Cutting costs versus digital transformation....

...it doesn’t have to be one or the other.

With The Economist suggesting a global recession in 2023 is inevitable businesses may feel that they should be concentrating on cutting costs rather than driving digital transformation.

However judicial use of digital tools to increase productivity as well as reducing costs may be an alternative to conventional cost cutting.

Many organizations made vital upgrades during the pandemic but have now been driven back to ever more stringent cost control. But this tighter squeezing of resources and suppliers’ margins won’t deliver much more in the way of cost reduction without a significant impact on service quality.

So how can CXOs reconcile the challenge to reduce costs whilst under pressure to transform their business, and deliver a better customer experience and a competitive advantage? The answer is in adopting new technologies and capabilities, and changing the way organisations operate.

Agile Projects - Agile projects are often cheaper and three times more likely to succeed than those using ‘traditional’ approaches.  But this does require a major change programme including training, coaching and monitoring to ensure that the improvements are embedded and sustained.

Up In The Clouds – The use of cloud providers, the speed of access as well as allowing scalability and flexibility, can also offer great cost savings through consumption-based pricing models, whilst eliminating capital costs.  Moving to the cloud, also gives you a chance to evaluate what applications may need to be replaced or retired.

Internal Automation – Internally, automation offer a means of improving consistency and efficiency whilst providing cost reductions.   But it should not be a case of merely automating existing processes. It requires blue sky thinking and reimagining how a service is delivered,  to benefit both the business (through streamlining processes) and the customer through an improved experience.

Customer Facing Automation - Customers like to self-serve and, given the right tools, they will not need to contact Customer Services. Customers can use chat/message or speech based interfaces to get instant responses in a conversational way. Whether raising an enquiry, asking for support or completing a transaction, the technology can replicate a human advisor to ID&V the customer, retrieve data from various applications and gather feedback.

Agile, cloud and automation all hold the potential to enable organisations to invest more money back into their business – and focus on innovation and expanding their product or service offering rather than just cutting costs.

But if you want to know more about how Customer Service Automation can help drive digital transformation contact us or call us on 0333 6000 360.