Future of customer service and retention rests on cloud

IT TAKES months to find a customer and only seconds to lose one, or so the saying goes. These days, it might be more like milliseconds.

Thanks to on-demand information and services available anytime, anywhere, customers are more empowered than ever and have sky-high expectations. If your customer is bored or impatient, confused or frustrated, for even just a second, they have myriad other choices. Gartner predicts by 2020, poor customer experiences will destroy nearly a third of digital business projects, and PwC reports that 73 per cent of customers now point to experience as an important factor in their purchasing decision.

In this context, providing a personalised, seamless, predictive customer experience is a core pillar of business success - and the only way to achieve that is by connecting every part of the enterprise and making sure customers are at the centre of all decision-making.