Delivering the best customer experience in adverse pandemic conditions

With the global crisis caused by Covid-19, enterprises shifted their focus on ensuring employee safety, business continuity & employee productivity, and we saw the emergence of new yardstick for customer experience (CX). In this blog, Rahul Mathur, Global Head of Customer Experience at Tata Communications, focuses on the new digital transformer – ease of doing business from home – and how it’s changing the entire business ecosystem.

While countries are gradually easing the lockdown, past few months have been very challenging for enterprises. The situation forced some foundational shifts in how companies look at their business models and how people collaborate and work with each other. A recent report from McKinsey estimates that the pandemic ushered in the equivalent of a five-year leap in digital adoption – in just eight weeks. And there’s no turning back. Additionally, the survey showed that 75% of people using digital channels for the first time will continue even when this pandemic is over.

Here at Tata Communications, we focused on making business easier from the get-go and it was critical for us to focus on the employee experience (EX). Within just two weeks, 98% of our global workforce was enabled to work from home (WFH), so they could work safely and still be productive.

At the same time, as many companies initiated their business continuity plans, reliable delivery was paramount. Enterprises urgently needed solutions to be up and running in very short timeframes. We were able to meet the tightest deadlines required to deliver critical services.

“Immediately after the lockdowns, many of our enterprise customers were asking how to enable WFH effectively. Our teams did a phenomenal job of helping thousands of users and more than 150 enterprise customers to work from home securely and seamlessly.”

Security plays a key role in ensuring seamless digital transformation of organisations and true borderless growth. Cybercriminals were out to make the most of the WFH vulnerabilities. United Nations executive Izumi Nakamitsu said that there had been a 600% increase in cyberattacks during the pandemic. Over any device and at any location, you need to make sure your colleagues are equipped to cater to customer needs and are able to access critical data safely and securely.

This secure access then needs to be backed by an agile and robust network to ensure interaction is secure, scalable, collaborative, smooth and delivers a higher customer experience (CX). At Tata Communications, it’s our job to make that happen, quickly and easily.

Take the contact centres, where knowledge workers need to access sensitive data in real time and also maintain a richer and more engaged experience for their customers. To ensure a superior digital experience in this new contact-less world, our overall solution harnessed two-factor authentication (2FA), Unified Threat Management (UTM) and seamless collaboration across the ecosystem backed by an agile Zero Trust Network solution optimised to enhance our clients and their end user experience.

Leveraging our industry leadership position, we have introduced Secure Connected Digital Experience (SCDx), a new proposition for enterprises to ensure business growth in a post-COVID world. With SCDx, we enable enterprises to meet the growing, worldwide demand for new ways of operating, which includes far higher levels of working from home, rising security risks, a shift to digital commerce and more contactless experiences for employees, customers and supply chain partners.

Today, digital Experience (DX) is one of the key considerations across industries.   Technology is playing a pivotal role in supporting the travel sector, especially aviation industry with no-contact, smooth and efficient processes. e-Medic consultation is on the rise, and is not just about reviewing reports but about live tracking as well. More and more businesses are rapidly evaluating new models to reap benefits e.g.  automobile industry is assessing phygital (physical + digital) sales channel starting from digital lead generation, virtual car specs and performance tours/demos etc., enabling a seamless experience for employees and customers.

Retail outlets are also looking for smoother and faster operations by deploying AI and AR mapped with buying history to assist faster turnaround. And all this is challenging the status quo. It’s a paradigm behavioural shift for each and everyone in this digital ecosystem.

“Our pandemic experience shows that to ensure a long-term and sticky relationship with customers, the solutions you offer have to be easy to use and deploy, align to the customers’ business goals and deliver richer experience.”

Remote working can make doing business easier and enhance the experience. This was recognised by majority of 200+ participants of one of our events, where they voted our collaborative platform to be more effective than similar face-to-face activities. We were able to attract a larger audience due to the virtual set up, and features like multiple virtual break out rooms etc. made collaboration and discussion highly effective.

“By making sure digital channels are welcoming and easy to use, while being scalable, reliable and secure, an enterprise can enhance the experience of employees, customers, and partners and the way they all interact with each other, to stay ahead in times of crisis and beyond.” 

From now on, every business will need that secure connected digital experience to deliver the very best possible employee as well as customer experience.

To know more about how you can harness the new emerging technologies to deliver solutions for the digital-first world, visit our Secure Connected Digital Experience page.