Infobip on why businesses should invest in customer experience

With industries quickly moving to adopt digital transformation, what do you think are some of the key factors companies should keep in mind when adopting new technologies?
There are usually many factors when making a decision on a new tech stack and it may vary from one industry to the other, but I think one factor is overarching – the customer. With each decision we make, there has to be a clear answer to the questions “Will this improve our customer base?” and “Will this improve our customer satisfaction?”. If these questions are not answered properly, there’s a high chance that your digital transformation efforts are not going in the right direction.

So why do companies need to invest in customer experience (CX)? What is the added value?
Customers and markets are overwhelmed with the variety of options, and the added value among solution providers is not always clear. But the simple truth is, how a client interacts with you as a business is key. Clients will no longer compromise in the quality-of-service area and CX is your chance to gain a competitive advantage.

With change comes resistance, what are some of the challenges you have witnessed when it comes to getting companies to commit to technology?
I think there’s one predominant reason why companies are reluctant to change. They’re usually under-estimating the level of change in the market so they’re becoming outpaced by the customers and competition. We’re a global company, working in over 190 markets so we can do some comparisons between geographies. Business logic is the same wherever we go, it’s serving your customer in the best possible way. What is regionally specific is the local ‘cocktail’ of preferred communications channels, where we have to support many specific services and a general level of technology adoption in selected geography. What’s interesting is that more developed doesn’t necessarily mean better tech adoption since some emerging regions are adopting tech at a much faster pace.

What makes a cloud communication service provider great?
First-of-all is the quality and broadness of communication services we can offer. We combine our infrastructure with fast, deployable, and programmable building blocks as the communications platform. This is combined with CX SaaS solutions stack that enables our users to take full advantage of our robust and versatile communications channels.

What region specific insight/knowledge is required on market trends and client behaviour to enhance the cycle of finding new prospects and successful lead generation?
B2B sales and marketing are reaching new levels of complexity. Customers today are not following well established procurement processes, they are well informed and much more aware of their needs. Before the pandemic, B2B sales were heavily dependent on in-person sales while in the last two years we have witnessed a massive decline in interaction with suppliers sales teams. Customers spend much more time learning independently and discussing the subject within various stakeholder groups. Also, B2B solution providers are moving towards becoming experts in their target customer business areas, which is visible through industry verticalisation of SaaS providers. Customers want to remain flexible and keep away from long-term commitments, so solution providers are moving rapidly towards consumption based models.

In the same way that companies’ approach to change entails bringing new innovations to market, how can revenue and sales representatives bring new processes and ways of thinking to the workplace?
We have been building a globally-spread sales engine since the early stages, so now we’re covering a variety of markets where we’re already using or moving towards a more targeted, customer-specific approach. Our sales and marketing teams are becoming segment focused and we keep investing in industry specific enablement for large accounts sales. In SME space we’re building engine-based sales comprised of marketers and low-touch customer engagement, heavily supported by digital customer journey. One of our biggest bets are our partnerships with technology providers, product partnerships, consulting, and MNO partnerships. We can engage our customer directly, through SelfService, partners or horizontal/vertical platforms, so our go to market design will have to be precise and customer centric.