Effortless Digital Customer Experience in the Time of COVID

Introduction

As we now mark a year into the pandemic, a few disparate truths have become evident in greater society and in the global business community. First, it is most likely that the coronavirus will unfortunately be with us for some time, as new variants develop and vaccine supply attempts to keep up with global demand. Second, employees who have been working from home in the past year seem to be just as productive – if not more – than if they were in the office. Third, and perhaps the most obvious truth as we look back on a year fraught with industry disruption, the effortless digital customer experience has become an imperative for businesses to grow and succeed, under normal circumstances and especially during turbulent times. Before the crisis began, the shift to preferred online service was already well underway, but the pandemic has dramatically accelerated it. The demand for effortless digital customer experiences is here to stay.

For Vitech, this comes as no surprise. Long before the crisis, Vitech had made personalized, effortless digital experiences a priority for V3locity, its market-leading, cloud-based administration platform for the Group Insurance, Annuities and PRT, Retirement, and Alternative Investment markets. As a marketer and frequent digital customer myself, it’s clear that online self-service options are now expected, and users value intuitive self-service, without the need for “customer service” assistance. With higher levels of straight-through processing, personalization, electronic forms and signatures, Vitech has made extensive investments in V3locity’s next generation digital self-service assets, so that the digital experience is smooth, highly adaptable, and as intuitive as possible.

Enabling the Effortless Customer Experience

In today’s global business marketplace, three specific digital customer experience trends have emerged:

• Customers prefer easy-to-access functionality over simply focusing on “look and feel”;
• Customers value low-effort self-service; human interaction has become a negative last resort; and
• Customer loyalty, demonstrated through repeat business, largely depends on how easy it is to
  work with an online service.

As someone who has worked in marketing in a variety of multinational corporate settings, I have seen the cross-industry appeal of and positive results from the effortless digital customer experience. Even when publishing print and video content, an effortless digital experience for customers (in my case, readers, email recipients, and social media audiences) that involves easy functionality and an intuitive self-service experience can lead to repeat business and long-term customer loyalty. Attracting and retaining customers in a fiercely competitive business environment is no small feat, and companies that ignore the importance of providing an effective customer experience can end up losing out to competitors who understand that it is the customer who defines good service.

It is so interesting to me how the effortless customer experience, in essence, really flips traditional customer service on its head. Standard performance metrics like resolution rate or average reply time are not key indicators. Instead, an improved, seamless, and simplified customer experience is the ultimate goal, as well as long-term loyalty and a positive impact on the organization’s bottom line.ⁱ

V3locity – the Ideal Solution

With these points in mind, V3locity, an intuitive, personalized system that meaningfully engages group client participants – internal users, brokers, employers, employees, members, and other service providers – is the ideal solution. V3locity has also been able to achieve this distinction through its sophisticated underlying technology, such as its modular, core benefit administration platform with a wide range of digital experiences. These technical enhancements are in turn made possible by Vitech’s ongoing, extensive R&D into V3locity.

Conclusion

Industrywide, an effortless digital customer experience has become even more crucial due to the widespread use and expectation of digital self-service options and increasing customer demand for easy self-service amidst the pandemic. Vitech’s V3locity platform seamlessly fulfills those requirements, and offers the responsive, persona-based design and straight-through processing that its customers need to remain competitive. Through V3locity’s effortless self-service capabilities, customers can achieve the repeat business and long-term customer loyalty that are even more critical during the current market disruption and ensuing effects.

For more on V3locity’s effortless digital customer experience, see our recent Insight paper, An Effortless Digital Experience: A Service Imperative.

[i] “The Effortless Experience: Turning Customer Service on its Head,” David Galloway, https://tractionondemand.com/blog/the-effortless-experience-turning-customer-service-on-its-head/