Skip to main content

Digital Growth: The Pursuit of New Value Creation

Savvy vendor CEOs know that every employee that comes into contact with a customer can potentially impact new growth. And, they're raising the bar of expectations. Sixty-four percent of customer service and support leaders now report "grow the business" is their most critical priority in 2022, according to the latest market study by Gartner.

The results of Gartner's survey of customer care and support leaders, conducted in August-September 2021, indicate a significant shift towards "adding value" and growing existing clients that have become a top priority for forward-thinking organizations.

"Business growth as a goal is well-aligned with the idea of value-added customer service that creates more value for the customer beyond simply resolving their issue," said Brad Fager, research director at Gartner.

Reimagine Customer Service Value Creation

Adding value in customer service interactions can lead to new revenue streams while also protecting existing ones. As a result, strategies that focus on enhancing value are prevalent and growing. In fact, 82 percent of organizations either have or plan to implement a "value enhancement" strategy.

Gartner identified two approaches that organizations pursuing such value enhancement strategies should follow. The first approach is to look for patterns throughout the customer base to find groups that are in need of, or more open to, added value.

The second approach is mining customer data to flag individual customers in need of more value. Other notable trends in this year’s survey results include the need for effective knowledge management systems and a greater focus on self-service adoption.

Modern frontline reps encounter heightened role demands that have elevated the minimum knowledge requirements for success. However, they also operate in a remote setting where a strong knowledge source (direct interactions with peers) has become scarcer.

Service leaders are confronting this paradox and plan to focus less on operating a remote workforce in favor of more effective knowledge management systems that enable productive customer service rep workflows.

However, that approach may be unwise if employee retention is a concern during the current "Great Resignation" environment. Seeking ways to improve your remote employee experiences seems like a worthwhile exercise -- while knowing that improving online interaction with peers can be achieved.

"To foster effective knowledge management practices, customer service and support leaders should prioritize people and process ahead of decisions on a tech solution, especially in the early stages of building knowledge management," added Fager.

According to the Gartner assessment, the basics of self-service adoption remain the greatest focus for service and support leaders. In 2022, leaders must look beyond improving their self-service channels and consider the holistic customer journeys that start on search engines and end on vendor websites.

For example, optimizing the customer site navigation and transitions across channels is a significant, untapped opportunity for customer service. Leaders can design a site navigation experience that guides customers toward self-service solutions while introducing "assisted service" at strategic points in the customer journey.

Proven Digital Business Growth Strategies

There are numerous untapped opportunities that drive growth, in my opinion. Within the enterprise software market, and SaaS offerings in particular, untapped value is often hidden in complementary products and services. The key is to define all the likely points of value creation within the Total Solution that informed buyers seek from qualified vendors.

Post-sales support roles are now frequently defined as Customer Success Managers (CSMs). They are a unique hybrid role between customer service and sales teams. Their primary purpose is to enable end-users to extract the maximum benefit from the purchased solution and thereby increase SaaS subscription adoption and consumption.

Moreover, customer IT organizations and Line of Business leaders often require access to actionable information and guidance that will help their end-users remove any perceived friction from workflows, and can help to streamline operations or advance desired business outcomes with process automation. 

These are effective digital business growth drivers that will influence most customer senior decision-makers during the solution assessment and procurement process -- it's also an essential foundation for building on a successful customer-vendor relationship.

Popular posts from this blog

Mobile Device Market Still Awaiting Recovery

The mobile devices market has experienced three years of unpredictable demand. The global pandemic, geopolitical pressures, supply chain issues, and macroeconomic headwinds have hindered the sector's consistent growth potential. This extremely challenging environment has dramatically affected both demand and supply chains. It has led to subsequent inflationary pressures, leading to a worsening global cost of living crisis suppressing growth and confidence in the sector. In tandem, mobile device industry stakeholders have become more cautious triggering market uncertainties. Mobile Device Market Development Operating under such a backdrop, the development of mobile device ecosystems and vendor landscapes have been impacted severely. Many of these market pressures persisted throughout 2022 and now into 2023, borne chiefly by the smartphone market. According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, worldwide smartphone shipments in 2022 declined 9.6 percent Year-over-Year

Global Digital Business and IT Consulting Outlook

Across the globe, CEOs and their leadership teams continue to seek information and guidance about planned Digital Transformation initiatives and the most effective enterprise organization change management practices. Worldwide IT and Business Services revenue will grow from $1.13 trillion in 2022 to $1.2 trillion in 2023 -- that's a 5.7 percent year-over-year growth, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). The mid-term to long-term outlook for the market has also increased -- the five-year CAGR is forecast at 5.2 percent, compared to the previous 4.9 percent. Digital Sevices & Consulting Market Development IDC has raised the growth projection despite a weak economic outlook, because of vendor performances across 2022, growth indicators from adjacent markets, increased government funding, and inflation impacts. The actual 2022 market growth was 6.7 percent (in constant currency), which was 87 basis points higher than forecast last year, alth

Digital Talent Demand Exceeds Supply in Asia-Pac

Even the savviest CEO's desire for a digital transformation advantage has to face the global market reality -- there simply isn't enough skilled and experienced talent available to meet demand. According to the latest market study by IDC, around 60-80 percent of Asia-Pacific (AP) organizations find it "difficult" or "extremely difficult" to fill many IT roles -- including cybersecurity, software development, and data insight professionals. Major consequences of the skills shortage are increased workload on remaining digital business and IT employees, increased security risks, and loss of "hard-to-replace" critical transformation knowledge. Digital Business Talent Market Development Although big tech companies' layoffs are making headlines, they are not representative of the overall global marketplace. Ongoing difficulty to fill key practitioner vacancies is still among the top issues faced by leaders across industries. "Skills are difficul