Introduction
As a universal fact, every business is for its customers, whose touchpoints with the digital assets are essential in scaling the business operations onward and upward. Facilitating a good customer experience (CX) is an investment that helps in leveraging the feedback and preferences of consumers to predict the success of their service. For a consumer, consistency and connected experiences are what determine the quality and reliability of applications, portal and conversational platforms. With organizations still thriving on traditional development modules and codes, meeting customer needs is beyond imagination.
Imagine having a portal that is siloed, disconnected and complex to use, serving as the interface with customers on a daily basis. As a business, you will fail to not only meet customer expectations but also provide them with an experience that cannot be reversed in the long run. Too many integrations with complicated codes have added no value to applications, other than making them less likeable among consumers. Transforming the customer experience is essential to sustain in today’s competitive digital business environment. But how? Low code development platform!
This blog will be an insight for organizations still struggling to enhance their customer experience. Delve further to learn how Mendix’s low code platform assists organizations in building, deploying, and managing applications that have a long-lasting impact on the customer experience.
Explore the differences between low Code and traditional coding
As mentioned, the Mendix low-code application platform is for everyone, working to design and build applications that are customer-centric. Being a model-driven approach, where the design and behavior are defined using a model rather than writing codes, its usage for citizen developers new to development is seamless and convenient. Let’s analyze a few more concepts that are far more user-friendly than traditional coding development practices.
Level of abstraction
Traditional coding: The approach involves writing code in programming languages like Python and Java that are complex and prone to manual errors. This seeks the meticulous attention of developers working with programming languages at a detailed, granular level, where developers manually write code to specify every aspect of a program’s behavior.
Low code: Based on pre-built interfaces, this kind of development assists in visual modeling, making it easy for developers of any experience to visualize the application during the development process. This helps in designing portals that have varied designs and developments without leading to huge expenses.
Debugging and troubleshooting
Traditional coding: The process of identifying and fixing bugs is done at the source code level, leveraging tools like the integrated development environment (IDE), profilers and other software development tools. This is a time consuming process where developers require a deep understanding of the programming language and the underlying system architecture to identify the bug.
Low code: With debugging tools integrated directly into the low code platform, developers can eliminate the need to interfere at the source code level. The platform also offers developers the opportunity to visually identify the workflow and other component interactions, resulting in faster development cycles.
Integration potential
Traditional coding: Integrating third-party tools and applications requires writing custom codes that should align with specific integrations. The process is challenging as well as not secure due to data format inconsistencies, security vulnerabilities and other concerns, leading to increased cost, development time and lots of manual labor.
Low code: The availability of ready-to-use connectors, pre-built components and APIs makes the integration of tools on a low code platform straightforward and seamless. Thereby enhancing the productivity of developers and accelerating the time-to-market.
Scalability and performance
Traditional coding: The potential to scale applications developed through traditional coding involves developers fine tune the application’s architecture, infrastructure and code. This kind of process is not just labor intensive but also poses a hindering factor for applications to scale beyond a certain limit due to hardware constraints and architectural decisions.
Low code: New deployment or scaling of current applications is feasible with a low code platform. This facilitates meeting business requirements on the go, empowering organizations to deliver an excellent customer experience amidst new additions and integrations.
Driving customer experience enhancement through Mendix Low Code
So how does this comparison—positioning a low code application platform as a feasible option—help with enhancing the customer experience? This is the next discussion we would like to cover in this blog.
User-centric design – The digital interface the customers come into contact with, or the app they use on a daily basis, needs to be customer-centric, meaning the interface, the design, uninterrupted usage and the need to support any kind of device. To facilitate this, a low code development platform can be the right choice, enabling developers to create interfaces (UI) using drag and drop components that can be visually created, learning how they look in the final design.
- The use of flexible layouts, fluid grids and media queries empowers developers to create applications or websites that adapt to any screen size and resolution, making them adjust to the user’s device characteristics.
- Developers are able to create multi-channel applications that are supported across different platforms due to the use of web technologies like HTML, JavaScript and CSS.
Performance optimization – The era of 5G is not just a network connection but a test for application performance. One of the main aspects consumers expect from any kind of digital interface is its ability to perform, scale and load applications. Low-code platforms advocate for an offline-first development approach, where developers prioritize designing applications to function seamlessly offline, making sure not to disrupt customer’s experiences while working or surfing.
- The freedom to design applications that can perform offline by storing critical application logic and user interface elements locally on the device is a boon to developers and an excellent experience for customers.
- The creation of Progressive Web Applications (PWA) that work by leveraging modern web technologies helps organizations work offline. This, when installed on user devices, can be accessed through the browser, allowing employees to work by caching resources and data locally.
Data integration – One of the most important aspects of enhancing the customer experience is the ability to provide the right data at the right time. What if your application notifies the wrong time for an e-commerce delivery? Or when your customer browses through a product that has an outdated price? All this will give a big blow to your customer experience, making sure they don’t return again to the application or portal. The need for low code is strongly recommended here.
- The platform encompasses data synchronization tools like APIs, libraries or modules for data merging, conflict resolution and versioning tasks. This helps developers implement synchronization logic without writing complex code from scratch.
- The integration of real-time data from users can also be synchronized, enabling the design and development of collaborative and interactive applications. This helps trigger events that are transformed into other applications or external systems, providing consumers with updated information.
The feedback loop – Offering personalization is the modern way of connecting with customers. Organizations provide this personalization by creating and developing applications that are more customer-focused in terms of preferences and behavioral patterns. The utilization of a low code platform comes in handy in this agenda of improving customer experience and reliance on the brand.
- The low code application platform leverages AI algorithms to read and understand past interactions between users, supporting user segmentation. This helps developers create personalized interfaces that deliver content to their needs and requirements.
- Developers can integrate feedback forms, surveys, and usability testing tools into the prototype, allowing users to provide feedback on specific features, functionality, and user experience aspects.
This emphasizes the importance of Mendix’s low code development platform not just for enhancing the customer experience but also for assisting non-developers or professionals without a strong web development background to design and build applications that have high speed, efficiency and performance.
A successful case-study of enhancing customer experience via Mendix
Mendix has always been the choice of businesses of any size when opting for a low code platform. This is evident from many customer success stories where developers utilized Mendix to build and deploy applications that helped streamline their business processes, enhance the customer experience and scale business operations to new heights.
Let’s discuss an interesting case study of a logistics company that leveraged the Mendix solution to improve their customer experience and optimize their business efficiency.
Raben Group of Logistics is a leading transportation company that foresees huge shipment orders across 15 countries. They offer tailored solutions that encompass services like international and domestic shipping and other kinds of food transportation. The company wanted to bridge the gap that existed between the IT team and the customer by having an end-to-end user application that would offer support from warehouses to delivery locations.
Requirements:
- The company wished to modernize their existing legacy track and trace system, which was country-specific and rigid.
- The IT infrastructure operated on off-the-shelf software solutions that did not scale to meet customer demands.
- They wanted to build flexible digital solutions, improving the efficiency of vast end-users.
The company chose Mendix as their low code development partner after a brief analysis of the existing options for low code solutions. They believed Mendix platform was the right choice for their organization, as the platform had
- Excellent support and partnerships.
- Offered a premium license model that aligned with their business model.
- Seamless integration and collaboration options.
Solutions offered:
- Offered a framework that entitled development activities from testing to production.
- Assisted in rapidly designing and developing applications across the supply chain that included tracking performance, pricing details and order requests.
- Provided unified view of the supply chain activities for customers.
Impact obtained:
- Built 30 low-code applications.
- Delivered a new version of the application within 6 months.
- Assisted over 100,000 customers throughout the shipment journey with the track and trace system.
- Achieved high returns on investment within a few years of building new applications with Mendix.
Thus, the above success story stands as a strong portrayal of Mendix as the leader of low code applications in revolutionizing the customer experience.
SquareOne Technologies: Pioneering Mendix and low-code solutions
As a leading digital transformation company, SquareOne Technologies is known for its services that help transform the customer experience and expand business opportunities. To maximize the utilization of Mendix and reap the benefits for your organization, it is imperative to get connected with a digital transformation company like SquareOne Technologies, which has served as a premium partner for Mendix for about a decade. The professionals at SquareOne Technologies are well trained and seasoned experts who will guide your organization at every step of application development, ensuring your business enhances its customer journey and experiences. Embracing swift development of applications is easy when done with the assistance of SquareOne Technologies.
Conclusion
Thus, we conclude the blog on a note, that customers are the bearers of your business. So, it is essential to study their preferences and deliver solutions that align with their objectives and standards. Mendix added enhancements to its platforms, like the integration of AI and machine learning, that foster a more rapid improvement in the customer experience than before. Mendix has also delivered 7 effective strategies for customer experience excellence. Make sure you download a copy of it to include in your business goals. To learn more about Mendix and its offerings for your business, get in touch with SquareOne Technologies, who will walk you through the demo of developing and deploying applications for better guidance. Never miss an opportunity to wow your customers.
