As more companies start to invest in CX, knowing where the industry is headed can give you a head start in your cx management program.
To make sure your cx is as good as it can be. You need to make sure you're providing the experiences that your customers have started to expect.
We put together the most important trends in CX for you to consider in your strategy. So that you can get ahead and provide the best experience to your customer.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
With all the advances in ML and AI in the recent years, businesses are finding more ways to incorporate these technologies into their CX.
This allows companies to devote people-power to other more difficult problems that AI cannot solve.
One major area is customer service and chatbots. AI can effectively identify what areas customers need help with. Suggesting content and solutions to common customer requests.
Another area is personalization. With a wide range of customer data available to businesses, using this data effectively to up-sell and cross-sell to customers become easier. Allowing businesses to offer more personal experiences.
This trend is also backed by the fact that people are becoming more used to AI. And feel more comfortable interacting with AI based systems. The most crucial aspect to look out for is letting people know that they're interacting with AI, so that they don't feel fooled if they notice.
Omnichannel
With the ever increasing adoption of voice devices like Google Home and Amazon Alexa it's imperative that companies start leveraging these platforms while the competition is still low compared to more established channels like mobile and social.
New channels aside, another important trend to look out for is the merge of experiences across channels.
Businesses that are traditionally offline will need to focus more online and vice versa. Because people perceive their experiences as a whole — they expect businesses to provide seamless journeys.
When considering your omnichannel strategy, it's important that you don't overwhelm yourself and you start small. It's best to start incorporating channels to your CX management program one at a time. So you can effectively focus on gaining the most out of each initiative.
Connecting CX to Business Objectives
As businesses continue to invest more into CX, combining experience data with operational data becomes more important. This allows businesses to gain deeper insight into the customer journey, making better and more informed decisions.
It's no secret that CX should be a company wide initiative. That's why eliminating data silos and focusing on transparency is one of the most important trends that businesses are prioritizing.
This is sometimes called a Single View of the Customer and in order to achieve it, you need to make sure you have the right technology infrastructure to manage the vast amount of data across your organization.
Realtime Customer Engagement
As we are experiencing a digital storm in our daily lives, we are surrounded by touch points where we can express ourselves instantly via social media and the web.
We text each other every day with instant messaging tools like WeChat or WhatsApp and customers have come to expect the same reaction time from companies.
They want to be heard/noticed right at the moment of their experience not even the following day.Tomorrow can be too late! Be real time do not miss the momentum!
Self-Service
As customers become more accustomed to technology, a large number of businesses are starting to leverage their customers to outsource some of their operations.
Giving space to your customers’ opinions with physical solutions such as kiosks or QR codes will significantly differentiate your organisation from others. You can easily outsource your company’s performance measurement to your real customers right in the place of the transaction.
Also, click & collect, self check out and self service are some of the most common ways businesses are enabling their customers to help themselves. Some businesses have even pushed this idea to its limit: having its first concept store opened in early 2018, Amazon Go concept stores are signaling changes to come in the future.
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Consider these trends in your customer experience strategy and ensure you offer the most seamless and delightful customer journeys.
Are you new to customer experience? Or would you like to compare your current strategy with our approach? Let's discuss how we can help you communicate with your customers!
