Officer at Lyft discussed their views on mobility – a digital technology that many companies are leveraging to transform the customer experience. For Sephora, mobility plays a strategic role with the customer journey. “Around 60 percent of the people shopping in their app are in the top two tiers of their loyalty program,” as stated by Sephora. Ms. Laughton also states that those companies that “spend time to understand consumer behavior and design experiences around that will win in this space. “ For Lyft, millennials have changed the category of transportation and the buying experience. In fact, mobility has been instrumental to Lyft’s success. When you think about it, mobility has not only transformed the way companies interact with their customers but also how customers interact with them – expecting content-rich, 24/7 responses. For me, if I have to wait, I am on to the next company!
Digital transformation goes beyond corporate branding where some firms may focus too much of their time. The brand is important; however, the customer journey and how technology is transforming that journey is key to revenue success. Mobility is just one of the many technologies that are disrupting the value chain. Many of these transformational projects fail because companies don’t address end-to-end processes. Companies are so focused on the front-end of the value chain (digital/interactive advertising) that they ignore the digitization of the middle and even the back-office where value creation can be the greatest. Some digital agencies have started to build businesses around the back-end of the value chain providing data management services from outsourced CRM processing to data analytics.
How do you take that customer experience and the information that you collect and drive it through the value chain? The digital agency needs to become “digital implementers.” As new technologies, like mobility, continue to disrupt the way companies interact with customers, companies need to think of digital transformation as an ongoing process – a process that continuously refines the customer “touch point.”
Companies need to look for:
- Holistic Customer View – Single view of the customer throughout the value chain.
- Multiple Customer Experiences – Follow the “touch points” and learn from these experiences.
- Rich Customer Experience – Enhance the relationship with content that is meaningful and beneficial to the relationship.
About the Author:
Diana M. Bolick is a B2B Marketing and Sales Executive. Focuses on: Demand Generation (New Technologies), Digital Transformation of the Value Chain, and Revenue Generation. She has a BA in Economics from Columbia University and a MBA in Marketing from Rutgers University Graduate School of Management. She is an active participant in Northwestern University – Medill – IMC - Social Media Marketing Group. You can follow her on Twitter @DianaBolick and LinkedIn.
