What comes to mind when you hear or read “trends in customer experience”? Well, depending on the marketing techniques you believe in or the business you work in, you may have varied conceptions of what CX entails. However, regardless of whether you are a traditional marketer or a digitally-savvy, non-conventional marketer, we can all agree that customer experience has become one of the most important components in making a business stand out from competitors.
We questioned marketers, entrepreneurs, and eCommerce specialists for their perspectives on the future of Product led Growth. Their comments were compiled into a list of twelve customer experience trends to watch in 2023.
1. Personalization as a defining factor
When a client receives a personalized experience, they are more likely to make a buy. Personalizing the experiences of your clients begins with the data you own about them. Create detailed client personas and use them to guide the content you deliver to each individual consumer. In addition, deploy marketing automation systems that enable you to send trigger emails and other notifications when clients engage in particular activities.
Customization is no longer a choice for organizations since personalization is now an expectation of customers. Instead, it is rapidly becoming the standard and one that has shown to be highly profitable. For instance, this report demonstrates that organizations that incorporated personalization had a 15 percent gain in sales.
Personalization, supported by potent marketing automation tools, is the single most important CX enhancement that firms can do to increase revenue.
2. More self-service options for the resourceful customer
If a consumer can handle their own issue, they will select this option before contacting a customer service representative through chat or phone. In the future, investing time and money in self-service resources will yield a significant return on investment.”
It is common knowledge that customers nowadays are technologically savvy and have substantially shorter attention spans than in the past. Therefore, people lose patience quickly when forced to wait for long durations to get their difficulties fixed. According to research conducted by Zendesk, 67% of consumers choose self-service over chatting with a corporate professional. According to Harvard Business Review, 81% of consumers attempt to resolve issues on their own prior to contacting a live professional.
Clearly, if given the proper means, consumers would prefer to address a problem on their own. It would be in the best interests of companies to invest in such technology to empower their consumers, allowing them to handle their difficulties with little friction.
This gets us to the next major CX trend that is ubiquitous and will continue to develop over the next year: omnichannel.
3. Use of DevRev CRM as Product Support
With Dev CRM, companies can now connect customer conversations with a ticketing and Knowledge-based platform with an integrated issues management workflow connected to the product features. All of this with real-time multiplayer collaboration and connections to other apps that companies currently use like Jira, Slack, and GitHub.
4. Chatbots to aid customer service
Artificial intelligence (AI) is gaining traction in the business sphere. Currently, many firms use bots to automate their sales and marketing processes, and chatbots have an even bigger influence on the digital customer experience. AI chatbots enable companies to expand their service for up to 70 percent of their most frequently asked questions, enabling them to answer and address issues more quickly. AI for customer experience will be a game-changer for companies who choose to adopt this trend.
By delegating a substantial portion of customer support activities to AI-powered chatbots, organizations can provide superior customer service around-the-clock while drastically decreasing operating expenses. Chatbots have proven revolutionary for all firms, with adoption rates accelerating by an average of 40 percent as a result of the epidemic.
Investing in chatbots may assist companies in enhancing their self-service capabilities, therefore adding to a favorable perception of their client experience.
5. Predictive analytics for empowered decision-making
As a chief technology officer, I believe organizations today have unprecedented access to customer data. Customers are willing to provide this information if it will result in higher benefits for them. Companies that wish to remain competitive and enhance the customer experience will likely increase their investment in predictive analytics.
Traditional data-gathering techniques, such as surveys, certainly assist organizations to evaluate and comprehend consumer satisfaction, but they fall short of meeting the diverse data needs of businesses today. With the use of predictive analytics, businesses are able to collect accurate, objective data on customer interactions, which proves to be a more trustworthy indicator of customer happiness and experience. Utilizing predictive analytics to inform business choices, bolstered by machine learning, may help businesses satisfy client demands.
6. Building trust with sincere data privacy
In 2021, there will be a heightened emphasis on privacy and the use of data by corporations. GDPR and the California Privacy Act (which won’t take effect until 2023) will have an impact on how companies manage consumer data in the future. Ensure that your organization complies with evolving data privacy and protection rules and regulations by keeping up with their evolution.
Customers’ concerns around the use of personal data are rising in tandem with the quantity of information that businesses acquire and maintain. Governments throughout the globe are implementing legislation to safeguard customer data. However, organizations may gain their consumers’ trust by demonstrating openness, clear security standards, and robust data protection procedures.
7. Enhanced accessibility with voice navigation
Accessibility has been on the rise, and it’s about time. The incorporation of voice navigation into eCommerce is one of the innovations I am most enthusiastic about. Voice search has increased in popularity over the past few years, allowing users to do searches using voice commands. The ultimate scenario, however, is for users to be able to explore an online marketplace and purchase the necessary items using only their voices.
As speech recognition grows more sophisticated and technology improves natural language processing, voice presents marketers with a huge array of opportunities. Voice-based search is expected to reach $40 billion by 2023. In addition, by 2023, the market share of consumer spending via voice assistants is anticipated to reach 18%. The use of speech technology in your website or application may revolutionize your accessibility and inclusiveness, allowing you to reach a larger audience.
8. Transparent communication, happy customers
Transparency is becoming an essential differentiator for businesses seeking to distinguish themselves from the competition. Customers may make better-educated decisions amongst suppliers when they have access to a plethora of information, and they prefer to select the firm that is most forward and honest about the sale and post-sale interactions.
Customers are pleased when firms are transparent about every facet of their products or services. Customers like businesses that embrace and own their truth, despite the fact that some businesses may be hesitant to be open for a variety of reasons.
9. Empathetic conversations that bolster relationships
Business-side digital platforms that trace a customer’s journey and guarantee that each encounter builds on the last
Providing a direct, conversational line of discussion is much more effective at establishing a connection with the consumer than utilizing impersonal communication phrases. For example, according to Harrison, contact emails such as ‘[email protected]’ or ‘[email protected]’ may be substituted with more accessible ones such as ‘[email protected]’ or’[email protected]’ that emphasize the human aspect of the customer support journey.
10. Pull customers instead of pushing products/services
The COVID-19 epidemic has significantly altered the purchasing habits and behaviors of customers. With promotional content saturating the digital market, marketers must now focus on ‘drawing the consumer’ to their organization, as opposed to ‘pushing the product’ into the market. Additionally, they will have to work harder to make digital platforms more participatory to provide a seamless purchasing and user experience.”
Customers in the digital era are more discriminating than ever before. They are quick to recognize when a corporation is attempting to force its products or services on them and will reject them nearly instantly without hesitation. A more effective method for companies would be to intentionally draw people through well-planned, smart, and relevant content that delivers value to the customer before they utilize your product. The next time they have a need for what you provide, your material will serve as breadcrumbs that direct them to you.
11. Offering online experiences & subscription models
Consumers are now accustomed to the convenience of purchasing items online, attending online events, and customizing products. These changes were already occurring prior to the epidemic, but the pandemic has exacerbated them.
Even a physical business may hold live online events connecting customers and admirers from across the world, erasing geographical restrictions and reaching a larger audience than ever before.
Offering subscription choices on items or services, so transforming one-time purchases into recurring ones, is an additional effective method of client retention and brand enhancement. Subscription models are sustainable over the long term, provide excellent ease for customers, and enable businesses to scale their development by gaining a deeper knowledge of their clients through data collected over the subscription period.
12. Implementing habit loops
Most of what we do as individuals are governed by our habits. Habits significantly influence how we interact with one another and with companies. Implementing habit loops that keep customers engaged in digital environments will become a top goal.
A habit loop is the brain circuit responsible for habit formation. There are three components to behavior: the cue, the routine, and the reward. A hook or trigger induces an action that yields a reward and motivates investment. Many firms have already implemented this in a variety of ways, with timed push notifications being among the most prevalent and effective. If you can determine habit loops – that is, discover the triggers that activate the reflexive routines that lead to rewards – you may begin to alter consumer behavior, so assisting your clients in overcoming unpleasant emotions and achieving desired outcomes.
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