Harness these 5 customer experience horizon trends now

We all love to talk trends. Knowing what’s hot now provides a glimpse into what’s coming — often sooner than we expect. And being prepared for what might otherwise be an uncertain future can provide a powerful competitive edge.

The shifts we’re seeing in customer experience strategies, the explosive growth of #AI, and customers’ unrepentant demand for more and better all hint at where customer experience (#CX) leaders need to focus. Seeing beyond the trends on the immediate horizon is crucial to successfully getting to what’s next before your competition does. As National Hockey League star and top scorer Wayne Gretzky wisely said, “I skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.”

Today, organizations need to understand which trends will affect their businesses and use that insight to reimagine what’s possible across customer and contact center employee experiences.?

“Customer Experience Horizons,” a report from MIT Technology Review Insights, supported by Genesys, examines the strategies and technologies that are transforming those experiences now and will propel continuous changes in the coming years.??

The report uncovers five approaches to transformation that CX leaders should take right now:?

1. Creating mutual value for customers and brands through richly contextualized experiences.??

Most organizations are already using customer data to personalize key interactions today. And many plan to optimize every interaction along fully contextualized end-to-end customer journeys. Customers will immediately see the benefits of sharing their data, which will build trust and loyalty. And it'll make it unappealing for them to switch to brands that don't use their #data to personalize experiences.

2. Viewing customer interactions as relationship-building opportunities.???

Leading CX-focused brands no longer consider queries solely as problems they must resolve as efficiently as possible. They view interactions as opportunities to deepen customer relationships and increase lifetime value. Increasingly, businesses will proactively share knowledge and act as trusted advisors. They’ll use #digital channels and employee-customer interactions to build engagement and nurture ongoing relationships

3. Using data to preemptively address customer needs.??

Organizations will increase their use of contextual and real-time data to streamline service interactions and reduce customer frustration. They’ll use their existing data and insight to reduce or even eliminate the need to ask customers questions they already have answers to. First movers are already developing comprehensive artificial intelligence (AI) roadmaps that integrate conversational, generative, and predictive AI throughout the customer and employee experiences.

4. Recognizing that customers and employees expect to be known, understood and supported. Organizations are rethinking what it means to treat customers and employees with empathy. They’re making interactions more personalized for both groups and looking for additional ways to show them they’re valued. One example s using predictive routing to send interactions to the employee who is best skilled to handle a specific issue. This practice also iprovides a more relevant and fast interaction, as well as first-interaction resolution – which all improve the customer experience. These more personalized experiences will increase customer and employee engagement, reduce turnover among both groups and manage costs.

5. Advocating for the customer. The contact center is a rich source of real-time and trending customer data. Shrewd CX leaders are advocating for the customer by sharing that insight across the organization to improve the experience across entire customer journeys. Many organizations are also using the contact center as an innovation hub, testing new technologies, such as generative AI, to improve productivity, performance and decision-making.

“In the future, we’ll see a much more functional, proactive contact center with less wait and better service. Instead of waiting for the customer to call you, you’ll make the proactive right action to address something the customer might not be aware of,” said Olivier Jouve, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Genesys.?

Learn more in the MIT Technology Review Insights report “Customer Experience Horizons.”