In today’s fast-paced, technology-driven world, the way businesses communicate with their customers is constantly evolving. Digital communications, offering speed, efficiency, cost savings, and environmental benefits, are increasingly becoming the standard.

However, transitioning customers from traditional paper-based methods to digital alternatives presents challenges. Despite the undeniable advantages, many customers remain attached to paper, either due to habit, lack of awareness, or perceived benefits. We explore strategies that can help businesses encourage customers to embrace digital communication while considering their concerns and motivations.

Digital communications provide significant advantages over traditional paper-based methods, whether that’s cost savings, quicker to implement, increased and trackable customer engagement or sustainability reasons. However, understanding customer behaviour in terms of their motivations and potential barriers is important so that you can develop the right strategy for your customers. This will then enable you to focus on strategies that will encourage the transition to digital. For example, exclusive content may work well for some customers, but others may need something more tangible like monetary incentives.

Strategies could include

• Incentives are particularly advantageous when a customer may feel the company is benefitting from cost-savings
• Education and awareness through workshops or tutorials to inform your customers
• Simplifying your processes so that it’s easy for customers to switch, ensuring your platform is flexible, user-friendly and mobile optimised
• Building trust to address privacy concerns and being transparent on how you collect and use data. Alongside this, you need to ensure a robust customer support system is in place and accessible online, to facilitate those transitioning
• Highlight the environmental impact on switching from paper to digital
• Leverage technology that facilitates quick and convenient communication, such as SMS or WhatsApp

Of course, measuring and reporting on your strategies is vital to record what is working or where improvements can be made. Customer feedback is crucial at this stage to ensure you understand all blockers or complexities for a customer to make the switch.

At APS, we can guide your organisation through this process and our team are on hand to advise at every step to ensure a smooth and effective transition for your cutomers and greater digital adoption.

You can download the full version of this report below for more information.

We recently welcomed Gaël Duez, a digital sustainability strategist and founder of the Green IO podcast, to host our webinar discussing the environmental consequences of our digital world and critically what businesses can do to mitigate their impact.

The electricity consumption of the digital sector is becoming a growing concern, with the International Energy Agency confirming 1,600 terawatts was consumed by the sector in 2021 – that’s roughly the same amount as India, the world’s third largest electricity consumer.

It’s not a surprise that with 1.2 billion smartphones sold in 2022, end-user devices account for almost half (45%) of all electricity consumption by the sector, followed by networks and data centres.

But why is this a problem? Because the world’s electricity production remains reliant on fossil fuels, indeed, as much as 60% of production is using our finite resources and releasing Greenhouse Gases (GHG).

Did you know 70-90% of the carbon footprint of your smartphone happens before it’s taken out of the box?

 

So, what can businesses do to reduce their impact on the sector? There are several quick wins to consider first, and although these are individually small changes, they can have a much larger impact when implemented consistently across businesses;

Equipment

• Extend product life
• Mutualise technologies
• Re-use or purchase second-hand
• Recycle

Reducing electricity consumption

• Turn off/unplug
• Limit 3G/4G connections
• Optimise printing

Data Management

• Avoid unnecessary creation
• Reduce size
• Delete

These practical steps are just the beginning towards minimising the environmental weight of data consumed within the digital sector. But should we always be thinking digital first? Lifecycle analysis is a powerful tool to support decision making for sustainable development, guiding you to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of a product or process. For example, it takes 20-40 times the amount of water to make a single e-reader than a book and 60% of downloaded e-books are never opened and are therefore consuming unnecessary data.

At APS, we’re committed to tackling your sustainability challenges, whether that’s for product designs, a new technology platform or printed materials. At every stage, our team will work with you to make sustainable and practical recommendations. Talk to us today, hello@theapsgroup.com.

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