Key Trends in The Personalisation of Service Culture

Progress Vice President APJ John Yang says as the world continues to manage the health crisis, organisations that use technology to personalise customer interactions will make them more resilient, and primed for growth.

By John Yang

COVID-19 has undoubtedly fast-tracked transformation initiatives and has made modernisation and technological innovation for businesses a reality. Many of these projects can take years to accomplish, but organisations were pushed to adapt and implement changes almost overnight.

According to the e-Conomy SEA 2020 report, with an accelerated and massive digital adoption growth due to the pandemic, Southeast Asia’s internet economy is poised to grow to over USD 300 Billion Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) by 2025. As consumers endured month-long lockdowns, the region now has a total of 400 million internet users, and e-Commerce, online media consumption and food delivery usage have surged. With this digital exodus, more than 1 in 3 of total digital consumers are considered new to the service, of which 90% intend to continue their newfound habits.

To keep pace with shifting market conditions and flourish in the post-pandemic world, organisations must leverage available technologies and increase focus on digitalisation. Companies can gain a competitive advantage and prepare for future disruptions by opening up to opportunities online. This online presence must be backed up and supported by reliable, intuitive and feature-rich technologies such as content management systems (CMS) and digital experiences platforms (DXP).

Key Trends

Online and offline experiences will intertwine. In the coming years, organisations will look at their content management systems for more opportunities to connect online and offline spaces for their customers. This means consumers are able to see advertisements and promotions online side by side with the products on the shelves, as well as changes in prices in real time.

Stores that rely mainly on their physical sites will invest more in e-commerce and development of connectivity between their online and offline processes.

Self-service technologies will offer capabilities that are indistinguishable from human communication. Self-service platforms are not new, and even before the pandemic, businesses have already been utilising chatbots and automated consumer support. However, the adoption of self-service technologies has been slow.

Many companies have not invested in them before because of the difficulty in gauging their impact. As the technologies that support automated tasks and information retrieval systems continuously improve, much of customer service will be automated. Why not? With chatbots, companies are able to provide an efficient and personalised customer experience without the need to add more staff.

By utilising AI-powered chatbots and self-service platforms, users will not be able to tell if they are talking to a human or a robot. For an enhanced and complete digital experience, organisations should opt for content management systems that offer an integrated chat feature.

Edge Computing will contribute to the personalisation of information, efficiency and protection of business processes. The use of cloud technologies will increase even more in 2021. The availability of 5G will accelerate the development of edge computing, and will lead to the creation of innovations and personalisation of consumer experiences.

For example, in a supermarket, a shopper’s electronic to-buy list can be reorganised to save time and effort. For a more efficient shopping experience, the list will show first the products that are closest according to the shopper’s current location. With the help of edge computing, customisation and personalisation will be done in real time. This level of efficiency is made possible through a content management system less dependent on centralised processes and information sources.

Users without technical training will be able to easily work with CMS. CMS can be classified based on its architecture. Coupled CMS is called such because the backend and frontend content administration are linked. The developers and content managers from the backend and the end users in the front end are using and viewing the same system. Most organisations use a backend CMS structure with multiple frontend channels and require an integration process to allow the sharing of information. A headless CMS refers to a backend only architecture, while a decoupled CMS means the backend and frontend are independent.

Headless and decoupled CMS options both separate the content from the frontend and require API integration for quick and easy dissemination of information to different channels.

However, true headless CMS do not have web development applications for people without technical training, which makes it dependent on IT teams. Moving forward, CMS providers will focus on offering solutions that do not require in-depth technical knowledge and will make website management for businesses much easier.

Developers will prefer .NET Core. The .NET Core enables the development of ASP.NET applications that run simultaneously on Windows, Mac and Linux. With .NET Core, developers can accelerate and simplify the process of creating hybrid and progressive web applications with productivity enhanced by the introduction of additional features.

The versatility and functionality that .NET Core offers will help IT teams develop and deploy applications rapidly. Moving forward, IT teams responsible for overseeing content management systems will use .NET Core and will prefer systems that are compatible with it.

(Ed. Featured image by Photographer Mikhail Nilov.)