5 Ways Digital Transformation Experts Can Be the Dragon in the “Year of the Dragon”
By Scott Draeger, SVP of Product Marketing and Vertical Solutions at Smart Communications
On the Chinese Zodiac calendar, February 10, 2024, marks the end of the Year of the Rabbit and the beginning of the Year of the Wood Dragon. Traditional interpretation portrays the Rabbit as gentle, quiet, and polite. 2024’s Dragon is bold by contrast, fitting for the world of advancements in business, technology, and transformation. The Chinese Zodiac.org captures the spirit of the Dragon.
As we leave the Year of the Rabbit and enter the Year of the Dragon, let’s move away from a gentle, polite, and quiet year of sending the same old messages with the same old technology to generate unspectacular results. Let’s bring the spirit of the Dragon to our approach to customer communication in 2024.
1. The Dragon is a Visionary
Dragons have a bold vision for the future, and this means thinking about how you will engage with your clients, partners, and employees for the long term. A Dragon’s vision for the future isn’t hampered by technical limitations created by legacy technology. A Dragon doesn’t accept, “that’s the way it’s always been done.” This is a year to evaluate new vendors, challenge your current suppliers, and define where you want to take your organization. A bold vision for the future always centers on customers, partners, and employees.
2. The Dragon is Compassionate and Loyal
Having a vision is important, but a bold vision cannot damage long standing relationships with your clients, partners, and employees. Move too fast or too far and you could sacrifice relationships. Dragons are compassionate and understand how to interact with customers. In 2024, Dragons will look at customer communications with an eye towards making them easier to understand, richer in context, and available on a variety of channels. Dragons understand that loyalty works both ways and being loyal to customers fosters loyalty in return. Dragons understand customer preference, respect context, and interact with authenticity.
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3. The Dragon is Ambitious
A gentle, quiet, and polite Rabbit will keep an outdated strategy running for another year to avoid confrontation, but a Dragon feels no need to accept flaws, limitations, or inefficiencies as excuses. Summon your inner Dragon to passionately articulate your ambitions for improving customer experiences, employee engagement, and organizational performance. This is a year to research options, knowing that leading communication technology providers are out there to understand your ambitions and collaborate on solutions that put you on a path towards realizing your customer-focused ambitions.
4. The Dragon is Optimistic
“It’s not going to work” isn’t in a Dragon’s vocabulary. Dragons are concerned with making it work with creativity and an open mind. Working with new technologies means understanding new approaches, taking new perspectives, and learning by collaborating. Dragons are successful because they put creativity and determination into their work. Dragons don’t just accept forecasts and projections. They create opportunities that reshape the future, expand the market, and deepen customer relationships.
5. The Dragon is Adventurous
Lastly, Dragons are adventurous. They aren’t looking to migrate the same communications to a new system for the sake of changing platforms. They are aspirational, transformational, and enthusiastic. They look to use their resources wisely to realize the vision they set forth. Dragons aren’t afraid of making a few mistakes along the way because they have willing internal partners, strong customer relationships, and deep vendor relationships that are needed to grow.
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Bring on the Year of the Dragon!
So, as we look forward to the Year of the Dragon, consider Smart Communications as a partner that listens to your vision, validates your optimism, ensures your ambition, shares your sense of loyalty, and is proud to go on adventure with you. As you get ready for the Year of the Dragon, let’s finish with some wisdom from TheChineseZodiac.org.
If you’re a Dragon, take a look at Smart Communications. Dragons are bold, challenging vendors. Share your RFI with us, and we’ll help you set and realize your bold vision. This is the year for your transformations. Smart Communications works with Dragons to help them realize their vision by surrounding our leading software offerings with the accelerated migrations, bundled professional services, and transactions structures that match your investments to your ambitious vision.
About the Author
Scott Draeger is the SVP of Product Marketing and Vertical Solutions at Smart Communications. With a passion for collaboration, he focuses on how communications can be better for the recipient and perform better for the business. He started as a document designer using a collection of hardware and software technologies, before moving to the software side of the industry. His broad experience includes helping organizations improve heavily regulated customer communications all around the world.