Insights

How to achieve digital transformation by putting the customer first

Robert Dutile, Chief Commercial Officer, UST

By Robert Dutile, Chief Commercial Officer, UST

23% of businesses focus on digital transformation for a better customer experience. - Harvard Business School Working Knowledge
New Study Shows Nearly 80 Percent of Companies Will Implement Conversational Customer Engagement to Improve Customer Experience- IDC

77% of CEOs said their company would fundamentally change how it engages and interacts with its customers. Accenture

Digital transformation fueled by cloud and AI is here to stay – IBM

Customer-centricity is not just a buzzword but an essential business practice. Companies focused on transforming customer experience are looking for technology partners to help them do so as part of the digital transformation journey. A shared vision will create the way forward by combining technology and business to elevate employee and customer experience. At UST, it is a part of the culture as well as the strategy. It is deeply ingrained in the organization as proven by a decision-making process that always puts the customer first.

Customer first means that the customer is the focal point of all decisions. It means the design and delivery of exceptional products, services, and experiences to create customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy. For a technology transformation company, however, customer-centricity goes beyond the customer. It means understanding the end-user- their needs and expectations. The goal is to enable the client's business process so that they can, in turn, better serve their customers, optimize costs, maximize revenue and create value.

Everyone talks about being customer-centric, but it's a philosophy we live and breathe at UST. Our key focus is always – how to provide value? Our flat organization empowers associates to create real-world solutions for our customers. We know that delivering truly customer-centric experiences is not about an objective 'world-class' service but about giving customers what they want. And what they want is a quick and easy process to follow, a transformative experience that benefits their business and their consumers.

How digital transformation is driving the customer experience

The phrase

"digital transformation"

can have different connotations for different people. For us, it means a purposeful design, development, deployment and operation of technologies. The purpose being to achieve a boundless impact on our clients' business, their customers, and the communities they touch.

Technology companies can no longer differentiate themselves on the products, services and solutions they offer. Instead, they need to differentiate through results; to create ecosystems of holistic digital transformation that orchestrate outcome-focused solutions and compelling value propositions.

UST has been a forerunner in creating high-impact partner ecosystems. The customer is at the center of everything we do. By embedding ourselves in our clients' business, we offer the right solution that delivers the right outcomes. It is essential to engage with empathy, learn all about the customer and their customers in turn, and train the team to always to put the customer first to achieve digital transformation.

Global enterprises looking to build a better customer experience (CX) and rapidly create and refine customer engagements, need to re-architect their IT infrastructure and leverage digital platforms. In this way, businesses can accelerate CX innovation to build long-term loyalty and drive rapid revenue growth.

UST’s digital transformation strategy | 5 key steps

Relevance

Staying relevant and enabling continuous transformation is the foundation of an agile organization. As more companies scale their digital personalization efforts, they need outcome-driven tech partners to drive their omnichannel experience with predictive personalization, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Businesses focused on digital transformations strive for an entire value chain narrative and look for digital platforms to help them do so. They need partners who create solutions that will quickly help them stay on top of what consumers care about today and industry trends.

Open innovation, ecosystem partnerships, and integrated customer experiences have become increasingly important. Leaders need to move strategically to stay relevant. Transformative experiences will impact the business bottom line and the communities they serve.

Domain expertise

Technology companies use their domain expertise and deep industry knowledge to help clients solve diverse problems and scale their businesses. But domain expertise is more than knowledge and technology skills. It is about embedding yourselves in the customer business to deepen your understanding of customer goals and their unique challenges. It is about identifying how customers can best leverage your functional and technical expertise.

Innovation

The rate of digital transformation has increased exponentially. Technology partners that operate in an innovation ecosystem with the right tools and can build the system to lead to that transformation are at the forefront of this change. A nimble, highly tuned innovation approach combined with intense collaboration underlies a transformative journey. It helps enhance clients’ businesses and offerings, tackles challenges in novel ways, and increases speed to market.

The UST Innovation Pods™ offer a proprietary process that immerses the team into the client organization and its challenges to help determine the most viable solution.

Meaningful partnerships

Everyone talks about the amazing service they provide. Enterprise customers want more than that. They want an efficient, friendly experience that delivers outcomes; that resolves their business problems with clear and accurate information on the service they will receive. Outstanding service, in this case, would mean how effective you have made their business processes, which will influence their long-term perceptions and behaviors.

Transforming lives

We foster meaningful connections and help businesses positively impact their communities. We apply a human-centered lens as we dig deep to understand customer and employee experience to drive decision-making. The journey starts by defining the real challenge to address the cause and not just the symptoms of the problem.

What may have taken a pandemic to effect change in others has just gotten better with companies that have strong core values. UST has been following the people-first approach from day one. The company’s core values of humility, humanity, and integrity are the foundations for every deliverable, every client and employee relation. They are an integral part of every UST associate. That strong value system helps build solutions that create a ripple effect in the industry and communities. Clients that find our mission and values align with their own realize synergistic value creation.

The UST narrative: A customer transformation mindset predates digital transformation

Every client's journey is unique and evolving. UST's clients have journeyed alongside us for over two decades because they get authentic and meaningful interactions and solutions. The customer-centric approach is reflected in UST's corporate culture and values. Instead of making profit and contracts our goal, we have steadfastly focused on pervasive customer-centric decisions to improve customer experience. For us, profit results from consistent hard work and innovative solutions.

UST's partner ecosystem is another example of strategic partnerships that put customers first. Together, they meet the vast demands of the digital era and customers' requirements with ease. These like-minded businesses work with UST to provide the right outcomes for clients and help them build a more reliable, robust, more resilient environment with cloud and AI-driven solutions.

We create an ecosystem of technology that will form the backbone of digital transformation. By developing and integrating the right technology solutions and the right talent, we help drive commercial value and complement existing technologies simultaneously. The result is a digitally enabled modern organization structured around customer journeys. Digital assets will help them become a profitable and sustainable enterprise and a force for good in the broader society.

Building a customer-centric culture is good for business. Customer-centric organizations develop solutions to address customers' evolving needs rather than simply selling their existing products and solutions. It can help grow revenues, improve efficiency, drive performance, and sustain profitability. It also helps build lasting loyalty and a long-lasting relationship that is more valuable than a single transaction. This is truly where customer centricity has an impact.

Learn more about UST digital transformation services.