Digital transformation brings technology into people's everyday life and enhances businesses' performance than ever before they function or serve their customers. Undeniably, customer experience plays a vital role in the digital transformation journey as customers are the king of today's business success. They are the growth driver of, whether a company is small or large, regardless of its location or functional areas.

Digital transformation, the integration of digital technology, has the potential to impact virtually every aspect of a business. And as customers these days are expecting more, it is likely to have the most potent impact on customer experience. Considering reports, retailers are most likely to prioritize digital transformation in a bid to drive growth. In fact, in an HBR survey, 40 percent of respondents recognized customers experience their top priority for digital transformation. Furthermore, 72 percent said they expect the shift to digital to build closer relationships with customers.

Still, several companies' efforts of digital transformation across the world are not placing customers at the center of their digital endeavors. They increasingly leverage new technologies to create operational efficiencies to lessen costs. This is, however, good in some context, but the price they pay for these technologies exasperate customers grappling with feebly designed experiences and incoherent and inauthentic touchpoints with the brand.

While enterprises across the globe today are making significant investments in digital transformation efforts, according to a report, the expenditures will reach from US$1.3 trillion in 2018 to US$2.1 trillion by 2021. This rapid explosion of smart technologies, combined with the declining cost of computing and storage power, has put most technologies, particularly analytics and advanced machine learning, practically in the hands of every business. However, just embracing the latest technology will not pave the way for a competitive edge.

Creating Effective Customer Experience

For almost every company, customer retention and then creating effective customer experience are the major priority. Thus, in this way, storing data locally with ensuring security, in first place, can assist a business customer to explore the information they want in a convenient manner. Most companies have already enabled their customer with access to all their past purchasing details on the company site. For example, if a customer wants to track, cancel, or return an order, they can easily do so on their own, without waiting for any assistance from the business's customer service team.

Moreover, one of the foremost ways to create customer experience relies on employees' understanding of digital transformation goals. As they have a comprehensive understanding and relevant knowledge, they can quickly take a significant digital-first approach across the organization and its impact will have on improving customer service.

So, as brands seek to deliver more enhanced and innovative services with a competitive edge, they need to start their digital transformation journey with the customer experience. Because customers demand better experiences from the organizations they do business with, and this creates opportunities for companies to meet or exceed those demands to be successful.