There are many benefits of migrating to the cloud: financial savings, increased agility, tighter security and uninterrupted service, just to name a few. But one often overlooked benefit is the improvements it brings to the customer experience and the positive effects this has on user trust and satisfaction, brand engagement and a company’s online reputation.
Improving the user experience is increasingly important for an enterprise’s success. According to Bloomfire, over 80% of businesses see the user experience as something which helps differentiate between competitors and, by the end of the decade, it is projected to overtake price and product choices as the main reason why consumers choose one brand over another.
Online, where consumers expect immediate, unlimited and uninterrupted access to information, products or services, businesses that still use non-cloud systems may miss out on the opportunities that the cloud has to offer. Migrating to the cloud provides the tools and services businesses need to participate in today’s competitive, on-demand marketplace, enabling them to enhance the customer experience and reap the rewards of doing so. Here are the ways migrating to the cloud can improve your customer’s experience.
Give customers 24/7 access to your products and services
The days where customers were prepared to wait for usual business hours to get in touch with a company are over. Today, they expect online operations to be available 24/7, whether that is to buy products, contact customer support or access online services. They also expect that these things can be done from anywhere, using any type of connected device.
By migrating to the cloud, it means that businesses have a much greater flexibility to put these things in place. For example, as employees can connect with work-based applications anywhere they have a connection, it means they can deal with customer service enquiries even when they are out of the office, helping expand operations and keeping costs to a minimum. Indeed, by using AI chat boxes, many of the inquiries a company has out of hours can be automated with only a minimal need for any human interaction.
This 24/7 availability can be provided for many services, such as product sales, ticket ordering, delivery tracking and much more.
Provide a one-stop shop
Ever had the experience of waiting for ages in a phone queue and then, when you finally get through, to be told you need to call a different number? There is nothing more frustrating for a customer than finding out they cannot access all a company’s services from a single point of entry, whether this is on the telephone or online.
Thankfully, the tools and systems available to companies which migrate to the cloud enable them to provide the integrated services that their customers demand, without them needing to leave the website.
The applications available in the cloud provide customers with easy to use interfaces from which they can manage all their services from a single place, whether on a website or smartphone app. Just think of all the things that online banking customers can now carry out on a bank’s website or apps. And if they have a problem, they can have access to support using the same interface no matter where they are, what time of day or what device they are using.
Offer personalised experiences
Despite all the concerns around data privacy, most customers prefer it when companies provide them with personalised shopping experiences. It’s great for consumers seeing products and services that are tailored to their needs and desires and putting these things directly in front of customers certainly helps improve sales. It’s a win-win situation for both consumer and company and something we are seeing a lot more of when we visit websites.
The reason companies can provide personalised shopping experiences is because of the vast amount of data that is made available. Websites can track browsing and shopping history; they provide wish lists to see what people like; if customers don’t inform them directly, their algorithms can quickly ascertain a consumer’s age, gender, family background, geographic location and similar data; and all these things can be compared with the data of those in a similar demographic. The result is that users of these websites see an increasingly accurate guess at the things they are looking to buy and this increases their chance of buying them, especially when the company uses this data to incentivise a purchase through offers and discounts.
To provide personalised shopping experiences, however, all that data needs to be collected, processed and analysed. And there are a lot of data to collect. Cloud computing offers the best way to do this, providing unlimited storage and processing capacity, charged for on a pay as you use basis while allowing the use of widely available big data and AI applications to undertake the data crunching.
Improve the trustworthiness of your brand
The cloud provides several ways to improve the reputation of your brand. With high availability cloud hosting, the bad press associated with application downtime can be a thing of the past; the security features available from service providers mean that there is a reduced risk of IT systems becoming victims of cyber attacks, infections or ransomware; and the choice of cloud-based tools on offer provides a range of ways to ensure that customer’s needs are dealt with quickly. Together, these things ensure that customers see your online provision as something that is both reliable and trustworthy.
Conclusion
Migrating to the cloud can greatly improve the user experience, helping to attract new customers and retain existing ones. With many tools available, the cloud can help businesses give their customers the online experiences they demand, providing 24/7 access to integrated services and personalised shopping from a reliable and trustworthy business. With these in place, businesses will have a clear advantage over their competitors.
If you are considering migrating to the cloud, check out our range of enterprise cloud solutions.
