Using Technology, Globalization, and Customer Experience to Grow Your Business

For many years, if you ran a small to medium sized business, your market was based almost exclusively in your local economy. As you grew, you might do some shipping to customers who lived a little bit farther away, but – for the most part – international business was reserved for industry giants. Today, though, with the advent of smartphones, wearable’s, and the Internet of Things, when it comes to your business, there’s no such thing as a “local economy” anymore.

With advancing technology, globalization – the movement away from insular economies, self-contained economies and markets and the movement toward a global marketplace – is changing the way we do business, no matter how large or small our companies are. To stay ahead of the game and really make it in today’s global marketplace, you absolutely have to take full advantage of the technological tools available to you.

That means creating an omni-channel customer experience. If you’re selling a mobile app that helps users get from one point in a city to another with the least delays, you’re just as likely to have customers in Beijing or Paris as New York City. Your customers are also just as likely to be using tablets or wearable computers as smartphones. You need to ensure that your customers get the same positive, consistent customer experience across media and across the world.

How Globalization and Technology Change Customer Service

Globalization and technology have not only changed who our customers are, but they’ve also changed how we conduct business and how we structure our companies. It’s easy now to outsource customer support to agencies or private contractors anywhere in the world. It’s affordable and easy, but it’s not as simple as you might think. 

Outsourcing customer support is a great way to save money, but it’s also a great way to lose customers if you’re not careful. You see, when you do this, you no longer have control over the customer experience your company provides. Your customers want to be able to trust you to give them the same customer service and the same customer experience every time they interact with your company on any level and through any medium.

That’s not to say that outsourcing is necessarily a bad idea, but you need to be very careful about the agencies or individuals you choose for customer service related jobs. For example, if you have in-house live chat customer support, but your phone support is outsourced, you need to make sure that the company you outsource that service to is going to give your customers the same positive customer experience that your in-house live chat support gives. 

Marketing Omni-Channel Customer Experience

If you can succeed in creating a uniform customer experience across all of your communications and transactions channels with your customers, you’ll have a very marketable feature that not every company can offer. Use this. 

Focus on your superior customer service and support in your marketing and advertising. Show that your customers get the same 5-star treatment whether they’re in a brick-and-mortar store, shopping online, live chatting with customer support, or calling your company for help. You’ll stand head and shoulders above the competition.