What is Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation is the process of fundamentally changing the way a business operates to integrate technology at all levels of the business and move to a fully connected and online-first business strategy. It’s about improving the speed and quality of how you interact with customers at all stages of their journey. A digital transformation isn’t just about adding more technology to your business strategy. Instead, it’s the need to change the way you think about connections between customers, departments, and other partners.

Why is digital transformation important?

Customers are becoming more dependent on online businesses and prefer to do business with companies that have a digital-first approach. 

But where do you start your digital transformation journey?

Ask yourself two questions - What do your customers need most, and how can digital processes help? Starting with these questions can help you create better strategies, whether that’s improving customer service using better data and analytics or gaining valuable business insights to help agents make more informed, quicker decisions and boost your business' CSAT scores. 

What are the benefits of digital transformation?

By 2023, global spending on services and technologies that will allow digital transformation is estimated to amount to $2.3 trillion.

Systems, workflow, and culture are impacted by a digital transformation process. Here are the key benefits of how digital transformation directly impacts the success of a modern business:

1. Solve customer problems faster

Using the latest software and approaching problems with a digital-first mindset helps customer-facing teams to troubleshoot issues efficiently. Modern logging systems, like help desk software, can often help identify the customer's issue in the earlier stage. Integrating your other systems with your help desk empowers agents with the information they need to solve problems quickly. Plus, when they need to take action on a customer's request, a modern helpdesk will let them do that right from the app itself.

2. Improve internal workflows

Collaborating with other departments is difficult when you're all relying on separate, hosted systems. This is where digital transformation can help. It knocks down silos between departments so that all the data you need is in one place, and it's much easier to communicate across departmental boundaries.

For example, if a customer wrote in looking for more information on their billing and account usage, your customer service agent needs to get in touch with the product team, and each team might have to pull its data and compile it to understand what the customer owes. Using modern software, the customer service team could pull both teams into the same conversation, quickly search the database for the information they need, and respond to the customer. 

3. Understand customers better

Integrating data from various departments means that you have more context when it comes to making customer decisions. For example, if account managers can view the last five conversations between support and the customer, they'll understand and approach the customer's pain point more clearly. 

Case study:

Hamleys, the finest toy shop brand in the world has close to five million customers visiting the shop each year.

The Problem Statement

As the level of customer service expectation increased, and the customer service operation scaled up and the head of Customer Services at Hamleys, Vaughan Potter, took the decision to move away from their existing customer support tool, BoldChat, to a more digitally transformed solution that would be fit for purpose.

Key successes with Freshdesk

After the quick implementation of Freshdesk, Hamleys could effectively optimize customer support operations.

Since going live with Freshdesk:

• Workflows were much more streamlined and efficient. 

• By reducing manual efforts for agents, SLA adherence has improved. 

• Freed up time for management to think strategically about their customer service.

• Positive impact on customer satisfaction levels.

 

Challenges to implementing digital transformation

With all of the benefits that digital transformation can bring to a business, it might be surprising that everyone hasn’t adapted to this new era of work. But as advantageous as the change is, it can be extremely difficult to move an existing company into this new way of thinking. There’s several reasons why it can be hard to build momentum towards such a huge change. Let’s look at three of the biggest hurdles impacting companies today

1. Map out your customer's current experience

Before making drastic changes, take the opportunity to map out where your organization currently stands regarding digital maturity. Which touchpoints are more complicated or more manual than they need to be? What processes feel outdated or unnecessary because of a disconnect between teams? Identify areas where a new digital strategy could help - either internally or with your external customer experience.

Bonus: Use this customizable template to identify your customer persona, understand their pain points and deliver personalized customer experiences across industries, including eCommerce, B2B SaaS, and Healthcare.

2. Determine top priorities

Rather than trying to fix everything at once and throwing everything into chaos, make a coordinated plan based on priority. What changes will have the most significant impact on a minor investment of your time and money? You can start the momentum rolling by prioritizing low-effort tasks that will have a big impact. This low-hanging fruit will require minimal investment from management, so you can move quickly and make change happen. 

3. Get buy-in from stakeholders

One of the biggest challenges to getting started with a digital transformation is convincing people who say, "we've always done it this way," to agree to change. To bring your team into the process, start asking questions early. Ask for their pain points - they have things they do daily that are frustrating and slow. 

Where can you help speed up their work? How will an improved digital strategy positively impact their day-to-day? Projecting a case for solving these pain points will help you get the buy-in of all the prime stakeholders. 

1. Self-service for ticket deflection

One of the key reasons that customers are choosing online businesses is the ability to avoid interacting with brand representatives, and self-service options allow them just that. Searchable, online documentation like knowledge base articles, community forums, and FAQs is the simplest way to improve your customers' experience. 

Self-service is no longer a "nice to have." It's a necessity to provide a positive customer experience. It has become so crucial that 70% of customers now expect a company's website to include a self-service application. With Freshdesk, you can scale your knowledge base, and forum content for multiple products and publish them on customer self-service portals, from one place. 

2. Omnichannel Support for seamless customer experience

The most significant difference between modern contact and traditional call centers is the sheer number of communication channels that can be incorporated into a customer engagement strategy. Going through a digital transformation almost always means extending your support beyond a 1-800 number and an IVR tree and picking up new channels like email, live chat, and social media.

This is why offering omnichannel customer support becomes necessary. Very few people rely only on calls to communicate anymore. Companies that only offer phone support managed through a complicated IVR system will find they get fewer and fewer calls as customers stop calling in. 

Integrating your business software with Freshdesk's omnichannel capabilities allows agents to efficiently work through their tickets, switch between channels, and track customer issues better. Admins can streamline team management and consolidate reporting across all support channels from one unified platform. 

3. Mobile support for any time, anywhere accessibility 

While they’re distancing themselves from phone calls, mobiles continue to be where customers spend most of their time - texting, browsing the internet and social media, using mobile apps, etc. Being mobile-friendly is incredibly important to compete in the modern marketplace. If customers navigate to your website and it's not mobile-friendly, there's every possibility for them to bounce from your site and move to your competitor's page. 

When you offer mobile support in customer service, users can swiftly tap through the different menu levels without waiting for instructions to appear on their screens. It's also possible for customers to set call-back requests at their preferred time.

For customer support teams, mobile support might involve

• A responsive help center that's easily accessible from the app or website.

• Live chat or messaging platform that's easy for customers to use on their mobile devices.

• Providing resources relevant to mobile platforms and sending messages that can be easily read on a small screen.

4. Automating common tasks to improveg agent productivity

Automation and technology go hand in hand. When most people think of upgrading technology, their next thought is automation and optimization. Digital transformation is no different. When you're collecting more information and storing it in a useful, accessible way, your team can take advantage of automation tools available at your help desk.

For instance, Freshdesk’s automation capabilities can help your team prioritize customers issues. It can also help direct incoming emails to the right department,  and automate routine tasks helping your team to be more efficient. 

5. Proactive support to increase customer satisfaction

The end goal of a digital service transformation is to have a deep understanding of your customers and to be able to support them at any time throughout their journey. The best benefit of this setup is the opportunity to start offering proactive support. Helping customers before they encounter a common issue can make their experience much smoother. This is called proactive support. 

E.g., Before an invoice is sent out, you can trigger an in-app pop to inform them that payment will be taken. When they purchase a new product, you might email them helpful online instructions about setting it up. Anticipating your customers' needs is much easier after a digital transformation because you have all the information you need to make suggestions.

Learn more about Freshdesk

Help desk software

Customer support software

Knowledge base software

Help desk ticketing system

Knowledge management system

Customer interaction guide

Customer engagement guide

Customer experience guide