Customer Experience Trends and How Will CX Look Like in 2030?
‘Customer is king’ is an age-old phrase that talks about the promise of delivering quality goods at affordable prices.
Today, customers have plenty of choices in every sphere, space and industry. So, just offering a good product at a reasonable price is not sufficient. The mantra ‘customer is king’ has taken its true shape. It is the customers who drive the market.
Therefore, customer service has galloped from just being a need to becoming a critical differentiator in the consumer’s eyes.
Going forward, it would not be inappropriate to say that customer experience is evolving. It will continue to do so into a space that will potentially be called business experience.
Now, technologies have paced both in the communication as well as digital space. Social media is omnipresent and has become a key platform for both—experience and opinion.
Customer expectations are rising, and the young generation is bringing in newer aptitudes and attitudes. Here are the best customer experience trends you shouldn’t miss on:
Trends in customer experience
In today’s hyper-competitive marketplace, understanding trends is crucial as businesses augment capabilities for today and tomorrow.
Trends are not just indicators; they are guide rails for keeping up with the expectations of the customer. They make your users feel valued.
Put simply, trends are essential for strategic and tactical planning within businesses as they constantly endeavour you to stay ahead and stay unique.
General trends
Investments made by businesses in customer service are bearing results. They seem to be meeting and even exceeding the expectations of customers.
Customer expectations from service departments are increasing with each passing year. Consequently, the focus of companies is expanding on customer service, changing the way they serve their customers.
Customers expect their feedback should drive better actions from businesses.
Companies have begun to measure their engagement with customers.
Speed and effectiveness are seen as critical components to service engagements by customers.
Trends that impact customer service
Customers remember a friendly customer service representative and are likely to remain with the brands that offer pleasant experiences. They prefer to interact with a knowledgeable agent who can handle and resolve issues quickly.
Customers often make repeat purchases after they experience a good service engagement.
Customers read positive reviews and are likely to be impacted positively.
Customers are willing to pay more when buying from businesses with a higher reputation for service engagements.
Trends in demographics–the millennial generation
The younger generation has higher expectations with the brands, and they prefer to interact online to fulfil those expectations.
Significant use of mobile phones and social media. For this group, brand interaction is moving to social media.
Young customers are more likely to share their opinion on brands and services with others.
Trends in customer communication
Both customers and businesses today prefer mobile phones for communication as opposed to computers. Mobility is the key.
Customers’ preference for communication through email or social media is increasing. Acknowledgement of every outreach to a company is critical.
Phone support is on the decline. However, in complex situations, customers prefer solutions via a friendly customer service agent. In-person interactions are becoming rare.
Mobile friendly support is becoming essential for young customers.
Trends in social media for support
Social media is becoming primary communication for a larger section of customers, especially the young. Older customers still rely on traditional channels.
Customers expect quick responses on social media platforms, preferably within an hour. Under no circumstances later than one day.
With the increased prevalence and use of social media, positive reviews have become crucial in customers’ decision-making. Hence, negative reviews need to be quickly addressed by the businesses.
Trends in self-service
Acceptance of self-service is increasing. Portals and mobile apps for self-service are enabled. However, the quality of content still leaves customers frustrated at times as they cannot use the information effectively.
Information for self-service is increasingly being searched online, especially by the young.
With fine-tuned chatbots, customers are becoming comfortable with automation. Customers needing to speak to an agent find reaching him increasingly difficult with large scale deployment of automation in customer service.
Trends in customer loyalty
Customer trust is becoming directly proportional to customer service and has arguably become the dominant factor in brand choice and loyalty to it.
Customers are willing to change a brand for lack of unique and custom treatment from businesses. They value experiences where an agent knows who they are and has insights into previous engagements.
Proactive outreach by businesses for feedback and suggestions is being seen as a welcome development by customers and they value it.
Just one poor experience is sufficient for customers to switch brands.
The trends illustrated above are likely to accelerate in the coming decade. The recent pandemic has already shaken up everything around us—from how we work, communicate, transact, buy and sell. It has even influenced our lives and lifestyles.
Therefore, it would not be an exaggeration to call these changes revolutionary as against evolutionary. We are living in a new normal, and this is likely to remain for a long time.
In simpler terms, both consumer behaviour and business responses are changing to align with the new normal. The consumer wants, aspirations, and expectations are rapidly evolving, and businesses are tactically and strategically making a quantum change to serve their customers better. They are looking at elevating the game with their strategies.
In the new normal and beyond, it is not just a customer service (CS) or customer experience (CX) that can make you stand out of the noise.
The need is to proactively and aggressively relook at the customers’ changing needs and adapt strategies to fulfil them. Leading companies have already begun designing and reorienting processes that can deliver an experience that is unparalleled, exemplary and exceptional.
The green shoots are already visible. CX, as ownership, is moving up from the Marketing Head or Operations Head to the office of the CEO. Additionally, the Board of Directors of various organisations have started putting a key focus on this piece.
The obvious outcome includes a better operational structure of companies to align with the evolving needs of the customers. Eventually, everything that the company will do will have a line of sight to the experiential approach. CX will evolve from priority to obsession. The focus, moving ahead, will be to have the customer experience for the business as a whole.
The way businesses communicate and engage with their customers is set to change. And the successful embodiment of this approach will be the differentiator over the next decade, maybe even earlier.
What is driving this evolution?
Focus on CX has been going on for a while. However, there are potential gaps in the current approach to CX in the new normal. And these become the reasons for evolution.
Some of these factors include:
Evolution of consumer behaviour: Expectations of consumers are hitting a broader spectrum. Moving ahead, they are more likely to compare their experiences across business categories and not just the products and services offered.
Put simply, if a customer has an experience better than their expectations with one brand, it becomes a benchmark for them. Any other brand not living up to this benchmark may not be good enough.
Maturity of CX: The basics of CX have matured over the last few years. Now, more businesses know what they need to do to grab their consumer’s attention and how to do it. But the problem is, all of them take the same approach.
Therefore, it results in similar experiences for the customers.
Businesses need to keep their customers at the centre of all processes and identify the different areas of development that their CX strategy requires.
Alignment with social priorities: Looking at the next few years, a great product at a reasonable price with a stellar experience will not be sufficient.
Consumer aspirations and attitudes are evolving, especially the young, who identify themselves with a purpose in life. It points towards an opportunity.
The ‘extra’ to graduate to an extraordinary experience for consumers can come from businesses standing up for a purpose. And therein can lay an alignment at a deeper, emotional level.
Conclusion
Consumers are evolving, and so are their attitudes and aspirations. Coupled with this, the new normal has brought in more contemporary ways of how consumers interact and communicate.
The young have especially started to align to a deeper purpose for existence and relationships. And, businesses have begun to realise the diminishing returns to their further investments in CX.
Therein, possibly, are the pointers to the next evolution, or shall we say revolution, in customer experience.
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