If your business is dependent on foot traffic, chances are you feel the impact of the current crisis. You’re not alone. All companies now navigate this shift in the consumer landscape. What you do to respond to this “new normal” in both the short- and long-term may determine how your business emerges.
Governments, businesses, and citizens around the world have now implemented drastic crisis management plans to slow the virus spread. In record time, companies have pivoted business strategies and crisis management plans to react to what is happening now and what may happen in the near-future. Employees now work from home, home school their children, and their consumer habits and customer service needs have changed as they adjust to a new normal.
Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates believes businesses must prepare for a long-term change in consumer behaviour that may continue long after the pandemic is brought under control. “Will people want to go and travel?” Gates questioned in recent live LinkedIn Q&A session. “Will they want to go to restaurants? Will they even think, you know, buying a new home is an appropriate thing? So, even once the government is saying these activities are OK, we can’t expect the demand side to re-emerge overnight.”
Why should you consider digital transformation now?
The good news is companies can leverage digital technology to stabilise workflows in the short-term, accelerate digital transformation to deliver better customer experiences now, and deepen relationships to grow business in the long-term. That’s because digital transformation is vital to how your customers see your business. In fact, 67% of customers say the way a company uses technology indicates how they operate in general, and 75% of customers expect companies to use new technologies to create better experiences.
In Singapore, COVID-19 has accelerated the creation of several online platforms such as Manyplaces.sg and Findfood to connect restaurants and hawkers with online customers. Findfood founder Michel Lu recently told The Straits Times that these new online platforms will continue to help support business in the post-COVID era.
“The virus has accelerated the inevitable,” he said. “Once people go online and realise they can do well, they will stay. We will not go back to the way things were, this is only the beginning.”
It is a myth digital transformation is only for big companies with million-dollar budgets. Digital transformation can mean a lot of different things. Simply put, it’s using technology to get closer to your customers while putting them at the centre of everything you do. This can be as simple as using your CRM for journey mapping email campaigns, adding chatbots to help with customer service, implementing an AI recommendation and abandoned cart strategy, or it can be as comprehensive as breaking down the silos between your sales, marketing, and service teams so customers have an integrated brand experience. These incremental changes, powered by technology, can make a big impact on small businesses. For example, 68% of service professionals at organisations using AI chatbots say their teams have seen reduced call and email volume. Reducing the time service professionals spend on calls that can be handled by chatbots frees them up to apply their emotional intelligence to more complex queries.
So, how can digital transformation accelerate effective crisis management now?
1. Stabilise your workflow
This pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital tools transforming how we work. For example, many companies now ask employees to work from home. This has resulted in the explosive usage of video, conferencing, and collaboration tools.
Enabling this new need for remote work is your first step towards greater organisation-wide digital transformation. By empowering your teams to embrace a range of digital communication tools, you’re resetting your organisational culture for the digital age. Your people will quickly see new technology not as a disruption to their normal operations, but rather as tools that enable them to continue — and enhance — their normal operations under challenging circumstances.
2. Consolidate employee and customer support
In the pre-COVID era, digital transformation required a process of thorough planning and development. However, a challenging business landscape calls for agility and companies now need to rollout a more immediate digital response at speed.
That’s why we launched Salesforce Care. It is our new preconfigured solution to keep employees connected with omni-channel workspaces, a digital learning platform, and it can streamline customer service with a self-service help centre, FAQ, and AI-powered chatbots. We know putting both customers and employees at the centre of your business is a necessity, especially at a time when there is so much uncertainty and both employees and customers need additional support.
As part of a strategic and consolidated COVID-19 response, Salesforce Care can help organisations adopt the Salesforce platform and deploy more immediate employee and customer support.
3. Accelerate wider digital transformation
While Salesforce Care is intended as an immediate response to the current crisis, it can also serve as a foundation for an organisation-wide digital transformation to ensure your company emerges from these turbulent times stronger than ever.
Salesforce Success Cloud Expeditions can help you plan and implement a successful digital transformation. After implementing Salesforce Expeditions, customers often see significant improvements in key performance metrics. According to an IDC white paper, organisations using Salesforce Expeditions reduce their yearly operating expenses by up to SG$15.58 million (US$11 million). For customer satisfaction and advocacy, they average as much as a 10-point increase in net promoter scores. To see how we can help you plan and implement a digital transformation journey, we provide a free Trailhead Trail.
Takeaway
Stabilising your business today with digital tools enables remote work and collaboration. It can also provide a foundation to accelerate needed digital transformation. This will ensure your business supports your customers, employees, and partners, and is ready to seize business opportunities.
We do not know when this pandemic will end, but companies that implement a crisis management plan to stay connected with customers while putting their customers at the centre of their work, upskill their talent on new tools, and restructure their businesses with digital technology, will emerge stronger in a post-COVID economy.
Download our free ebook to take the next step on your digital transformation journey.
