Small and medium businesses have been experiencing significant market shifts in the last 5 years. It was clear that small business growth shall be driven by digital transformation as this will become the core of customer experience and customer touch point in a mobile connected era.
With the onset of pandemic , the pace of digital transformation has been accelerated. Changes predicted in business model in the next 4-5 years are getting implemented in span of weeks. Products and services which were considered only for the offline world are now flying off the shelves on online platforms. More than ever, small, and medium size companies need to leverage E-commerce and socio-digital platforms to touch base with customers and stay relevant.
As customers get socially distant in a pandemic world and spend more time on browsing digital screens , its important that the small business revamps its digital strategy to suit their audience.
Even though the initial touch points today are social media platforms like whatsapp, Facebook, LinkedIn and various community forums, the eventual place where a customer can authentically experience the small business services and solutions is their website. Enhancing the digital customer experience is the only way ahead.
Enhanced Digital Customer Experience
The new age website must not only excite the customer about the services provided but must be the experiential retail store from where customer can happily transact once they are convinced of the decision to buy. Quite often, its observed that website developers spend a lot of time on design of the website , the themes , the colors , the brand etc. to bring in the right experience. For a small business impacted heavily by the pandemic can focus and prioritize on the process-based customer experience. In such times, they can focus more on simplifying the purchase process, ensuring alignment to customer’s buying process and ensuring free and lower cost platforms like social chat messengers are cross leveraged effectively for best customer experience. It is important that customer gets the following when they visit your e-commerce website.
1. Exceptional quality product or service value proposition. ((nothing in the world can replace this).
2. Focused direct attention from the business as small and medium have quite often been providing services from the backend through modern trade, resellers markets and agents etc.
3. Exceptionally responsive ecommerce that works best on the mobile phones as customers are tuned into their personal devices more than ever.
4. A simple search process and powerful one within the site to ensure customers get the information they need quickly.
5. A simple check in and cart process which can enable quick payments across multiple platforms.
6. Enough bells and whistles to ensure customer returns to buy more in form of discounts and value additions.
7. Last but never the least , a well-coordinated delivery experience and post purchase experience. This is where the next customers and newer opportunities are generated at no extra cost.
In addition to the above, the sectors which are doing well or have the luxury of past profits can also consider experiential opportunities around AR and VR based e-commerce platforms. They can focus on creating a different league of digital experience.
Gain control of your payment collections
For the business and B2C , these systems also need to ensure backend is maintained equally well, but of the two, the priority must be for the front end. For the B2B platforms the experience will also double up as a process improvement tool. The biggest benefit for small business can be the power to interact with end customers, get more control on costs, customer churn and feedbacks. A common challenge faced during pandemic is also on outstanding bill payments and collections. Digitalizing this can be a powerful way to manage the collection delays during the pandemic.
Be in touch despite the social distancing norms.
The key focus on small business while shifting to an online platform must maintain the long-standing human touch as it is. With the advent of social distancing the clients are longing for that personal touch. Always ensure that your online services do not compromise this personal touch. The giants in your sector may need to move mountains to get this induced in their high inertia systems , hence the transition to online must be a supported hybrid model where the human touch is not lost. Have human voice interactions and cut the multiple layers of IVRs to the minimum to make your customers feel the human touch. Have fantastic loyalty bonuses and subscriptions induced for constant touch bases and move beyond the standard call out scripts.
In conclusion, do not have second thoughts about taking your business online , but do it the right way by enabling the right process and technology. If correctly implemented , by the end of pandemic , your small business would have covered significant yards in the journey of digital transformation.