How Cloud Services Can Drive Customer Experience in the Digital Age
July 15, 2019Leading cloud service providers prize important customer experience (CX) improvements as a cornerstone of cloud computing. This truth is also visible to technology decision makers among businesses. In fact, 57 percent of survey respondents report improving customer support or services drives cloud solution investment according to the 2018 IDG Cloud Computing study.
This new reality of CX driving cloud use and strategies points the way to the next stage of evolution of the cloud as an enabler of continuous innovation. According to President of SAP HANA Cloud Dilip Khandelwal writing in a recent Forbes article, this new phase of cloud-driven CX can best be described as continuous innovation as a service.
The novel approach looks at cloud systems and services through the lens of its foundational ability to promote anywhere accessibility and workforce efficiency. This new paradigm is driven by global data centers that are also cloud computing service providers.
Cloud Service Providers and Continuous Innovation
We can see the effects of a continuous innovation approach in cloud providers and cloud services providers that enable customer login to self-service applications anywhere and anytime. The same can be said of application and collaboration tool access anywhere and anytime by a business’ workforce.
Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud strategies using a mix of both public and private cloud are foundational to these and other CX and continuous innovation approaches. Cloud service providers connected to major cloud providers make this possible through the ability to spin up servers for responsive DevOps and application development. This connectivity also enables:
- Scalable and flexible cloud disaster recovery
- Increased network uptime
- Virtual workplace abilities
- Global application access
They can all work together to drive seamless workforce mobility and collaboration.
The growth of IoT and its need for transmitting non-time sensitive data to the cloud and time sensitive data that must be gathered and analyzed close to its point of origin are both crucial to CX across sectors. This analysis of data from IoT sensors can have equal or greater impact by providing actionable business insights into customer needs and system performance. IoT sensor data can also be the basis for new lines of business.
Cloud Security Service Providers and Uncompromised CX
In many cases, businesses are dealing with Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or Personal Health Information (PHI) data with strict regulatory compliance needs, so security is paramount. Many businesses are distributed enterprises operating in sectors like finance, health, retail and others.
These distributed enterprises may have numerous branches and divisions that must have access to data and systems. They must also ensure regulatory data privacy compliance as they operate across regional or global distances. Cloud security service providers are also tasked with delivering options capable of protecting data at rest and in transit while also providing the means for continuously improving CX.
The most innovative cloud service providers are staying one step ahead of the needs of businesses by offering cloud services capable of delivering integrated, frictionless omnichannel customer experiences. That can translate to meeting changing needs for intuitive, integrated e-commerce and mobile commerce platforms and processes via colocation fostering digital transformation.
In this next phase of cloud computing we are already seeing the rise of digital business services which go beyond support and maintenance to help companies speed up their digital transformation. Cloud computing service providers deliver the interconnectivity, technical support and streamlined implementation and management of everything as a service. By leading the way with these services, they are paving the way to the next phase of the cloud based on a continuous innovation as a service approach.