5 Customer Experience Predictions For 2024

Every year since 2014 I’ve written my customer experience predictions. This year I’ve partnered with an industry expert whom I’ve known for 15 years Daniel Hong who is a former VP & Research Director at Forrester for the Contact Center & CRM practice. Daniel is currently the Chief Marketing Officer at Minerva CQ, an Artificial Intelligence startup focused on reducing call times in the contact center.

This year not only are we zooming out to look at customer experience but we’re also focusing more specifically on the place where customer interactions happen the most; the contact center. The contact center is the most important place for customer experience investments in 2024. With the past few years bringing steady declines to customer service, there is much work to do, but things are looking up this year.

1. Customer experience will improve for first time in three years

There are a few reasons why we can anticipate improved customer experiences in 2023.?

Firstly, 2024 will be on the receiving end of investments made in 2023. A survey by TELUS International found that 72% of leaders spent more on digital CX in 2023 than 2022, with 68% increasing their digital budgets by up to 25%.??

While there are a variety of staffing, retention and management issues that perpetually plague customer service, improved digital experiences have been a plus for customers. As we mentioned Telus research shows digital budgets have increased. As a customer you’ve probably noticed that ecommerce companies have made it increasingly easy for you to browse their website, imagine the product in your life, and return it if it doesn’t work.??

Secondly, Forrester predicts that while customer experience has been a longtime dance of a few steps forward and a few steps back, the upward increase will be driven by the small percentage of brands that have continued to get better over the years.

2. Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Won’t Kill the Contact Center But Will Give Rise To Collaborative AI?

With the growing popularity of Generative AI the specter of mass agent layoffs has once again come front and center. It won’t happen in 2024 or in the near future. Contact center leaders are focusing on improving agent performance, CX, and operational efficiency with AI rather than reducing costs through automation. Ironically, the increasing use of GenAI as consumers, like reading AI-generated summaries of Amazon reviews, or listening to a personalized AI DJ on Spotify, or (soon) talking to ChatGPT while driving a Volkswagen, will help reinforce the notion that working alongside AI, collaboratively, is just the new way of working in the contact center.?

In 2024 contact centers will start designing agent experiences around the notion of collaborative AI–the combination of the strengths of both machine and human intelligence to enhance problem-solving, decision-making, and overall performance. It’s widely used today in healthcares, manufacturing, research, finance, and customer support (e.g. agent assist).

3. 1 in 4 AI-driven Contact Center Agent-Assist Deployments Will Fail

While there are a multitude of awesome agent assist case studies that show -30% response times, +300% productivity gains, -10% in AHT, +5% in NPS, to name a few, in 2024 there will be a number of agent assist deployments that will fail due to:?

Companies lacking the insights needed to track the true impact of this expensive technology.

Companies know what types of calls they receive but many don’t know why customers are calling, why certain calls are so long, the AHT by call type, and root causes for frustration.?

Little to no value perceived by agents.

Some agent assist deployments are poorly designed where agents—particularly the experienced ones—tend to discontinue the use of agent assist. Having AI point out the obvious with “frustration detected, show empathy” or “slow down you’re speaking too fast” behavioral prompts (without adding more value to help the agent) will be met with eye rolls and a disgruntled employee. We’ve seen several of these that have since been shut off.??

Contact centers should conduct a discovery to obtain a baseline of customer intents and problem areas. From there design the right collaborative AI experience by layering in LLMs, workflows, and agent assist designed to improve the problem areas defined. This will ensure the right metrics are being used to measure success for the agent assist solution.

4. Companies will get away from dependence on survey feedback.?

A Qualtrics survey of over 28,000 consumers in 26 countries about their expectations and what companies should do to win and keep their business and they found that customers are not filling out surveys.?

Companies don’t have to rely on direct feedback, although that can be very valuable. In addition to senior level team members talking directly to customers frequently, companies also must gather data and insights - and glean actionable information from it.?

Customer experience professionals must listen to contact center conversations, read online chats, product reviews and social media to gain real answers into what is actually happening with their customer experience.?This year will bring a laser focus on more useful and accurate data insights efforts.

5. Human-led channels will continue to be priority for companies and many will double down on digital-first?

NTT Data’s 2023 Global CX Report provides a great snapshot of preferences for contact channels by age group. Not surprisingly, younger generations embraced digital more while those 40+ have stronger preferences for analog (in-person and telephone). Regardless of digital or analog, 75% of respondents preferred human-led channels when it comes to customer service. In 2024, preference for human-led channels will continue with digital channels growing in more popularity as companies improve their digital touch points and experiences with better integrations, AI, and UX. Brands cannot ignore the need to effectively support digital and omnichannel to better serve the younger generations of customers who engage on multiple digital channels.?

What we know for sure is that nothing is a given, and 2024 will have good and bad things come out of left field, as 2023 did. But one important strategy is to always be ready for anything, and when something unexpected comes up, you can move quickly.?Also remember, customer experience is a longterm game; making the customer-centric move is the better decision for your business.

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