Businesses use an array of technologies to primarily serve one purpose- active customer engagement. Today, digital technologies such as portals, content management systems, and search are converging into one digital experience platform. For a deep dive into how the evolution of digital commerce can be understood in two phases, we had Rajesh Varrier, SVP, Head of Digital Experience & Microsoft Business, Infosys, share insights around the impact of digital commerce and more personalized customer experience.
Q1. How have technologies such as AR and VR impacted CX?
AR and VR technologies can create immersive experiences by including elements from both the physical world as well as the digital environment. Today most organizations engage with their customers either at their physical locations or via their website or mobile application. As people increasingly become comfortable interacting with new technologies, there is an opportunity to engage with them in novel and exciting ways. With the cost of AR and VR technologies coming down, companies are finding it more affordable to adopt them.
VR allows a company to interact with a customer in a computer-generated simulation of a real-world environment, while AR can generate a merged view by superimposing Information on a customer’s view of the real world. With these technologies, companies find it easier to help their customers visualize the product in the context of its usage and communicate its value better. AR and VR can help customers make purchasing decisions, particularly in the case of high-value products as they can experience them even before they place an order for them. For example, real estate companies can give a digital tour of their different properties, or a travel agent can showcase various holiday destinations by giving a virtual glimpse into the landscape of each place.
As these technologies become more affordable and accessible, AR and VR will become central to creating seamless experiences between real and virtual existence.
Q2. How can the adoption of digital cut down on infrastructure costs?
Statista reported that 63% of the world’s population was using the Internet in April 2022 and India along with China and the US is leading the internet penetration rate. This inevitable growing preference for digital has brought into focus the concept of digital real estate.
Digital real estate is primarily the IT infrastructure that delivers non-physical capabilities. An integrated digital infrastructure brings together an entire ecosystem including virtual channels and offline stores, factories, and warehouses to make businesses resilient, agile, and responsive. As we make technological breakthroughs, we are creating powerful digital capabilities and their application in commerce is allowing businesses to do a lot more than just sell products and services.
Organizations can deliver superior consumer experience without investing in physical stores, support hybrid work models without renting or buying office space and move to the cloud to reduce expenses on storage, computation, and communication. IT Infrastructure brings speed into execution of business ideas with real-time information sharing, data and analytics, robust connectivity, and risk detection and prevention capabilities.
We can only expect the cost of technology and IT infrastructure to come down with new innovations and increase in adoption of digital technologies across industries and across countries.
Q3. How can the cloud boost omnichannel marketing and online shopping experience?
The retail industry must engage in omnichannel marketing and deliver superior online shopping experiences if it is to survive the digital age. As consumers wander between various touchpoints, from physical stores to various online channels, it becomes essential to offer them a consistent and seamless experience.
A cloud-based platform empowers companies to manage data across different channels. It can help integrate the enterprise software and systems and connect the data from different parts of the organization to provide a single view of customer behavior and interaction.
Cloud provides a powerful, scalable platform to monitor the customer journey across different channels which can be instrumental in understanding their preferences. The information can be leveraged to create personalized customer services. Store managers can have real-time access to the customer profile and history empowering them to offer the right suggestions or assistance.
A significant benefit of using the cloud is its ability to scale up or down as per demand. Seasonal fluctuations can place undue stress on operations and resources. With cloud, one can release or pull more resources as per need on a pay-per-usage basis which can be highly efficient and cost-effective.
Q4. How does Infosys enable enterprises to engage with customers at all touchpoints throughout the user journey?
In current times, every business has a digital presence and customers are increasingly becoming comfortable using digital technology. The customer touchpoints are not limited to a particular channel or market. It spans across physical and digital environments and is often interconnected. Enterprises need to provide the best possible omnichannel customer experiences that are seamless, consistent, and can be sustained across all touchpoints.
Real-time, multi-lingual, personalized, safe digital interactions are a given. Infosys helps enterprises create engaging digital experiences not only for customers but also for employees and partners. We help companies rethink, design, and implement all aspects of customer journeys end-to-end. As customer expectations are continuously evolving, we must keep pace by regularly measuring their experience on every channel, device, and platform across all customer interactions and changing as needed to meet the desired business outcomes.
Our services cover the entire spectrum from helping organizations align on the outcomes they expect from the Digital transformation they are about to embark on, to rethinking the entire experience design putting Human in the center, bringing in the latest innovations using IOT/5G/AR/VR as applicable to ensure world class experience is delivered through the customer journey.
Q5. What makes Infosys Digital Experience (DX) relevant to businesses?
Every organization worldwide is rethinking Digital Experience across channels. How they connect, interact, and transact with all kinds of stakeholders, be it customers, partners, employees, or even investors.
Today’s fast-changing technology landscape provides organizations with a huge array of capabilities at their disposal to ensure that the experience they deliver is best in class. Consumer expectations with respect to their experiences are also rapidly changing. How does an organization align the desired business outcomes to changing expectations of its stakeholders, and then constantly deliver and keep itself up to date?
Infosys Digital Experience business finds itself right in the center of this exciting global transformation. We are partners with global and local brands in their journey to ensure they navigate their next and they put their best out there from a digital standpoint. We guide our clients into delivering integrated and personalized experiences by building human-centered digital platforms that support the entire CX journey of Digital Marketing, Commerce, and Service Interactions.
Any organization that wants to rethink its digital presence starts by figuring out what they want to achieve. Our journey starts there, helping customers arrive at the outcomes they want to change for the business, and arriving at a common definition of success. From there emerges the strategies to be adopted to make the outcome a reality. The execution will of course touch on several aspects, from human-centered design, implementation of platforms whether it be mobility, commerce platforms, marketing technologies, CDP (customer data platforms), AI/ML, or others. What technologies come to play depends on the nature of the business, in some cases AR/VR might make a strong business case, in others, it may be IoT or leveraging 5G. Whatever be the case we work through the entire journey from concept to reality with customers globally helping them navigate their next!
