Tag: customer expectations

Sometimes, it takes an outsider to allow South Africans to recognise that SA retail innovation is positive in their own country.

Learn the surprising power of delivering beyond your customers' expectations. Essential lessons in hospitality for every business, from the former co-owner of legendary restaurant Eleven Madison Park. Will Guidara was twenty-six when he took the helm of Eleven Madison Park, a struggling New York City two-star brasserie that had never quite lived up to its majestic room. Eleven years later, EMP was named the best restaurant in the world.

The stats speak for themselves. Firstly, there has been a 169% increase in online purchases from new or low-frequency online shoppers. Secondly, more than 80% of consumers who increased their omnichannel digital usage during the pandemic expect to continue with these.

The customer satisfaction gap between South Africa’s banks is closing rapidly, with the digital acceleration brought about by the pandemic being a significant equaliser. Banks are under significant pressure to reinvent their customer value propositions and differentiators at a time when technology and digitisation are making them increasingly invisible to their customers - until things go wrong.

COVID-19 changed the world as we know it, and along with it, customer expectations. Everything is evolving and those organisations that want to thrive, add value, and solve customers’ challenges, will need to have a hard look at their products and services to accommodate the shifts that are happening.

Many leading brands find that the operational transformation journey is more challenging, costly, and resource-demanding than expected. Organisations must unify their people, processes, and technology around the common goal of digital excellence to succeed. This is true whether your organisation is made up of multiple entities or functions as a universe of channels reaching out to customers in new and expanding markets.

Customer expectations are evolving faster today than ever before. That’s hardly surprising. In an always-on world where people have devices with them all the time, they’re exposed to great digital experiences on a daily basis. When a customer has a great experience in one sector, they expect the same from all of their service providers. 

A global pandemic and the ensuing lockdown implemented in South Africa disrupted businesses across most sectors, putting small and medium sized businesses, in particular, under immense pressure. If 2020 has taught us one thing it is the extent to which we have come to rely on the internet.

When we published our 2020 Technology Vision trends report in February, COVID-19 was not yet a global pandemic. Now, everything has changed. This pandemic is the greatest challenge the world has faced in decades, yet rather than slowing innovation, it is amplifying it to historic levels.

The prospect of another year of lack-lustre growth presents forward-thinking business leaders with the perfect reason to tap into the ‘experience economy’. The country’s lackadaisical approach to customer experience is a glaring gap that could deliver tangible results if properly filled.