Customer experience has become a top priority for business leaders in recent years. According to IDC, the top three objectives of organizations are improving operational efficiencies, increasing profit, and most importantly, delivering the best customer experience.1 Business leaders know that they need to focus on the long term by building loyalty and lowering attrition, not only for their survival, but also for their growth. Omnichannel retail powered by AI is the key to achieving this goal.
Creating Seamless Omnichannel Retail Experiences
Digital transformation has evolved from a buzzword to a critical success driver that companies have embraced. This is evident in how business leaders are simplifying the customer experience, modernizing their IT infrastructures to bring their physical and digital worlds into one seamless omnichannel experience. For instance, ordering at your favorite quick-service restaurant has become more convenient and personalized with self-service kiosks, where you can customize your meal, or with just a tap of your finger, get it ready for pick up or delivery via their app.
Another example is how banks have made transactions easier and more secure with technology. Besides using mobile apps to facilitate transactions, we are seeing the adoption of videoconferencing with a branch associate and clients becoming more widely available as an option for personal in-branch banking.
Technology is a powerful tool that can transform your customer experience and set you apart from the competition. But to harness this potential, consider these key factors that will shape your digital transformation journey.
Provide new capacity for new apps
To handle transactions in real time, you need new applications that can run smoothly with low latency across all solutions. Whether it is analyzing huge amounts of data for making crucial decisions or easily fulfilling customer orders, you need a flexible and dependable network that can securely scale and link your data centers, cloud providers and edge locations.
Leverage AI for innovation and personalization
AI is not just a trend, but a game-changer that can help you deliver personalized and proactive experiences to your customers. AI can help you analyze large amounts of data, understand customer preferences and behavior, and provide personalized solutions and recommendations. For example, AI can enable a call center agent to resolve an issue or offer an upsell opportunity without asking repetitive questions by accessing relevant information and insights from various sources.
Plan with your biggest asset in mind: your employees
Creating long-lasting customer experiences and empowering employees goes hand in hand. Employees are the biggest assets of any organization. Organizations must empower today’s employees with the digital tools of tomorrow to help them go the extra mile for their customers. The nature of work has evolved, and teams expect flexible solutions that empower their productivity and satisfaction. Planning around your workforce strategies must include your technology roadmap to enable seamless and secure collaboration for everyone, regardless of a hybrid or remote work setting.
How Lumen Can Help
Leveraging our experience in working with many of the largest global organizations across industries, Lumen can help you build and transform your infrastructure to deliver exceptional customer and employee experiences. Our experts will assess your existing solutions and help you prioritize your modernization strategy based on your specific needs and goals. With our guidance and expertise, we can work with you to develop a roadmap that aligns with your vision.
Check out our interactive guide to AI for practical steps you can take to implement AI effectively and cost-efficiently across your retail environment.
1 IDC, Modernizing the Network with Performance-Enabled Digital Infrastructure, November 2023.
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