Leveraging Digital Transformation to Drive Customer Centricity

Over the past year, digital transformation across industries significantly accelerated. A recent executive survey by McKinsey reported organizations have sped up operations and supply-chain digitization by three to four years and the number of digital products or services they offer by as much as seven years. I

This amazing rate of change means customers now expect more from organizations. They now want – and expect – real-time information and the ability to perform many of usual business operations virtually.

While the speed of this digital transformation has been challenging, the disruption is necessary.

It’s a welcome change for many who see this as a new era of customer centricity. It’s making it easier to do business with a company, from the customer’s perspective, on the customer’s time. Ultimately, it should also enhance customer connections by focusing more time on high touch engagement, not transactions.

Customer centricity is a significant focus for Honeywell Building Technologies (HBT). Historically, we’ve put the product first; now competing on customer experiences, too. As we shift to become customer first and outcome focused, we’ve talked and listened to our customer to better understand their day-to-day challenges so we can truly partner with them and make it easier for customers to do business with us. Our goal is to make it easier for them to do their jobs.

Honeywell has listened to customers to understand what they need from us to not only complement their own digital transformation but also how we can improve how they interact with us. The result is a new ecosystem of solutions designed to improve customer experiences across every touchpoint with HBT. We’re also setting new customer experience expectations for our teams.

Always-On Tools

The recently launched MyBuildings.Honeywell.com offers a refreshed and simplified e-commerce platform that provides our customers with direct product purchasing access. They can quickly place orders, track purchases, request support or return a product through chat-bots and a personalized dashboard.

Customers who piloted the platform consistently said access to real-time information and an easy ordering process, saves them hours a day. “With this information at our fingertips, we can solve anything within minutes and move on to do what we do best – selling and servicing,” said Brad Higdon, president of Bass United Fire & Security Systems.

Easy Learning Opportunities

Also recently launched, My Honeywell Buildings University (MyHBU) is an education portal offering more than 200 instructor-led courses and a curated library of more than 700 hours of on-demand content to help customers learn about Honeywell Fire, Security and BMS products. The platform helps customers remain current with product and critical industry certifications they need to respond to business needs, anytime and anywhere. Training also helps drive their businesses by expanding the type of projects they can bid on and products they can install.

These tools are the first phase of HBT’s customer centric digital transformation. Future enhancements include a loyalty program for channel partners and greater digital access to the full spectrum of products, services and software. We’re also automating processes, creating recommendation engines and building mobile access to product support and training.

Access to personalized information, easier ordering, greater customization and on-demand resources and information are the start of the “next normal” customers will experience when they work with Honeywell teams. We aim to use these tools to improve our say/do ratio and commitments to our customers. In the end, customers will spend less time accessing information, products and services, and more time putting them to use to create a better, safer experience in more buildings around the world.

Contributed by Andy Kupsco, vice president of customer experience for Honeywell Building Technologies