Customer experience: the UK at a glance

Amazing customer experiences only happen you have the ecosystem to design, optimise, and deliver them. Brands need strong experience management competencies, customer-centric culture, and technology to execute at scale.

There are loads of reports that talk about trends and insight into digital trends for 2022. I've found a few that are worth talking about.

Here’s what you need to know for 2022:

Trend one: Customers have had enough, and they're willing to walk?

Bad experiences are costing businesses around ￡147 billion in consumer spending annually. Customers simply won't spend if they think the business doesn't meet their expectations.

• 6.5% of your revenue is at risk due to bad experiences
• Consumers are 3.5x more likely to purchase from a business after a positive customer experience
• Consumers are 5.1x more likely to recommend your brand after a positive customer experience?

Trend two: predictive personalisation

71% of customers expect companies to deliver personalised interactions, and 76% get frustrated when they don't receive a personalised experience.

The concept of loyalty is in flux. The notion of what it means to be loyal and how that loyalty is rewarded is evolving. At the same time, consumers are more digitally savvy, leading to increased expectations. Fortunately, companies can use a greater volume and variety of data to get more personal and predictive.

Trend three: out with the old, in with the new

What we buy, where we buy, and how we use it have changed dramatically in 2022. Without adapting, there is a gap between what customers expect and what companies deliver.

7/10 people believe customer experience needs to be improved,?and below is the % of consumers that say businesses need to make major improvements in the following areas:

As we move into a new post COVID-19 era, you need to take a fresh look at everything to understand what’s working and what’s not and identify the actions to take to close the widening gap between your business and your customers.

Radically overhaul your customer service.?A one-size-fits-all approach to service won’t work anymore. As customers engage with you across multiple channels, you need to understand what each customer needs and when they need it and deliver a tailored service on the channels they prefer to use.

Think customer, not channel. From the buying process to how people use your products and access support, how customers interact with you has changed. As you understand what they need, break down silos between channels and look at the end-to-end journey to identify what’s working and what’s not.

Make agile your default setting.?With current global supply chain issues and labour shortages, finding intelligent ways for humans and technology to converge will help ease the burden on your people. Equip teams with the tools and processes to automatically get insights from the right people so they can take action quickly.

Trend four: consumers will stop engaging unless you take action

Customers are used to being asked for feedback; it’s now standard for most businesses. But consumers are clear – if they give you feedback, they expect a response. Yet nearly half of consumers said companies need to get better at listening to their feedback.

For 2022, you’ll need to listen harder and demonstrate to your customers that you hear them and that their voice matters. Companies in every industry are becoming ever-more sophisticated at collecting and using feedback to improve the experiences they deliver, and customers now expect it in every interaction they have.

Listen.?Channel preferences have evolved, so your listening program should too.

See the whole picture.?Make indirect feedback part of your strategy so you can understand what customers say, wherever they’re saying it.

Track the ROI of experience. Unstructured data will help you to detect emotion, effort and intent — then connect it to a structured framework like CSAT, CES or NPS so you can see their impact on performance.

Trend five: treat customers as people, not commodities

Though every interaction doesn’t have to be one-to-one, it has to feel one-to-one. Customer needs and preferences should be reflected in the experience you offer, and this will help you to create a stronger relationship with your customers

Consumers have re-evaluated the relationships they have with businesses. They have more choices than ever, and their tolerance for bad experiences is as low as ever. They expect companies to treat them as people and to put them and their needs first. And the good news is they’re willing to pay more if you do.

As we saw in the previous section, listening to and acting on feedback is a good start, but consumers expect you to go further. They expect you to work hard to create genuine relationships with them. That means interpreting the signals they’re giving you, understanding what they need, and tailoring your response.

Turn data into insight.?Gather customer feedback from every channel; online, on the phone or face to face – and create a unified, 360-degree view of every experience so you can see where to improve.

Sense and respond. Identify friction points in your most valuable customer journeys, and use the warning signs and signals from customers as triggers to take action, so you can step in and get them back on the right path quickly.

Make one-to-many, feel one-to-one. Build new segmentation models based on experience data rather than just demographics. By grouping customers by their expressed needs and preferences, you can develop targeted offerings that feel one-to-one and deliver them at scale.

Mind-blowing stats you need to know

• 61% of customers say it’s difficult for a company to earn their trust (Salesforce ).
• 32% of all customers would stop doing business with a brand they loved after one bad support experience (PwC ).
• Bad news travels fast: The overwhelming majority (89%) of customers will make their poor support experience known to others (HiverHQ ).
• 74% of customers?can switch brands if the purchasing process is too difficult for them. (review42 )
• Two-thirds of UK consumers ?can’t remember when a brand experience last exceeded their expectations.

There's a lot to digest here, but it always comes back to the customer, 'the customer is always right' definitely rings true. They're the centre of everything I do and most marketers.

While you're here, do you want to grow your network, gather knowledge and gain new ideas for everyday digital marketing? Then you need to join?The Digital Marketing Bunch ?group today for more content like this!

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