Downtime isn’t an option. In this blog, David Alexander explains why Digital Operations is now the backbone of business resilience, and how organizations can stay up and running—even when the unexpected hits.
In today’s always-on world, the ability to quickly respond to incidents, optimize workflows, and ensure seamless customer experiences has become a competitive differentiator. Digital operations (Digital Ops) are no longer just a back-office function—they are central to how businesses engage with customers, maintain uptime, and deliver on their brand promise.
As Chief Marketing Officer and General Manager of Digital Operations at Everbridge, I’ve seen firsthand how leading enterprises are leveraging automation, AI, and real-time collaboration tools to drive business resilience. But beyond technology, marketing leaders have a unique opportunity to shape the way companies communicate their operational excellence and build trust with customers in an always-on world.
The changing landscape: Why digital operations matter more than ever
Every organization, regardless of industry, faces the challenge of delivering seamless experiences while managing an increasingly complex digital ecosystem. Consider these key trends:
- Customer Expectations Are Higher Than Ever – According to a PwC study, 73% of customers say that a positive experience is a key factor in their brand loyalty. In a digital world, even a minor outage, security breach, or service disruption can erode trust.
- Downtime Is Costlier Than Ever – A Gartner report found that the average cost of IT downtime is $5,600 per minute. For industries like e-commerce, financial services, and SaaS, these numbers skyrocket.
- AI and Automation Are Redefining Incident Management – Organizations are moving from reactive to proactive strategies, using AI-driven automation to anticipate and prevent disruptions before they impact customers.
Digital Ops has become the backbone of business continuity and brand reputation—but it’s not just a technology issue. It’s a marketing and customer trust issue as well.
Marketing’s role in digital resilience
While Digital Ops is often seen as an IT function, marketing leaders have an equally important role to play in ensuring operational resilience:
1. Communicating operational excellence as a competitive advantage
Customers expect reliable, always-on digital experiences—but many businesses struggle to translate their operational excellence into a compelling brand narrative. Marketing must help bridge the gap, positioning resilience, security, and uptime as differentiators.
For example, SaaS companies that highlight their 99.99% uptime, rapid incident response, and AI-driven automation in their messaging build greater trust with prospects and customers.
2. Aligning marketing and digital ops for seamless customer experience
Marketing and Digital Ops teams often operate in silos—but they shouldn’t. A well-coordinated strategy ensures that service disruptions, incidents, or updates are communicated transparently and effectively.
- When a major e-commerce platform experienced a brief system outage during peak holiday shopping, the marketing team worked with Digital Ops to proactively communicate real-time updates via email, SMS, and social channels—ensuring customers stayed informed and minimizing frustration.
3. Leveraging digital ops insights for smarter customer engagement
Incident data, response times, and system reliability metrics aren’t just for IT teams—they can fuel smarter marketing strategies. By integrating Digital Ops insights into marketing analytics, businesses can:
- Understand how outages impact customer retention and adjust strategies accordingly.
- Personalize communications based on historical engagement and incident history.
- Optimize campaigns by ensuring they align with peak system performance.
Best practices for driving digital resilience and customer trust
Organizations that successfully integrate Digital Ops with marketing and customer experience (CX) efforts follow these key principles:
1. Automate incident response to minimize customer impact
A fast, automated response to disruptions prevents minor issues from becoming major customer experience failures. AI-driven automation platforms like xMatters help teams detect, triage, and resolve incidents before they affect end users.
Best Practice: Leading SaaS providers use automated escalation workflows to route critical incidents to the right teams in seconds—reducing downtime and improving response times by up to 70%.
2. Develop a customer-centric incident communication strategy
When issues occur, transparency is key. Customers appreciate real-time updates and clear expectations.
- Do: Use proactive multi-channel communication (email, SMS, social, in-app messaging) to keep customers informed.
- Don’t: Wait until customers complain before acknowledging an issue—own the narrative early.
3. Use AI and analytics to predict and prevent issues
Predictive analytics can help identify potential disruptions before they impact customers. Organizations leveraging AI-powered monitoring tools can:
- Analyze historical data to anticipate system failures.
- Detect anomalies and trigger automated responses.
- Improve decision-making for both IT and marketing teams.
Case study: How a global tech company optimized digital ops to enhance CX
A major SaaS provider faced customer churn due to service outages. By implementing xMatters for automated incident response and aligning marketing with Digital Ops, they achieved:
- 50% faster incident resolution, reducing service disruptions.
- Proactive customer communication, improving brand trust.
- AI-driven insights, helping both IT and marketing teams optimize performance.
The result? A 20% increase in customer retention and a stronger competitive position.
The future of digital operations and marketing
As businesses continue to digitize, the role of Digital Ops in shaping brand trust and customer loyalty will only grow. Forward-thinking companies will:
- Embrace automation and AI to make Digital Ops more intelligent and responsive.
- Align marketing and operational teams to deliver seamless experiences.
- Leverage predictive analytics to anticipate disruptions and enhance decision-making.
The convergence of Digital Ops, marketing, and CX is no longer optional—it’s the future of business resilience. Organizations that proactively integrate these functions will not only mitigate risks but also create lasting competitive advantages in the digital economy.
In today’s digital-first world, Digital Ops is about more than just keeping systems running—it’s about ensuring every customer interaction is seamless, reliable, and frustration-free. Marketing leaders must take an active role in shaping this narrative, turning operational excellence into a brand asset.
The question for marketing and business leaders isn’t whether Digital Ops matters—it’s how they will leverage it to create a more resilient, customer-focused future.
Summary
Digital resilience is the key to business stability. David’s advice shows that automation, speed, and cross-team collaboration are what keep businesses agile and customers happy. Take stock of your digital operations today and see where you can improve.