To say that technology has advanced in the past couple of years would be a colossal understatement. The ways enterprises now function and interact with customers are dramatically different from what they were a decade ago. And though this has triggered a lot of change, many of those changes have been for the better. For example, it’s now easier for customers to evaluate their options, learn about different brands, and collaborate without making a lot of effort.
But it doesn’t stop here.
The transformation in the world of business has not only made the life of customers simpler but also fuelled their expectations.
Customer Expectations at All-Time Highs
Today’s digitally conscious customers have access to transformative technologies such as machine learning, automation, and more to get what they want almost exactly at the moment they need it.
What’s more, the rise of these technologies has amplified customer expectations, resulting in a new a more competent and powerful buyer.
In recent times, customers are more demanding than ever. The new business model gives the power to customers – they expect better service, better solutions, better experiences, and better value. Ergo, customer expectations are rapidly increasing. And it’s up to organizations to keep up with those expectations.
Consider a real-life business scenario to comprehend this facet better. Businesses need time to get an auto or homeowner’s insurance quote. But it takes place in a 15-min session on a website and results in an immediate quote. The need for organizations to do it in a few minutes actually determine how delightful their customer would be. In short, customers demand speed, convenience, and ease to stay delightful and ultimately loyal.
Related White Paper: Reimagine your Customer Data Integration
The point being, to make customers delighted and provide maximum value to them, organizations need to transform the way they do business. And for that, they need to analyze the data of customers and comprehend their requirements in toto. Customer data integration platforms play an important role here.
Meeting the Rising Customer Expectations with Data Integration
Customer data integration solutions enable business users integrate and analyze customer data and extract insightful information, which can be leveraged to make critical business decisions.
These platforms begin the magic by empowering business users onboard customer data faster by up to 80%. Meaning that the data that used to take months to get onboarded in an existing business ecosystem will take only a few minutes now. This is the moment where organizations can put a positive impression on their customers and enhance the quality of their experience.
Then, organizations can use these platforms to integrate myriad data streams of customers and manage them at the speed of business. They can employ self-service-enabled features or functionalities embedded in these solutions to do that. For example, pre-built application connectors can help any business user create data connections and directly exchange information with cloud applications such as Salesforce, MS Dynamics CRM, HubSpot, and more. Another feature such as shared template allows them to receive invoices, orders, inventory information, shipping information, leads, contacts, contracts, etc from their suppliers.
Self-service integration empowers everyone in a company’s value chain to look directly at data streams and customer entities through intuitive screens and dashboards and generate insightful information for driving decision-making. It does so by enabling everyone in the organization to delight customers. Simultaneously, IT is freed from participating in the process and executing API coding and EDI mapping actively but continues to control or govern them. This makes them productive and gives power to business users instead.
With next-gen features such as machine learning and security protocols, non-technical users can analyze and manage multi-dimensional, complex data of customers and use the insights to fulfil their requirements without delay.