"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"
The future of customer experience is in the cloud
Dickens famously said, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." The pandemic and the looming recession have caused extreme swings of the pendulum. While the world is experiencing chaos and disruption, some companies are responding with alacrity and resilience. Delta Airlines, for instance, invested in airports, end-to-end customer experiences, technology overhauls through cloud enablement, and in-flight Wi-Fi infrastructure during the pandemic. As a result, when travel resumed, Delta Airlines emerged as the strongest airline business post-pandemic and drove 50% of the entire airline industry's profits in the last quarter. A must listen podcast.
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Easier said than done. The elephant in the room is the existing legacy technology stacks, which present a challenge when integrating modern digital capabilities. Their limitations in handling the high computational demands of intensive, real-time predictive systems end up creating a patchwork of various architectures that do not work well together, hindering businesses from staying competitive in today's market.
The key to success is to embrace AI and the Cloud as part of a holistic strategy for modernizing the technology landscape and driving new business and operating models. The future of customer experience is in the cloud.
By investing in data analytics, AI, digital experiences, and cybersecurity, companies gain a competitive advantage, enhance customer experiences, and improve overall business operations. The cloud then acts as a force multiplier. Delta Airlines, for example, leveraged cloud and AI investments to enhance the end-to-end customer experience, including ticket booking, price predictions, schedule changes, real-time flight updates, and customer support. This allowed them to improve their competitive advantage, enhance customer experiences, and optimize overall business operations.
In several industries, industry-specific SaaS solutions are being set up to address the specific customer, business process, risk, and regulatory requirements of the particular kind of business. For instance, in retail, one of the most puzzling challenges is determining changing customer behaviors and trends amid the chaos of data, and then taking advantage of this to quickly realign the customer experience, their expectations, and the complete supply chain. This means being able to deliver and quickly scale shopping experiences across multiple touchpoints, including websites, mobile apps, social media, and smart connected devices. Companies that do this well with emerge stronger.