The pandemic has forced transformation and technological change on a range of organisations, public, private and voluntary. But as we start our roadmap back to normality, these amendments can’t be “here and no further.”
The reconfiguration of businesses might have been a necessity and forced all companies into the less comfortable world of digitalisation but there has to be a determination to keep surfing the wave of change. In summary there was a forced short term change that we now must turn into a constant state.
The supply chain was one key area for change, with all thoughts turning to how it could be maintained – think toilet roll in March 2020! Now organisations must continue to review and renew those chains as a core function within their business. There may not be another global pandemic (we hope) but there could be another cause for an outage which will demand a response. There is a need to make supply chains more resilient. The companies who have taken the time to adapt their security and resilience as a core focus will continue to prosper.
In doing this, questions that can be asked are:
- How much more processes can be automated?
- Can communication be enhanced?
- Can the customer experience be further developed?
The customer experience is another key aspect of an organisation’s planning that must be considered. This will require serious thought because it will be too easy for companies to load in the technology resulting in actually marginalising itself from an increasing number of customers.
Developments must always be made with the customer experience in mind. Companies will win loyalty from customers with simple and easy to understand methods of solving issues. These often require some form of human interaction. The reliance of “chat bots” to respond to frequently asked questions may be sufficient when there is a pandemic biting at your heels but is it going to be embraced moving forward?
There is a strong business edict that states if you really want to know your business, become its customer. It is as true now as it has ever been. Test your websites, the response to queries, make a purchase and see just how swift and “friendly” that process is. If you come across a mistake, hopefully you will learn how easy it is to rectify that mistake.
If you are in the shoes of the customer, then “it works ok” won’t be enough – you will want to be an industry leader, compete with the market and provide the best possible service.