Future of Customer Experience (CX)

Customer Experience (CX) is a vital strategy for businesses to differentiate from the competition and remain ahead of customer expectations and demand. 87% of business leaders consider CX as a key growth engine (Consulting.us, 2019). The rapid advancements in technology have provided businesses with ample tools to create an exceptional customer experience that leaves customers feeling satisfied.

What are the Drivers of Change in CX?

Customer experience (CX)?has witnessed a major shift over the past two years that has “redefined” the future of customer interactions. The start of the Covid-19 pandemic introduced restrictions and regulations that forced customers to satisfy their needs via digital platforms and businesses had to meet this inflated digital demand. As a result, businesses had to rethink their conventional means of customer experience to provide an efficient digital experience. Once pandemic regulations subsided, customers welcomed the ease of interacting with businesses online (Freshworks, 2021).?

Besides the change in CX culture fuelled by new customer demand and expectations, another driver of change lies in the advancements in technology. Companies are now embracing “automation, AI and robotics” in order to provide a superior customer experience (Forrester, 2019).

What does the Future of CX Look Like?

In this fast-paced digitalised and technologically advanced era, consumer behavior is changing rapidly, introducing new opportunities for businesses to differentiate from competitors. We discuss the top trends for the future of CX:

Focus on “Mobile-First Conversations”

Gone are the days when consumers would willingly wait for minutes to get in touch with a company’s support team via phone calls. Today, consumers value speed and want the ability to instantly interact with a company from the apps they frequent, such as “Apple Business Chat, Facebook Messenger [and] WhatsApp”. In fact, 68% of WhatsApp users agree that interacting with a business over Whatsapp is easy and more convenient.?

Placing a focus on “mobile-first conversations” is not only convenient to the consumer, but offers businesses benefits such as reduced call volumes. For example, companies reported a 20% decrease in the number of customer-related calls by using Apple Business Chat in their customer service strategy (Freshworks, 2021).

Deeper Role of AI in CX

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become crucial to maintaining a winning CX strategy. One in three business leaders state that AI’s predictive capabilities and delivery of customisable customer experiences is vital in “driving returns on their investments” (Freshworks, 2021). AI’s applications in CX include automating customer queries, offering self-service options, personalised responses, as well as the ability to predict consumer behaviour (Freshworks, 2021). Freshworks (2021) predicts that AI has more to offer in the future of CX.

Leveraging Modern Tech Platforms for Agents

The future of CX is also expected to empower customer support teams (Freshworks, 2021). Agents face many challenges, such as large volumes of queries and the ability to maintain quick customer response times. Keeping their support teams’ well-being in mind, businesses are focusing on developing “new-generation digital” and technologically-driven platforms that will empower agents to offer the best premium support services by reducing overwhelming tasks.

From this perspective, we are likely going to see advanced operations with AI assisting in customer query classification as well as the ability to direct these queries to the appropriate support department and agent. Similarly, businesses can utilise AI bots and offer self-service options to minimise the workload of customer support teams (Freshworks, 2021).

References:

Consulting.us (2019)?Executives say customer experience top priority to spur growth in 2020,?Consulting.us. Consulting.us. Available at: https://www.consulting.us/news/3444/executives-say-customer-experience-top-priority-to-spur-growth-in-2020.?

Forrester (2019) in?Future of CX. Forrester, p. 2. Available at: https://www.forrester.com/customer-experience/future-of-cx/.?

Freshworks (2021) in?The Future of CX: 2022?. Freshworks, p. 2, 8-9, 11-12, 13-14. Available at: https://freshdesk.com/customer-experience/cx-trends