Digital Strategies for Business
A new year is nothing else but 365 days of new opportunities, and business owners and entrepreneurs know that.
As a matter of fact, these days it’s typical to listen to so called ‘resolutions’ where people and companies set specific goals.
Most of these resolutions include very popular ones like ‘…take my business to the next level…’or ‘increase our revenue by this amount‘, etc. So I would like to offer you a simple ‘how‘ to your business goals. This article will show you three simple digital strategies to make your business better this year.
Digital Stategies for Companies
1. Unify Your Communications in The Cloud
Cloud based Unified Communications is actually the first step to make your business better by digital strategies.
A recent study by Frost & Sullivan showed that business cloud communications are actually the cornerstone of digital transformation.
And in case you are wondering, “why do I need to transform my business digitally?”, I can respond to that with two simple answers:
- To increase teams and employee productivity
- To gain business agility
When a company moves its communications to the cloud they gain business agility because they can collaborate and communicate from anywhere using any device.
This turns into more enthusiastic teams and a smarter workforce because they engage in high quality voice and/or video conversations regardless of the device or environment.
And since they can connect everywhere project and group meetings run smoother with a more efficient use of the time. This way customers are served better and there is a smarter approach to new business opportunities.
A friend of mine was struggling with its sales team as they were always on the road and he was suffering of fragmented communications.
His company migrated to a cloud based communication platform and they now carry a business app on their laptops, smartphones and tablets that let their team communicate with customers and associates in a more productive way.
2. Enable OmniChannel Conversations
In 2017 Deloitte Global presented the result of an interesting survey. This survey asked consumers and brand owners how they would like to engage in conversations by 2019.
In the result you could easily observe the actual need to establish conversations out of the traditional voice channel.
For example you could observe how the demand for chat conversations was expected to increase 166% and conversations via SMS/text were expected to increase 200% while phone conversations would decrease by 26%. Sounds familiar?
A good example of this reality is American Express; they will tell you they actually engage with their customers over web chats for more than 50% of the time. Is your business up to this challenge?
Now, being OmniChannel refers to the task of enabling digital customer engagement. However do consider that this task is not fulfilled by simply having different devices or platforms to achieve that.
I remember having a prospect that came to us because they found theirselves paying simultaneously for LiveChat, Skype For Business, RingCentral and a couple of other tools; so they were not only dealing with the headache of paying and managing different platforms but at the end of the day they were multichannel and not omnichannel.
The principle of omni-channel is to integrate all channels communications in just one platform. The story of course ends when the prospect became customer and today they have agents engaging in conversations via voice, video, SMS, email, fax and even social media through just one application window.
To show you the impact of enabling omnichannel technologies in deep, I can tell you that Nemertes, a very important research organization, shared through their last study that if companies want to reduce cost per interaction, increase overall sales and reduce churn rates, they need to add customer facing digital channels.
So deployment of omni-channel technologies benefit organizations at the customer level.
3. Integrate With Your Business Applications
Haven’t you had those experiences when you call to book a hotel and before saying anything the rep identifies you and asks if you want to stay again in the same room with that marvelous view?
Or when ordering some pick up at your favorite restaurant they ask you if you are ordering again this or that before you even say a word? If you have had those experiences then you will agree that context is very important in a conversation, specially in those conversations where you are trying to sell or provide customer service.
By integrating your company communications with your business applications you are empowering a new kind of contextual productivity, without the need to modify business or productivity applications to achieve higher levels of connectivity.
When a company integrates its business applications is making possible that employees can access at their fingertips and at all times the pertinent information about a lead, customer or even a vendor wether that information came from a CRM, an accounting app or specific business application. Content in context translate to more efficient transactions and happier conversations.
I had a case of a service provider whose customer reps would take about 45 seconds in average to identify an account in their Salesforce CRM portal.
Doing the math of 45 seconds times 300 reps times some thousand of calls a day turn into a lot of wasted time.
Today and after having deployed an integration between their CRM and the communications platform, before a call is answered by a rep all the pertinent data is offered in a window and a richer and more contextual conversation takes place.
Conclusion
Although to grow a business there are infinite strategies, considering the digital transformation of the communications is a win-win. Go to the cloud, open the doors to new communication channels, and interconnect with your core business applications.
In a very short term you will realize your company now is more agile, developing more business opportunities and with more productive employees.
If you need help with either of these key strategies do not hesitate to contact us at info@linkedip.com or by visiting www.linkedip.com.
