There are often three pillars associated with sustainable growth in business—these are, environmental, societal, and economical. Each of these serve as a driver for businesses to boost their revenue potential and are all important aspects to consider when looking at how to offer customer service that makes a difference. And technology can help you in your endeavours towards this.
Here, we’ll be exploring how technology can support you to be sustainable and drive your business forward.
Environmental sustainability
More and more consumers are becoming aware of the buyer’s impact on natural resources. And with our planet already in the thick of an environmental crisis, it’s important that business leaders are considering the toll their work is having on the planet.
While the reversal of damage required is significant, small steps towards environmental sustainability by all companies can promote quicker healing and preservation of our planet. For example, by reducing paper usage to preserve our planet by way of intelligent automation solutions. Though this may seem like a small step in the grand scheme of things, Unisan has reported that nearly 50% of business waste is usually made up of paper. Additionally, experts in the field have predicted that by 2025, there will be 2.3 trillion pages printed each year in the UK. So, taking steps towards reducing our usage is vital for better environmental sustainability within organisations.
Societal sustainability
One aspect that can significantly contribute to sustainable growth is that of compliance. For many businesses, and particularly for regulated entities, it’s critical that they are adhering to regulatory requirements and doing right by the people directly involved with their business. This is particularly integral to a business’ societal sustainability practices, given that government estimates for money laundering in the UK still stand at costing our economy over £100 billion per year.
Investing in compliance can help provide peace of mind to both businesses and their customers alike, fostering a relationship centred around reliability and trustworthiness, which in turn nurtures greater organic growth for their business. With regulatory data and compliance tools available for all industries, businesses can help to stop criminals in their tracks and protect themselves against financial crime.
The idea of doing right by people shouldn’t just apply to those outside of your company, but also to those who are an internal part of your organisation—starting from the point of onboarding. According to a CareerBuilder report, more than 93% of employers believe onboarding can be the make-or-break between whether an employee stays or goes. In addition to this, research published in the Harvard Business Review found a direct correlation between the employee experience and customers. It reveals that the more satisfied your employees are, the better customer service they can offer, which in turn drives revenue growth.
So utilising compliance tools that can help validate the information given to you about them and speed up their onboarding, as well as utilising employee experience tools that tell you about overall employee performance and satisfaction, can help drive sustainable business growth.
Economic sustainability
In business, economic sustainability refers to a company’s use of its assets to maintain company profitability over time. So, doing more with the customer feedback you have access to, can help to achieve this.
As an organisation looking to nurture growth, you need to understand your customer’s journey from their first onboarding interaction. According to research cited by LinkedIn, 63% of customers consider the onboarding experience when deciding whether to subscribe to a service or purchase a product. This signifies huge scope for businesses to increase their revenue with a good, streamlined onboarding process and ultimately, to help boost their local economy.
As well as making things simpler for your customers at the point of onboarding, ongoing monitoring and reactive responding is critical to prevent high customer churn. As their circumstances, preferences, interests, and the wider economy change, your customers are bound to want something that differs from what they originally invested in, and responding to this in good time is key to maintaining your customer base and not losing out to a competitor.
By using customer experience technology, such as Voice of the Customer programmes, you can continually measure and monitor customer feedback and insights, to offer them the products and services they want and need the most. In doing so, you maximise you unlock potential for stronger turnover growth.
