Contactless CX during pandemic restrictions gave a newfound meaning to the cx journey; everything today has to be personalized to the customer’s taste. Competitive customer experience design today requires constant adaptability for consumerism and seamless service, all put together with increased engagement. Any organization with the realization of why customer experience matters, will know how to apply it as a strategic differentiator, digitally transforming to not only survive but thrive in these demanding times. Below we have discussed the top emerging customer experience trends in 2022.
“Customer experience is the new marketing battlefront.”
Chris Pemberton
1-Creating a Long-Term Customer
Becoming a customer-centric company that puts the customer’s needs first is imperative to deliver both quality and quantity in service. If the customer’s journey is full of meaningful touchpoints that create personal impact, it will want them to keep coming back to the same service provider. Improving your customer retention will automatically enhance revenue, as customers today are willing to pay above and beyond to get more immersive experiences.
Customers are ready to pay up to 16% more on premium products and services if it means they get exceptional experiences
– PWC
Of course, empathy goes a long way when trying to build a customer experience strategy. Understanding your customers’ needs requires their input and feedback while staying connected constantly throughout the transaction, and even after. It also helps build the customer’s trust in the organization, enhancing the customer lifetime value (CLV), and ensures they don’t go looking elsewhere for solutions.
About a third of consumers claimed they would consider switching to another company after one bad customer service experience
– nextiva
2-Omnichannel and Automated, yet Human
As Omnichannel services allow customers to communicate via the channel of their choice, it naturally creates a more seamless customer experience overall. Where AI has to be incorporated to reduce response wait times and increase agility, human intervention would serve best for personal attention to customers, or escalated cases.
The future of CX holds more and more:
Speed and efficacy through digital technology (chatbots, 5G, IoT, AR, VR)
data-focused outcomes analyzed through metrics
personalization through video chat
feedback based on voice-of-the-customer
open channels for easy transition between all
82% of top companies focus on the human experience with digital technology
Omnichannel has been a part of customer experience trends 2020 as well, but this accelerated more due to physical restrictions and popular customer demand. Real-time responses with predictive analytics can aid in devising empathic exchanges for omnichannel experiences. Incorporating findings from NPS and C-Sat scores also help create a more tailored service to your customer base. Customer insight and machine learning can therefore benefit to cover all the bases: knowledge level, good service, agility, and ease.
3-Remote Partnerships
Since work from home became part and parcel of modern work-life, it is easier to engage outsourced remote teams to give you the competitive edge and employ a customer experience specialist round-the-clock. A BPO partner can not only bring about cost savings, but also contribute new methodologies, processes, and approaches to expand your CX to new horizons. Customer Experience outsourcing brings you globally available top agents, extra-added layers of tech security (necessary for remote teams), and 24 hr. coverage; all with data redundancy. This means your customer experience department can tend to any client across the globe, irrespective of time zones, and resolve issues in real-time. Since there is so much competition to deliver exceptional results to your consumers, no option should be left unexplored.
86% of CX professionals and businesses expect to compete based on Customer Experiences in the future
4-Employee Experience Matters
Fulfilled employees become even bigger brand advocates when they interact with your customers. CX trends 2022 demand attentive agents with active listening so that the customer is made to feel special, treating their issue as a top priority. Focusing on constructive employee onboarding, gamification, and positive company culture can forge healthier employee experiences in the workplace, physical or digital. Supplementing your teams with the necessary tools to ease their job will also inspire them to work harder, in turn increasing customer satisfaction post-service. Providing motivation and incentives is also very important to ensure an empowerment culture with an environment to deliver more every day. Since superior customer experiences largely rely on excellent human interactions, your employees must be at their A-game when facing your clients and consumers.
82% of consumers prefer human interactions now and in the future
– PWC
5-Tell Your Story
It is easier for your consumers to connect with you if they feel they have a commonality of values and relatability. Advertising and marketing have also transformed post-pandemic and now must involve illustrating the brand journey to audiences. Highlighting the customers’ and employees’ journey with the brand will galvanize trust and abridge generation gaps. It will also help you identify constantly changing customer demands when your consumers interact with you more. Customers nowadays prefer eco-friendly consumerism that can make them feel like a positive contributor after a purchase or service is availed. You can also utilize User Generated Content to make your customers your brand advocates, generating leads through positive word-of-mouth. Since social channels are the first medium to represent a firm’s online brand voice (other than websites), they too are a favorable tool to create content specific to your clients.
Two-thirds of customer loyalty is driven by CX, rather than brand and price put together
Before you create any customer experience strategy suited to your organizational requirements; it is critical to understand: what your customer needs, create a process map to the customer’s journey, address all actionable pain points, base your goals on measured data, and have the latest tools and teams to facilitate their practical application.
No matter what customer experience trends you follow, certain elements have become embedded within the term itself. Today superior customer experiences are personalized, omnichannel, AI-powered, data-centered, and customer-focused. To excel as a business, you have to learn to digitally transform at every step as antiquated models no longer support modern consumer demands.
