I’m driving on a motorway heading out for a day trip, the A/C is blasting a bit much and I’m feeling cold, the junction is coming up and I don’t want to miss it, I’m sandwiched between two articulated lorries, baby is crying, eldest asking for a snack, middle one needs the loo and I’m holding a conversation with my partner on the economics of the car industry in 2021. I’ve got to choose a focus, so I pick the driving part.
In my last blog, I shared some of the challenges thrown up by balancing priorities across a digital portfolio and the many pressures to deliver quickly. I also outlined some factors you can consider in your decision making. Hopefully, your decisions are not quite as ‘immersive’ or time-critical as the driving anecdote, the key points were choice and seeing through the noise.
Let’s look at some of the tools you can turn to when making your digital choices:
-
Priorities
Just like managing your packed diary, you need to apply the same principles to your portfolio. Consider for any change, what your decision-making criteria is and use this consistently across your portfolio. I’m not just talking about urgency, this is also about the hierarchy in those expectations we mentioned in part one and their relative importance. If Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) is the top priority, then reflect that in your decisions. Establishing this ‘north star’ metric(s) will help you and your teams to focus.
-
Dialogue
You are not alone in making these decisions, you have a team around you that know your organisation, your staff, customers and where the real challenges lie. Communicate the priorities and empower them to make decisions about where to focus. Work with them to formulate goals that can deliver specific and measurable outcomes quickly.
-
Review and adapt
This is not a linear process, you will not decide the set of tools, services and changes you want to see at the start of the year and by the end, it will all happen as planned. Make time to pause and review how successful you have been based on data and key metrics. This might mean throwing away work, changing direction or adapting your ambitions.
-
Flexibility
With the best will in the world, it is not always possible to deliver the change the way you envisioned it. The team might be seeing a surge in demand at the moment and don’t have the capacity to deliver change alongside. Perhaps other changes are being bedded in that need more time to play out before the next change can be introduced. Maybe there are some foundational technology changes that need to happen first before you deliver your strategic initiative. Balancing all of these factors across your portfolio is a critical operational skill. It also takes a lot of strength, patience and humility as a leader.
If you are implementing a model where Customer Experience (CX) and Return on Investment (ROI) are your critical success factors, be specific about how a new digital tool will deliver on these.
Taking the example of an improved contact routing system in your contact centre. In this case, understanding the impact on CX requires an understanding of the customer journey. Where the customer interacts with the routing system, which digital channels they approach with, where the greatest challenges are that your change is trying to tackle. Then be laser-focused on that challenge, and where the greatest impact will be. If you discover that CSAT tends to be low for customers because they have a long wait to get answers for billing queries, set a goal to reduce that time within the next reporting period. This type of focus helps your team to unleash creativity and deliver real results quickly. ROI, in this case, might come from efficiency improvements. However, there might also be a hypothesis that removing the pain of handling billing queries makes you easier to work with and you see an increase in renewals or new sales from recommendations. Because your budget cycle runs frequently, you need to be able to make ‘relatively’ small changes like this, measure success and act.
If you have a long list of technologies to implement this year, take time to think about what impact each change will have on the metrics that matter, break down the changes into smaller chunks and be open-minded to learn and change direction along the way.
Read part one of this two-part blog series for factors to consider in your decision-making process and for examples of organisations that successfully put their customers first. If you would like to learn more about how we can help you with your digital transformation, please contact us.
