Lifecycle Sustainability of Digital Customer Experience

In an increasingly digital world, customer interactions with businesses have largely shifted to online and mobile channels. Checking your bank balance on a smartphone app, ordering dinner via a delivery platform, hailing a ride through a mobile service, or chatting with telecom support online – these are all examples of digital customer experiences (CX). They offer speed and convenience, but each interaction relies on an ecosystem of devices, data networks, and data storage that consume energy and resources. The lifecycle sustainability of customer interactions refers to understanding the environmental impact at every stage of a customer’s engagement with a service, from the first digital touchpoint to the last. This includes the energy used by customer devices and interfaces, the data processing in the cloud or data centres, and even the manufacturing and end-of-life of the hardware involved in providing digital services. While digital CX can sometimes replace more resource-intensive physical interactions (for example, online banking reduces paper statements and car travel to branches), it is not impact-free. The emissions from powering servers, cooling data centres, transmitting data, and charging millions of devices add up significantly. As the digital sector grows, so does its carbon footprint – already estimated at between 3% and 4% of global GHG emissions in 2020, putting it on par with the airline industry in terms of climate impact. This paper will delve into how we can measure these impacts, what factors contribute most, and how five key service sectors are addressing (or could address) the sustainability of their digital customer interactions. We will also highlight methodologies such as LCA (in line with ISO 14040/14044 standards) and GHG accounting frameworks that help quantify the carbon footprint of digital services. The goal is to provide a comprehensive yet accessible overview of digital CX sustainability, empowering a broad audience – from business leaders and policymakers to everyday consumers – to understand and act on this emerging aspect of environmental responsibility.

1. Understanding the Digital Customer Experience Footprint

Every digital customer interaction, whether it’s streaming a video or sending a message, triggers a chain of processes in the background that consume energy. To grasp the footprint of digital CX, it’s useful to think of three main components often cited in studies of ICT (information and communication technology) emissions: data centres, network infrastructure, and user devices. Data centres (the “cloud” where data is stored and processed) require electricity for servers and cooling systems; networks (the mobile and broadband infrastructure that transmits data) draw power to route information; and user devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops, smart TVs, etc.) consume electricity from batteries or the grid. Research suggests that the energy consumption is split broadly as 22% data centres, 24% networks, and over 50% by end-user devices for typical digital services. This means more than half of the energy (and thus carbon emissions) associated with an online service can come from the customers’ own devices during use. The lifecycle of a digital interaction spans beyond just the moment of use: it includes the manufacturing of devices and equipment, the operation phase (where continuous power consumption occurs), and the end-of-life disposal or recycling of hardware. However, for many digital services, the use stage dominates the total emissions, primarily due to the electricity consumed by hardware during operation. For example, consider a simple action like viewing a webpage or using a mobile app – this single interaction engages a chain of energy-consuming events: a request hits servers in a data centre (drawing on power-hungry servers and cooling units), data travels across the internet via routers and cellular towers (each using electricity), and the consumer’s device displays the result (using battery power, which ultimately comes from the electrical grid when recharged). If the electricity powering any part of this chain comes from fossil fuels, that interaction has a measurable carbon impact. Even seemingly negligible actions accumulate; billions of digital interactions per day globally equate to a substantial carbon footprint. One analysis of e-commerce websites found that a heavy webpage could emit on the order of 12 grams of CO₂ per view due to the energy required by servers, data transmission, and the user’s device. Multiply such figures by millions of users and hundreds of interactions per user, and it becomes clear why digital CX sustainability is garnering attention. In the following sections, we break down how to measure these impacts and examine specific industry contexts.

2. Measuring Environmental Impact Across the Service Lifecycle

How can we quantify the environmental impact of digital customer interactions? Traditional sustainability accounting methods are increasingly being applied to digital services. One widely used approach is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), an internationally recognised methodology (standardised by the ISO 14040 series) for evaluating environmental impacts of a product or service from cradle to grave. In the context of digital CX, an LCA would account for everything from raw materials and manufacturing of devices/network equipment, through the energy consumed during data processing and transmission, to the end-of-life disposal of hardware. For instance, an LCA comparing digital vs. paper bank statements by NatWest found that even digital statements have a carbon footprint – mainly from the electricity used by customers to read the statement (about 42% of total emissions for the digital option). This kind of analysis helps identify which stages of the service lifecycle contribute the most to emissions.

Another important framework is the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, which provides guidelines for organisations to categorize and report emissions. Under the GHG Protocol, emissions are grouped into Scope 1 (direct emissions from owned sources), Scope 2 (indirect emissions from purchased electricity), and Scope 3 (other indirect emissions, such as those from supply chain and product use). Digital interactions mostly contribute to Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions for a service provider. For example, a telecom operator’s data centres and network base stations would contribute to its Scope 2 emissions (electricity the company consumes). Meanwhile, the energy used by customers’ devices when using the service could be considered part of Scope 3 (in the category “use of sold products/services”). Measuring these requires collaboration – companies need data on how much energy their digital services cause users and networks to consume. Increasingly, ICT industry standards (such as ITU-T recommendations and the ICT sector guidance under the GHG Protocol) are helping to unify how such measurements are made. These methodologies stress the importance of defining clear functional units – e.g. “per user per year of service” or “per transaction” – to make results actionable. A bank might measure emissions per online transaction, or a streaming service might report emissions per hour of video streamed. Such metrics make it easier to target reductions and also to communicate impacts to consumers in relatable terms.

It’s worth noting that precise measurement can be challenging. As sustainability researchers point out, there is often a lack of transparency from tech companies about energy usage details. In absence of perfect data, estimates and models are used. Tools like digital carbon calculators (e.g., website carbon calculators) or models like the Sustainable Web Design model provide approximate formulas for emissions based on data transfer and energy intensity of electricity. Despite the challenges, applying LCA and GHG accounting to digital CX is not only possible but increasingly expected. It enables companies to identify “hotspots” of environmental impact in the customer journey and to innovate solutions – whether that’s optimizing code for efficiency, investing in renewable energy for data centres, or educating users on energy-saving settings. The following sections consider each of the five focus sectors and illustrate how these measurements and considerations play out in practice across the service lifecycle of customer interactions.

3. Telecommunications: Networks and Data in Balance

Telecommunications underpins the entire digital economy, carrying the data for every other sector’s digital interactions. In the telco sector, customer interactions include making calls, using mobile data, streaming content, managing accounts via apps, and contacting customer service through digital channels. The sustainability challenge for telecoms lies primarily in the network infrastructure and data centres required to deliver these services. Mobile networks (4G/5G towers, base stations, switching centres) and fixed-line networks (fibre optic nodes, routers) run 24/7 and are energy-intensive. As data demand grows exponentially – Americans, for example, used a record 100 trillion MB of mobile data in 2023 – networks must expand capacity, often leading to higher total energy usage despite efficiency improvements. Telecom operators worldwide have noted that electricity consumption of networks has been rising in recent years due to sheer growth in data traffic. This means that a customer streaming a video or participating in a video call is indirectly driving energy use in the network’s base stations and servers.

Measuring the impact of these interactions involves metrics like energy per bit (joules per gigabyte of data transmitted) or emissions per subscriber. Many telecom companies conduct LCAs of their services; for example, a study might evaluate the carbon footprint of a one-minute phone call or a megabyte of data transfer (which can be defined as functional units in an LCA). Such assessments consider the power used by switching equipment, cell towers, and data centre routers during that interaction. Interestingly, the manufacturing of network equipment and customer devices (phones, routers) also contributes to lifecycle impact, but the use phase dominates for telecom services since equipment runs for years consuming electricity continuously. On the customer side, smartphones themselves use energy (from the grid, to charge batteries) for connecting calls or loading webpages, and this is part of the footprint of a digital telco interaction.

Telecom operators are increasingly aware of these sustainability issues. Many have set targets to use renewable energy for their networks and are investing in more efficient technologies. For instance, modernising networks and switching off legacy 3G systems can improve energy per data unit. Some telcos are exploring AI to dynamically manage network energy use (powering down capacity during low demand). Still, transparency is key – a customer might have no idea that streaming a 30-minute HD video over a mobile network can involve a complex chain consuming electricity at multiple sites. By publishing data and engaging in initiatives like the ITU’s environmental standards for ICT, telecom providers can help measure and ultimately reduce the per-interaction footprint. In summary, in telecommunications the service lifecycle spans from building and maintaining network infrastructure to delivering service to customers’ devices. Ensuring the sustainability of digital CX here means greening that entire lifecycle – from using low-carbon construction and renewable-powered data centres, to optimising the energy used per call or per gigabyte of data. The next time we enjoy seamless connectivity, it’s worth remembering the energy behind the signal and encouraging our network providers to keep that impact as low as possible.

4. Financial Services: Digital Banking with a Lower Carbon Budget

The financial services industry has rapidly embraced digital customer experience, with online banking portals, mobile banking apps, digital payments, and even virtual customer service agents. By moving customer interactions from physical branches and paper statements to digital platforms, banks and insurers have indeed reduced certain environmental impacts – for example, less paper use and fewer customer car trips to branches. However, digital finance is not impact-free; it simply shifts the burden to data centres, networks, and devices. Every time a customer checks an account balance on an app or completes an online transaction, there is backend processing happening on servers and data travelling across networks. The energy and carbon cost of these interactions can be measured and optimised.

One notable example is the digital bank statement. Traditional paper statements have an obvious footprint from paper production, printing, and postal delivery. Digital statements eliminate those, but an LCA commissioned by NatWest Group found that a digital statement still carries a carbon footprint largely due to the energy used by customers in accessing and reading it. In fact, about 42% of the digital statement’s emissions came from the electricity consumed by the customer’s device during an average seven-minute read. The rest would include data centre storage of the statement and network delivery. If some customers then print the statement at home, that further adds to emissions. This example underscores the importance of looking at the full lifecycle – the bank successfully cut out paper (a win for trees and waste), but must also consider the efficiency of its app and website (to minimise data transfer and device processing time) and perhaps even educate users on energy-saving habits (like lowering screen brightness or avoiding unnecessary printing).

Banks and other financial firms can use frameworks like the GHG Protocol to account for their digital services. Often, a bank’s own operations (Scope 1 and 2) are relatively low-carbon if they mainly involve offices and data centres running on renewable electricity. The bigger picture is in Scope 3, where financed emissions (emissions from loans and investments) are huge – but also where digital service emissions lie. For a primarily digital bank, the operational carbon footprint might heavily involve data centre usage (often outsourced to cloud providers) and the collective impact of millions of app uses. Some fintech companies and neobanks highlight that they are “branchless” and thus more carbon-efficient, which is true to an extent (less real estate and commuting). However, they then must focus on the digital carbon – ensuring their servers run on green energy, their code is efficient, and perhaps even offering carbon footprint info to customers for their digital activities. In fact, there’s a growing intersection of digital innovation and ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) in banking, where banks leverage digital tools to also further sustainability goals (e.g. using AI to analyse and reduce energy usage).

In summary, the financial sector’s digital CX journey illustrates a trade-off and an opportunity. The trade-off is physical vs digital impact: e-banking saves paper and fuel, but uses electricity and data. The opportunity is that banks can measure and manage this footprint closely – for example, by adopting green cloud solutions, consolidating data centres for efficiency, and guiding customers towards fully paperless, low-energy operations. With clear reporting and innovative design, digital finance can be a win-win: offering customers convenience and transparency, while keeping the environmental cost per transaction as low as possible.

5. Consumer Goods & Retail: E-commerce and the Invisible Emissions

The way we shop has been revolutionised by digital technology. In the consumer goods and retail sector, customers now frequently browse products on websites, compare reviews on apps, and click “buy now” instead of visiting physical stores. This digital customer journey includes various touchpoints – viewing product images or videos, chatting with online support, receiving e-receipts, and participating in loyalty programmes via apps. Each of these interactions, although digital, has a real environmental footprint. Websites and mobile apps rely on data centres to serve content and process orders, and on networks to deliver that content to consumers’ devices. The impact is cumulative: an average online retail site might be visited millions of times; if each page view emits a few grams of CO₂, the total can be substantial. A study of online retailers found that some content-heavy sites produced over 10 grams of CO₂ per page view due to server processing and data transfer needs. Those grams come from electricity – often still fossil-fuel generated – powering the servers, the network equipment, and the user’s computer or phone for that burst of activity.

Measuring the e-commerce footprint requires looking at the whole system. For instance, consider a typical online purchase lifecycle: a customer searches and views products (data centre + network + device usage), places an order (transactions processed in servers, confirmations sent via email – which itself has a carbon cost to send/store), and possibly tracks delivery (GPS data and updates via app). On the physical side, there’s warehouse operation and transport of goods, which usually dominate the carbon footprint of e-commerce. However, isolating the digital portion, retailers are beginning to pay attention to their digital carbon emissions. Some retailers use services to measure their website’s energy consumption and have started optimising images, enabling dark modes, or reducing unnecessary scripts to cut data usage. These practices not only make the customer experience faster, but also leaner in energy use.

Another factor is data storage: Retailers accumulate customer data, transaction records, and product information, often indefinitely. Storing and processing big data sets continuously in the cloud has an energy cost. According to one analysis, big tech data centre emissions have been rising with increased storage and AI demands. For retail companies leveraging cloud-based analytics and AI (for recommendations, for example), it’s important to account for the energy that these enhancements consume. Methodologies like LCA can help identify that, for example, the “use phase” (customers browsing and the retailer’s servers running) might dwarf the “production phase” (manufacturing of IT equipment) in overall emissions for a digital retail platform. In addition, circular economy ideas are emerging: some consumer goods companies are using apps to involve customers in product take-back or recycling at end-of-life, adding another positive digital interaction that can offset environmental impact by extending product lifecycles.

In conclusion, the retail sector’s digital CX is rife with invisible emissions that need to be illuminated. By measuring the energy per web session or per online order and making changes accordingly, retailers can significantly reduce the carbon footprint of online shopping. It could be as straightforward as compressing images or as strategic as choosing a hosting provider powered by 100% renewable energy. Consumers, too, can be part of the solution – for instance, consolidating their online orders (to reduce separate deliveries and the associated digital and physical emissions) and being mindful that endless scrolling or refreshing also has a cost. Retailers that transparently communicate their digital sustainability efforts can build trust and encourage more eco-conscious customer behaviour, aligning convenience with conscience.

6. Food Delivery Services: On-Demand Convenience and Carbon Considerations

Ordering food via a smartphone for quick delivery to your doorstep has become a routine convenience in many cities. Food delivery platforms provide a strongly digital customer experience: users browse restaurant menus on an app or website, place an order, and track the delivery in real-time on a map interface. In this sector, the environmental impact spans both digital and physical realms. The physical impact – primarily the transport emissions of the delivery vehicle (bike, scooter, car) and packaging waste – is obvious and often discussed in sustainability circles. The digital impact is less visible but worth examining: the app itself, the data transmissions, the cloud services coordinating orders and routing. For a single food order, the digital energy use might seem trivial – a few minutes on a phone, some GPS signals, and server pings. But multiply this by millions of orders per day worldwide, and the energy adds up. For example, maintaining real-time maps and notifications means continuous communication with servers. GPS location updates for tracking utilize mobile networks every few seconds. Restaurants and drivers are also connected to the system, which involves data centre processing (matching orders, optimizing routes). All these data exchanges consume electricity.

To measure this, one could define a functional unit like “per delivery order” and assess the energy used by all digital components for that order. That would include the end-user’s phone usage (screen on, data transmission), the cellular network or Wi-Fi usage, the servers handling order processing and dispatch, and even the driver’s phone running the delivery app. While each of these in isolation is small, the aggregate can be significant. A hint of scale: an average WhatsApp text message may only be a few kilobytes, but active group chats or media sharing can surprisingly accumulate emissions – one estimate found an average WhatsApp group could cause 2.35 kg CO₂ in a week from all its data usage. By analogy, frequent use of any data-heavy app (like food delivery with maps and images) contributes to emissions over time. The difference is, unlike a social media scroll, a food delivery also triggers a motorbike or car trip, which often dominates the carbon footprint. However, focusing on digital, the companies running these platforms have started to consider green IT strategies: using efficient coding to reduce app data usage, choosing eco-friendly cloud hosting, and optimizing algorithms so that, for example, fewer server calls are needed. Some services bundle orders or use AI to optimise delivery routes – this not only reduces driving distance (physical benefit) but also minimises redundant digital communications.

From a lifecycle perspective, if we evaluate a year of operations of a food delivery service, the digital infrastructure (servers, networks, devices) is part of the service’s footprint. The companies can perform an LCA to find what portion of total emissions comes from IT operations. Many large delivery firms are now pledging carbon neutrality or net-zero strategies that include their digital emissions. This might involve offsetting the carbon from their server electricity use, or investing in renewable energy certificates for the power their platforms consume. The customer touchpoints here – from app install to order to feedback – could also be made more sustainable. For instance, encouraging customers to order from nearby restaurants (less delivery time, but also fewer data hops potentially as some systems use edge computing when localised) or to opt out of unnecessary notifications (reducing data traffic). While these are small tweaks, they represent a holistic approach where every aspect of the digital CX is tuned for lower impact. Ultimately, for food delivery apps, the message is to not overlook the “thin blue line” on the map – the digital journey of your order – as part of the carbon footprint. By measuring and optimizing it, alongside greening the delivery fleet, the sector can continue to satiate our appetite for convenience without harming the environment’s health.

7. Personal Transportation: Ridesharing and Digital Mobility

Personal transportation services have been transformed by digital platforms. Whether it’s ride-hailing services like Uber and Bolt, bike and scooter sharing schemes, or even public transport journey planners, the customer experience is now largely digital. You summon a car via an app, you unlock a shared bicycle with your phone, you pay for a bus ride using a QR code – these interactions are seamless and efficient. Environmentally, these services often promote benefits like reducing private car ownership or optimising routes to cut down on unnecessary mileage. However, as with other sectors, the digital infrastructure enabling these services has its own environmental cost. Let’s consider a ride-hailing trip: a user’s app sends a request (data goes to the platform’s servers), algorithms match them with a driver (server processing), the driver’s app gets the navigation route (data from map services), and during the ride, both rider and driver might have GPS and data on continuously. All of that requires data centres (for dispatch and maps), network usage (for sending info back and forth), and device power on both ends. The footprint of a single trip’s digital interaction could be measured in terms of data used – for example, a 15-minute ride might involve a few megabytes of data when you combine map updates and notifications. A few MB of data might correspond to a few grams of CO₂ emissions, depending on the network and data centre efficiencies. Again, this seems minor, but for a platform facilitating millions of trips daily, the digital emissions are a piece of the puzzle. Indeed, digital technologies in transport globally (including navigation services, etc.) contribute to ICT sector emissions; as one study noted, ICT’s share of global emissions is growing with trends like these digital innovations.

From a service lifecycle viewpoint, a personal transportation service has to account for the manufacturing and maintenance of IT equipment (servers, smartphones for drivers), the operational energy (all the computing and data transfer during rides), and end-of-life (old servers or devices being replaced). Ride-hailing companies have mostly been focusing on the obvious impact: vehicle emissions. Many have programs to encourage electric vehicles or carpooling, which directly tackle tailpipe emissions. But some have also started to look inward at their IT operations. For example, ensuring their data centres (if self-hosted) or cloud services use renewable energy, since running the app’s backend might be a non-trivial part of their corporate carbon footprint. For instance, if a ride-hailing firm uses thousands of servers globally to constantly calculate routes and manage traffic data, powering these on green electricity or cooling them efficiently is important. Similarly, efficient coding can reduce how often the app pings the server for updates, thereby saving energy (and also mobile data costs for users and drivers).

An interesting angle is how digital CX in transport can enable sustainability beyond its own footprint. By measuring travel patterns, these apps can suggest eco-friendlier options – e.g. showing users public transport alternatives or encouraging shared rides. Some apps already display CO₂ saved by choosing a certain mode. Thus, the digital interaction becomes a catalyst for sustainable behaviour, potentially offsetting its own energy use by driving a much larger reduction in vehicle emissions. Nevertheless, accuracy in accounting is key: the companies should avoid assuming digital = inherently green. A well-known tech mantra is that “what gets measured gets managed.” If ride-sharing platforms measure the energy per ride on the digital side, they might find innovative ways to cut it (like load balancing their server usage to off-peak when renewable energy is plentiful). In summary, the personal transportation sector demonstrates the dual role of digital CX: it can reduce environmental impact of mobility by smarter logistics, but it also introduces a new layer of energy consumption that must be managed sustainably. By doing both – leveraging digital to cut physical emissions and minimising the digital footprint itself – these services can truly drive us toward greener mobility.

Conclusion

Across telecommunications, finance, retail, food delivery, and transportation, it’s evident that digital customer experiences carry very real environmental impacts. The convenience and efficiency gained by digitising customer interactions come with hidden energy usage – in data centres humming away unseen, in network equipment quietly relaying our data, and in the devices glowing in our hands. Measuring this impact is the first crucial step towards managing it. Frameworks like LCA and the GHG Protocol provide blueprints to capture the full picture, often revealing that the majority of emissions arise during the use phase of digital services. This is a call for companies to not only green their data centres and network operations but also to design digital platforms with energy efficiency in mind. As we’ve seen, optimising a website or app to be lean can cut emissions while also improving user experience – a true win-win. Sector by sector, specific strategies emerge: telecom operators can pursue renewable energy and smarter networks, banks can ensure their digital solutions are supported by green infrastructure, retailers can streamline their web services and use data judiciously, delivery apps can refine their algorithms and perhaps integrate sustainability nudges for users, and mobility services can power their platforms with clean energy and encourage eco-friendly choices.

Equally important is transparency and awareness. Just as companies now often report the carbon footprint of their operations, we may soon see them reporting the carbon footprint of digital services per user or per transaction. This information empowers consumers to make informed choices and encourages competition on sustainability. Given the digital sector’s share of global emissions is already comparable to heavy industries, there is both a moral and business imperative to act. Fortunately, the same innovation that drives digital CX can be harnessed to reduce its footprint – from AI systems that dynamically cut energy use to blockchain solutions tracing renewable energy usage.

Call to Action

For businesses and organisations: it’s time to integrate sustainability into every digital touchpoint. Start by assessing your digital carbon footprint – how much energy do your customer interactions consume, and where can it be reduced? Implement design and technology choices that favour low energy use (for example, efficient coding, cloud optimisation, renewable energy sourcing). Engage with industry standards and frameworks to report your progress transparently. For policymakers and industry groups, the call to action is to support research and guidelines (like updated ISO standards or sector-specific benchmarks) that help quantify digital emissions and set targets for reduction. And for consumers, the call to action is to be conscious of our digital habits: just as we try to save electricity by turning off lights, we can adopt small behaviours like unplugging devices, limiting high-definition streaming when not necessary, or curbing digital waste (such as unnecessary emails or cloud storage) – these choices, multiplied across millions, do make a difference.

Emergent Africa, through this paper, encourages a collective shift towards green customer experience. By viewing every customer interaction through the lens of its lifecycle impact, we can discover new opportunities to innovate sustainably. Let’s ensure that the digital revolution, which has enhanced customer experiences in countless ways, also evolves to lighten its environmental footprint. The next great customer experience will not only be seamless and personalised – it will be sustainable. Now is the moment to act, measure, and improve, so that our digital future is one where customer satisfaction and planetary well-being grow in tandem.