How is the digital transformation shaping the customer needs of our time? The TCI event entitled "Digitalization drives Customer Service Excellence" in September took a detailed look at this question. The TCI editorial team has an exciting two-part interview with the two organizers, Frank Bunge (FBU) and Martin Bergmann (MBE). After the first part While the first part of this article dealt with the conclusions that companies should draw from the new opportunities, the following second part deals with information that companies should be aware of in the course of the digital transformation. This includes how customer needs will change and how artificial intelligence, for example, can make a decisive contribution to a company's success.
Moments of truth that companies have to face - Interview with Frank Bunge and Martin Bergmann
Mr. Bunge, Mr. Bergmann, where do you see the biggest stumbling blocks for companies on their way through their own digital transformation? What are the challenges for SMEs in particular?
FBU: For almost all companies, digitalization is associated with a significant cultural change. Entrepreneurial thinking must not be based on the product, but on the customer. There have been many examples in the past where companies have missed out on disruptive changes (or did not want to acknowledge them) and therefore disappeared from the market.
Here are just three examples:
- From the carriage to the car ➨ Studebaker
- From analog to digital photography ➨ Kodak
- From cell phone to smartphone ➨ Nokia, Blackberry.
This is the challenge facing companies. This change in corporate culture must be approached holistically in every respect: Cross-functionally and top-down within the company and with the customer and the employees - without distributing the customer-centric mindset equally to all customers with a watering can. Both the necessary professional change management and the clear definition of the holistic approach pose a real challenge for many companies.
So let's focus on the customer: what would you say are the most important criteria for success in order to really inspire customers? How can technology drive customer centricity here, and what opportunities should companies ideally take advantage of?
MBE: The most important criterion for success is the customer-centric mindset implemented in the company from the top down. The actual implementation of a customer-centric culture and living this culture comes before the implementation of digital tools. However, these are then an indispensable enabler for achieving customer enthusiasm. In addition to the culture, employees must also be involved and motivated accordingly. Customer enthusiasm can only be generated with enthusiastic and motivated employees. In the context of digitalization, topics such as Work 4.0 or New Work an important part that is still underestimated in many companies. Both are topics that we address with TCI as part of our holistic approach, including with competent consultants.
Then comes the technology, which must help a company deliver a unique and personalized experience to its customers at every touchpoint. Here too, many companies do not yet recognize the opportunities offered by new digital technologies such as mixed realities, the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence.
You just mentioned the topic of artificial intelligence. It is well known that opinions are divided among end customers and employees, ranging from existential fear to hope. In your opinion, what role do AI technologies play from a business perspective?
FBU: Like almost all ground-breaking developments in the past, all companies that want to continue to 'play the game' in the global markets will have to deal with AI. And not just from a technological perspective, but also to surprise and retain customers through personal experiences.
The economy and society will change fundamentally, as AI will have an impact on all areas of daily life. Jobs can and will disappear if AI offers the possibility of automating these activities and using machines to do them better than humans. Just as the car or the computer could not be stopped as a development, AI will not be stopped as a development either. However, it remains important to recognize and exploit the positive potential of AI. Yes, as with the industrial revolutions of the past, jobs will be lost. In the past, these were almost exclusively manual jobs, but now more and more administrative jobs will be affected. Overall, however, the number of jobs has increased over time with every technological advance. I am convinced that this will not change, even in times of digitalization and AI. I cannot judge when and if a computer will ever reach the creativity of a human being. And the ability to think creatively is the unique selling point of humans and, in my view, will remain so for a long time to come. Our partner colleague, who also spoke at our symposium, recently wrote that the human brain has not even been fully researched yet. How can you claim that a machine will be more intelligent than a human brain?
MBE: Fear of artificial intelligence is not only unnecessary, but also misguided. In my view, we all need to deal with AI proactively, constructively and without fear. The new computer technologies and new storage media make it possible to store much more data - keyword Big Data - at a significantly faster speed. Stored 'experiences' are used via algorithms to derive decisions. As a lot of data is compared, these decisions are based on a solid database. This decision is therefore often and increasingly more correct than a human decision. This can be very helpful in many standard processes and can also improve quality of life.
In which direction will customer service develop? How important is personal customer contact in the context of process automation?
MBE: Customer experience is influenced at every point of contact with the customer - both positively and negatively. It is therefore becoming increasingly important for companies to know the 'customer journey' of their customers. Companies need to know and address all 'moments of truth', starting with the attractiveness of the supplier search and selection, through purchasing and benefits, to the active management of customer enthusiasm through positive customer experience over the entire service lifecycle. Every customer contact - even and sometimes especially those before the actual purchase - has an impact on the customer experience. And even after the use of a purchased product or service, customer experience can and is shaped by a company's behavior. The impact comes from every employee with customer contact. At our symposium, Professor Buxmann presented the example of a voice robot from Google that can adapt the dialog in a telephone call to its human conversation partner. A great example that shows how far technology has already come and gives an idea of what will be possible in the near future. The robot adapts language and semantics to the other person. However, it will not replace face-to-face conversations in the future, in which ad hoc and creative responses are made to customer expectations and needs. And this individual and personalized response is crucial for customer satisfaction.
FBU: Customer service must become more individual and personal. In this context, I always like to quote Neela Montgomery, the Otto Group's Executive Director of Multichannel Retail:
Customers will very soon expect a deeply personalized interaction based on predictive technology and they will be merciless to the retailers who don't master it."
~ Otto Group - Hello Future/Fiscal Year 2016/17
What Neela Montgomery says about B2C and retail is also increasingly true in B2B business. Companies are differentiating themselves less and less through their products. Customer orientation and the customer experience resulting from customer-oriented action are ultimately the differentiating criteria from the competition and therefore determine the success of a company. What counts for customers is less and less the static characteristics of ownership and functionality, but rather current availability at the time of need with the expected benefits and characteristics.
For B2B, this means moving away from reactive complaint processing and troubleshooting and towards proactive and predictive fault avoidance. In the future, AI in particular will offer companies the opportunity to derive future customer expectations from past customer behavior and proactively adapt their service offering accordingly. The availability of products can not only be improved by actively avoiding faults. Innovative and valuable solutions can also be offered to customers that exceed their expectations and generate customer enthusiasm - the lever for customer loyalty. However, these solutions not only ensure customer loyalty. They will also generate sustainable and profitable sales for the companies. The most successful companies are those that inspire their customers with unexpected personalized solutions.
In what way can TCI support companies in their digital transformation - especially in order to achieve major corporate goals such as customer loyalty?
FBU: With its network of consultants consisting of experienced senior managers in C and VP functions and experienced consultants, TCI combines practice and theory in a unique way. At the same time, TCI offers IT expertise at all levels and - as demonstrated in Ludwigsburg - solid and innovative competence in matters of digitalization and customer service excellence. This holistic approach to expertise as well as performance and solution competence sets TCI apart and guarantees our customers success in implementing their challenges.
MBE: Transformation means change. And every change involves people and every change affects people. As TCI, we therefore want to address all aspects of digital transformation: How do companies need to position themselves and how do they need to optimize their processes in order to customer expectations serve them better? How do they identify these customer needs? But also: How must this transformation process be managed in order to complete it successfully and how are employees involved so that they remain motivated to generate customer enthusiasm during and after the transformation? This is another aspect of the holistic nature of TCI's consulting portfolio that we wanted to demonstrate with our event and were probably able to do so.
Thank you very much, Mr. Bunge and Mr. Bergmann, for the interesting comments on the insights that participants were able to gain at your event "Digitalization drives customer service excellence". In particular, the role of artificial intelligence and its significance for the future of companies opens up fundamental questions. We wish you continued success in accompanying companies on their journey and look forward to another event on this topic!
The interview with Frank Bunge and Martin Bergmann was conducted by the TCI editorial team.
Editor's note: You can also read the first part of the interview with Frank Bunge and Martin Bergmann. It deals specifically with the challenges that digitalization poses for companies, the necessary cultural change in companies and what a future-proof mindset must look like as a solid foundation for change. You can find part one here: Digitalization drives customer service excellence: versatile TCI event points the way forward.
Understanding customer needs: Visual impressions of the TCI event "Digitalization drives Customer Service Excellence"
To round off the two-part interview with Frank Bunge and Martin Bergmann, here are two more videos from the event "Digitalization drives Customer Service Excellence", which took place in Ludwigsburg in September 2018:
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(Source: Transformation Consulting International GmbH)
(Cover image: © Frank Bunge / TCI GmbH)
