The benefits of low code platforms for businesses looking to improve their customer experience and business interactions are being realized more rapidly today than ever.
Low-code development platforms are on the rise as more citizen developers are engaging in providing targeted apps without using traditional methods.
This is nothing new: the worth of the low-code market is expected to rise to over $27 billion by 2022.
Why the sudden focus on low-code platforms? The answer is twofold.
First, there’s the relative ease with which low-code apps are developed—a drag-and-drop environment that’s intuitive and offers a relatively low barrier to entry.
In 2019, 37% of developers were using or planning to use low-code products. By mid-2020, this is expected to rise to more than 50%
This means development speed is improved and apps can become mainstream without the typical months-long development process.
Second is the fact that by using low-code platforms, customer experience can be greatly enhanced to promote a better, more satisfactory digital experience.
Related Post: 20 Customer Experience Stats SMBs Must Know
A good customer experience contributes to brand success and assists businesses in reaching targeted marketing goals by fostering customer loyalty and converting leads.
Technology and the Low-Code Customer Experience
Technology has the potential to significantly impact the experience of digital customers to cement relationships, increase brand loyalty, and make it easier to find products and services specifically targeted to individual customer needs.
On the business side, focused applications can help businesses learn more about their target audience by collecting and analyzing customer data which can then be used in your campaigns and strategy.
Digital strategy is so important today that 85% of decision makers say they have two years to have moved forward significantly with their digital transformation strategies or risk falling behind competitors
This shift toward digital transformation has a majority of businesses excited about the prospect of fostering closer customer relationships through digital means.
But, while a positive customer experience can strengthen a connection, a poor one has the opposite effect.
There are many digital factors that can adversely affect customer experience.
Consider, for example, a website that hasn’t been properly optimized for mobile browsing.
With 58% of all online traffic occurring through mobile channels, a clunky, slow-to-load site can cause the customer to click away, leading to lost sales and a customer who may not be inclined to revisit your site.
Digital self-service is another beneficial feature that can enhance and promote a positive customer experience.
Allowing customers to receive automated support to find answers to important questions, update information, or retrieve passwords can keep customer frustration to a minimum so they are more likely to revisit your site.
In fact, optimizing the customer’s digital encounter with your brand to minimize frustration is crucial to building a strong customer base and setting the stage for revenue and business growth.
Related Post: Infographic: 10 Low-Code Trends for 2020
Benefits of Low-Code Platform Delivery Times
As we mentioned above, creating and launching apps through a low-code environment allows for faster times to market, allowing businesses to keep pace with rapidly changing customer trends.
Other ways that fast app delivery times contribute to improved customer experience include:
1. The Empowerment of Citizen Developers
Low-code development has assisted in the rise of a new class of developer: The citizen developer, a non-IT professional creating apps based on their in-depth knowledge of a company’s—or their customers’—needs.
82% of firms say citizen developers—business professionals with little or no coding experience–are becoming increasingly important to their business
Because citizen developers often understand how work processes and customer needs dovetail, they can easily turn that knowledge into applications to solve customer pain points.
Since they can be found in all departments, job descriptions, and leadership levels, citizen developers are well placed to respond to the needs of customers with whom they interact, combining multiple perspectives that give them an advantage when designing applications that target the customer experience.
This in effect means that stakeholders can have more involvement in the app development process and ensure the project doesn’t stray away from what they need.
In North America, nearly 60% of all custom apps are now built outside the IT department by professionals who have little or no IT coding experience
2. Greater Business Agility
In our rapidly expanding digital world, businesses face more pressure than ever to pivot in response to market changes, buying trends, and customer expectations—the hallmarks of business agility.
This need for rapid-fire app development puts considerable strain on traditional developers and coders, who are often overloaded with work.
72% of low-code developers create apps in three months or less, compared with six months or even years to develop applications using traditional development
Additionally, a shortage of computer programming talent is compounding the problem, with an estimated 1 million programming-related jobs anticipated to be unfilled in 2020.
Tellingly, although 58% of all STEM degrees are in computing, a mere 8% of that number are in Computer Science.
With fewer than 30,000 computer science majors graduating each year, it is predicted to take up to eight years for the talent supply to match the considerable demand.
Fortunately, citizen developers using low-code platforms can greatly reduce the pressure on current IT staff and ensure that businesses are able to develop apps at a rate that keeps pace with staff and customer expectations.
One of the benefits of low-code platforms is that they’ve leveled the playing field to a certain extent. Even if a business doesn’t want to build an app itself, there is now no shortage of agencies and developers who are willing to take on a low-code development project for an SMB.
3. Increased Speed and Efficiency
The simple nature of the low-code platform makes it the perfect way to speed apps to the finish line.
But speed isn’t the only thing of the essence—getting apps from conception to market more quickly also frees up other staff to work on mission-critical projects.
In fact, with developers managing much of the “up-front” work to alleviate some of the workload on IT professionals, software engineers can then jump in to extend functionality through additional custom coding if they so desire.
This results in a more efficient development process, reducing costs along the way and increasing the number of resources that can contribute to app development.
As low-code projects are significantly shorter in time and cheaper than more traditional methods, it makes it a lot more viable for SMBs to hand off projects without bogging down their existing IT teams during the initial development.
Low-Code Platforms for Better Customer Experience
Today’s customers expect faster, flexible, more personal digital experiences from the companies with which they do business.
And, 90% of IT leaders feel that the flexibility and speed of low-code environments are positioned to improve customer experience better than more traditional development platforms.
On the consumer side, the benefits of low-code platforms are that they help provide better customer service through tools like real-time updates, lowered delivery times, better interaction, and targeted user feedback.
68% of IT developers agree that low-code is viable for the development of mission-critical applications and 80% believe that using low-code can free up developer time to work on higher-level projects.
Essentially, consumers will gravitate toward businesses that are able to address their needs the fastest—and low-code development looks as though it can fill that gap in the market readily.
Takeaways
- By using low-code platforms, customer experience can be greatly enhanced to promote a better, more satisfactory digital experience.
- Optimizing the customer’s digital encounter with your brand to minimize frustration is crucial to building a strong customer base and setting the stage for revenue and business growth.
- Faster app delivery times empowers citizen developers, provides greater business agility, and increases speed and efficiency.
- Consumers will gravitate toward businesses that are able to address their needs the fastest — exactly what the low-code customer experience paradigm is set to do.
Subscribe to our blog to receive more insights into business technology and stay up to date with marketing, cybersecurity, and other tech news and trends (don’t worry, we won’t pester you).
