Meeting customer demand - striking the right balance

  • Angus Burrell, General Manager at AltaPay, a Valitor company

  • 18.10.2018 01:30 pm
  • Customer experience

Businesses run on balance sheets – where assets and liabilities are held in equilibrium. If a business wants to invest in one area, it must generate the resources from another. If the balance is out, then the business simply can’t work. The analogy holds true for business operations across the board, especially where the need for rapid innovation has to be balanced by the capability of the business to deliver against a value proposition. However, we are in risky times, where many businesses are losing sight of balance in the pursuit of quick returns. And, if you get the balance wrong, customers will punish you for it.

At a time when businesses are moving faster than ever to meet growing customer demands, staying in control of it is essential. Yet, at times organisations’ front-end systems are moving too fast for the back-end to keep pace. Critical assets like the stock inventory are slipping out of control as retailers fail to track and recognise items as they are returned through any number of channels. Before long, this inability to stay up to speed will hit the bottom line hard and the impact on customer service will follow.

No longer is the established notion of ‘keeping pace’ with customer expectations going to be enough. Businesses have to understand what consumers will want one, two and five years in the future if they are to remain competitive in the ‘Expectation Economy’ within which they now operate. Meeting these demands will be critical, but if any changes made are to be sustainable, businesses have to ensure that they do not chase short-term customer satisfaction to the detriment of the wider business. There is a balance to be struck.

Meeting expectations

The key to meeting these steep expectations is building strong relationships with customers. Technology will be pivotal in bringing this to fruition but its use must be carefully focused and led by customer issues and challenges. For example, people won’t decide to use a particular retailer just because they have installed a new piece of technology - they will make their choice because a brand delivers an enjoyable experience or makes it easy to buy products or services in a way that is convenient for them as a consumer. In short, technology has to be applicable and serve a clear purpose.

Getting this right will have a significant impact on customer satisfaction levels. In a recent report, Gartner claimed that uncertainty in the customer experience is the fundamental reason for much of the frustration and disappointment that consumers feel towards brands. This is where delivering technology-driven services that provide clear value for customers can prove to be a competitive advantage. However, this not only relies on the successful implementation of front end technology. If retailers are to find a sustainable solution to this challenge, any changes must be fully integrated with existing back-end systems. 

Joining the dots

The rise of biometric payments is a good place to start in terms of technology that is going to be playing a big role in the workplace over the next few years - the retail industry in particular. Juniper Research has predicted that 770 million biometric apps will be downloaded on an annual basis by 2019, in order to facilitate payments through facial recognition or fingerprint technology. Any given company can install the front end tech that makes this a reality. In the short-term, customers will be impressed by the novelty value but this will not last unless the new payments model is integrated with back-end systems. If these new payments methods aren’t linked with CRM or accounting systems, the business in question will be negatively impacted, which in turn will filter down to the customer. Customers could miss out on personalised offers due to a lack of insight into purchase history, and the business itself could struggle to manage its finances.

As an example, many retailers rely on omni-channel as a core part of their customer service offering. In fact, according to research conducted by Context Consulting on behalf of Valitor, 87% of mid-large retailers claim that omni-channel payment solutions play either a ‘critical’ or ‘important role’ in improving customer experience. In this context, a typical transaction could see a customer buy several items online and decide to return one in store. On the face of it, a painless, convenient service has been delivered to the customer. Yet, behind the scenes, if this process is not linked to back-end systems, the business can lose visibility of what stock it currently possesses, how it needs to manage the supply chain accordingly and ultimately, the impact on the bottom line will not be tracked. A lack of integration like this can have huge consequences for a business financially and it won’t be long before this rolls down to the customer.

Meeting customer expectations is not a responsibility or a side project that can be siloed in one part of a business. Any initiatives to drive change must be closely tied into existing systems if they are to be sustainable. Short-term fixes won’t help the customer or the business in question. The ‘Expectation Economy’ demands a more considered approach where the positives of innovation are balanced by the reality of delivery. Balance is everything.

 

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