With the pandemic wreaking havoc everywhere, organizations experienced some major transformations across 2020–21. Come 2022, businesses continue to evolve to keep up with the market dynamics. Here, the aim is obviously to provide a better customer experience and solidify brand loyalty.
In this pandemic-hit world, businesses must, therefore, be aware of the major CX trends to thrive, and not just survive.
When it comes to keeping customers happy, what should companies watch out for?
Let us take a look at the top 10 CX trends for 2022:
1. Emphasis on online customer experience
Businesses should add more channels to enhance customer experience all across the digital landscape. This is because online customer interactions are here to stay, and consumer expectations will certainly soar to newer heights. According to Forrester, in 2021 digital consumer service interactions were likely to increase by 40%.
2. Delivering security and trust
Companies need to focus on delivering a customer experience that cultivates faith and confidence in consumers. The outbreak of the pandemic has dealt a hard blow to customers’ trust, which prompts them to be more inclined towards brands that are more humane and can make them feel safe. For instance, e-commerce giant Amazon restricted the “cash on delivery” feature to minimize human contact.
3. Rise of the “touchless” interface
As a response to the pandemic, “touchless” interfaces or “zero UI” will gain swift popularity, just like the sudden switch to “contactless delivery” which is now mainstream. User interfaces that operate on voice commands and gestures will now gain greater acceptance. So companies need to innovate, improvise and scale up on these touchless interfaces, using the latest technologies.
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4. Highly refined personalization
In 2022, customer experience will solely be about individual attention and humanity. Organizations will be using more AI and Natural Language Processing to attain superior levels of understanding through bots, which deliver highly personalized customer interactions.
5. Consumer emotion analytics
The past two years have been an emotional rollercoaster for people globally, which naturally reflected on their decisions and online activities. From 2022 onwards, companies will be looking forward to understanding consumer emotions better. According to Forrester, 10% of the budget for customer intelligence will be dedicated to emotion analytics that will empower companies to predict market trends based on insights from customer emotions.
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6. Readiness to experiment
Estimates say that one out of ten adults will be more open to experimenting with new online experiences, like virtual reality or augmented reality. Companies will want to deliver a more engaging customer experience that delves into creativity and experiments. However, to strike the right chords, they must make sure that the experience remains authentic.
7. Customer service automation
Automating routine and repetitive service requests using self-service chatbots will allow more time to deliver empathy that customers look forward to. Automation will also allow organizations to better handle customers who proactively seek a human agent to understand their problems and offer personalized solutions.
8. Adopting a hybrid business model
In 2022, businesses are gearing up to tackle emergencies and unprecedented situations by adopting a hybrid business model. A hybrid model allows a business to function both online and offline, depending on the need of the hour. It will ensure that the overall customer experience remains intact.
9. Emergency response readiness
Businesses are resorting to technologies like Machine Learning and AI to ascertain and prioritize emergency customer requests. For instance, e-commerce platforms prioritized ration and medicine deliveries over other products during the pandemic.
10. Quantifying customer satisfaction
From 2022, organizations will finally analyze and apply CX metrics to measure customer satisfaction. Apart from existing metrics like CSAT and NPS, innovative ones like Customer Journey Tracking (CJT) will come into force. Newer metrics will help businesses gain clearer insights into consumer satisfaction.
This article was first published by SID Global Solutions.