With economic uncertainty comes opportunity. This is a timely phase for Asian businesses to build stronger customer relationships, enhance services and grow efficiently.
As you scale up your business, it’s also vital to provide an environment that attracts and, more importantly, retains skilled talent. Consider a ‘business as unusual’ approach to take stock of where you stand with customer expectations, use of technology and the employee experience to create the optimum setting for success.
Here are some of my thoughts.
Optimise digital technology
With 350 million digital consumers, Southeast Asia is set to become the fastest-growing digital economy in the Asia Pacific. The pandemic pushed people in this region online at an aggressive pace, and businesses need to adapt and win digital consumers.
Technology allows even solo business operators to look prominent. But there is the catch — customers have come to expect technology to work seamlessly. Creating a website that is hard to navigate can create frustrated users and make companies appear unsophisticated. Whatever technology you use to connect to your customers and partners, make sure it is practical and easy to navigate.
Efficient technology solutions improve your customers’ experience and help you make vital decisions to grow your company. Data is the fuel for business success, from understanding and analysing competitors to tracking shipments or evaluating pricing.
As a global company, technology is core to our work, informing us of critical information we need to understand everything from a customer’s health concerns to the ordering of the raw ingredients used in our products that help improve people’s health.
We’ve designed customised technology to connect Herbalife to its distributors and the distributors to their customers for continuity and ease of product ordering and delivery. We enable our distributors to run their businesses more efficiently, whether they are in Asia or other parts of the world, regardless of their technology platform.
Grow or scale your business
Many business owners may hear the adage that managing and understanding company growth is challenging. What may have started as a solo operation may suddenly become a business needing additional resources.
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When you’ve owned your business for a while, you start recognising areas that can be handled differently or by someone else. Once ready for this next step in your business, you can grow by adding resources, such as employees.
Scaling is increasing the profit of your business without significantly raising costs. An example is using technology to automate functions that previously required many employees, thus saving time and money while enhancing profit.
I am also a firm believer in having the right support network and mentor to provide seasoned guidance and advice on how to expand at the right pace. Our annual Herbalife Asia Pacific Entrepreneur Surveys consistently show that these two factors, built on top of good business fundamentals, are essential drivers of success and crucial when scaling your business.
Create immersive customer experiences
Asia is a diverse region, from cultures and ways of working to economic and developmental stages. Service expectations vary in each market, and if you are reaching out to an audience that sits across different markets, you must be able to cater to the customer’s needs accordingly. There is nothing worse for consumers than poor customer service.
How can you personalise the customer service experience, helping everyone feel heard, valued, and essential to the business? Focus on removing the pain point for the customer — from training customer support representatives to providing service representatives for your brand.
Technology offers many ways to connect to customers, yet it still needs to create a personal and not robotic connection. At Herbalife, technology augments the high-touch customer experience in direct selling so that our distributors can create individually tailored wellness programs for their customers, forge relationships and build communities.
Another way businesses can connect to customers is by using data to learn as much as they can about them how they shop and think. The more information you have on your target audience, the more you can create a seamless way for your customers to buy your products or services.
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For example, our company has applications that enable distributors to provide an integrated physical and digital customer experience for their nutrition clubs and uses predictive AI to help our distributors deliver trusted brand experiences and take their business to the next level.
Be employee-focused
The pandemic taught businesses many important lessons, but perhaps the most important was that working in an office is not always vital for success. A recent study revealed that more than 56 per cent of employees in Asia Pacific want flexible work options. While the debate continues on whether or not remote working helps employee productivity, new ways of working are here to stay.
As a business leader, provide your teams with the technology tools to be productive. Dispersed teams need access to high-speed internet, webcam support, and ergonomic workstations that allow them to do their job and work seamlessly.
Managers must overcommunicate with their teams spread across a city or the world, ensuring they feel part of a connected work community that values them. Workers love being part of a larger, connected team, so incorporate scheduled meetings, one-on-one manager check-ins, and fun and engaging games and icebreakers.
Another lesson learned from the pandemic is prioritising employee health and well-being. This can include fitness memberships, mental health services, and other programs to allow employees to keep themselves mentally and physically fit.
Prioritise sustainable business practices
From solo practitioners to large multinationals, sustainability is good for our world and our customers. Consider sending fewer non-electronic communications, moving to sustainable packaging materials, and sourcing products from like-minded suppliers are all vital to the health of our planet.
Simple measures such as recycling at your office, determining how and when you travel, conducting more meetings digitally, and thinking of the environmental impact of your business can go a long way to doing your part to create more sustainable business practices.
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