Customer experience includes any aspect of a business that affects customer feelings. Customer experience prioritizes the relationship with the customer, regardless of the interaction length or past or prospective purchases.
The way customers perceive and interact with a brand throughout their journey, from discovering products to making purchases and becoming loyal customers, is known as the customer experience. This experience can range from a simple purchase to a complex conversation with customer service. A positive or negative interaction with a brand can have a significant
The customer is the brand’s lifeblood, and the modern customer has high expectations for interacting with your company. Transforming your customer service into a company-wide customer experience culture is essential to delivering a CX strategy that meets and exceeds expectations, creating life-long brand advocates.
Customer Experience Trends in 2024
At the outset of 2022, a post-pandemic global economic recovery effort was gaining momentum, and supply chain issues were beginning to ease. Despite a promising start to the year, the past twelve months have been turbulent for many organizations. International conflict, inflation, and the continued ripple effects of the pandemic have placed burdens across nearly every industry. Inflation and layoffs loom for many as companies brace for economic downturns.
As a result, buyers are tightening their budgets and becoming more cautious about spending. For brands looking to emerge from this wartime period as successful, providing connected service that scales and delights will be essential.
We believe the following five trends will underpin success in 2024 and beyond:
- Efficiency Matters
- Messaging… the New Default Support Channel
- Conversations as Meaningful Experiences
- Empathetic Personalization
- Courting the Conscious Consumer
Ready for a CX solution that will enable you to underpin success in 2023? We help businesses of all sizes connect with customers as they do with family and friends on the channels of their choice by delivering a messaging-first experience that builds trust and strengthens customer loyalty. Download our CX trends ebook today and unpack the tips and tricks to transform your organization.
Customer Experience Trends in 2024
Keeping up with what’s new in customer service trends can be difficult when trends emerge regularly. However, we can help you navigate through the trenches and understand the ones that matter most. Follow our blog or hit the links below to jump to the 2022 customer service trends that appeal to you most:
- Embracing Digital Technology
- Proactive Support
- Instant Gratification
- Context is Key
The world of customer experience is ever-evolving, according to the top customer experience podcasts. New trends that emerge quickly become baseline expectations for customers. Currently, we’re seeing a rise in the use of SMS, social media messaging, and live chat support. Eighty-one percent of CX organizations report that reducing wait times is a critical priority within the next three years.
These four emerging trends share the opportunity to meet customers where they are while saving money and freeing time for your customers and agents. Learn more about these experience trends in our guide for the future of customer engagement.
- Embracing Digital Technology
Embracing digital technology is critical to creating the best experience for your customers. Today’s customer expects business to be available across all communication channels (the web, social media, phone, email, and text), with text messaging, according to our data, being the most frequently checked and responded to channel, especially among younger customers.
This omnichannel strategy (when businesses are open to communicating across multiple platforms) also helps to build a relationship with the customer through brand awareness and maintaining customer loyalty. With 64% of consumers reporting they enjoy talking to customer service via the same channels they communicate with family and friends, expanding your communication methods to SMS and social media cannot be underestimated.
We all experimented more with digital channels during the pandemic, and that’s not going to go back to where it was before the pandemic. There will be increased customer expectations that your business can service them both in person and digitally.
-MATT IDEMA,
VP OF BUSINESS MESSAGING, META
- Proactive Support
As mentioned, customers don’t want to be treated like a task checked off a company’s list. Suppose they’ve reached out to a business with a question or issue. In that case, they expect that line of communication to remain open and to be remembered, even after the initial conversation has ended. For example, when a customer reaches out to a business with an issue, it takes time, energy, and patience to explain the situation. Ideally, the company would employ effective probing questions in a call center environment to understand the customer’s situation thoroughly and provide tailored solutions. This can help the customer feel heard and valued, making it more likely they’ll return for future interactions. Seventy-three percent of consumers appreciate follow-up after their problem is solved. Perhaps if the company in this scenario had followed up after the initial interaction, the customer wouldn’t have even had to initiate the second conversation, saving everyone time.
- Instant Gratification
A significant shift in the evolution of customer service is the modern customer’s expectation of instant gratification. Gone are the days when the average person was expected to wait in long lines, hold on the phone, or receive a delivery longer than a few days after placing their order.
Customers expect a convenient and speedy response to their questions, with nearly half expecting customer service representatives to respond in less than four hours. However, the average response time for customer support teams is over 12 hours. By implementing response automation through your customer experience software, businesses can more easily resolve this disconnect and work toward delivering higher customer satisfaction rates and an overall better customer experience.
4. Context is Key
Creating personalized experiences for consumers is yesterday’s news. Leading brands have been personalizing online shopping experiences for many years, with features like customized product recommendations based on past purchases.
People need to be understood as individuals. Brands must remember that consumers are people, too, and need to be treated as such. Building customer relationships provides value for the brand, the business, and the customer buying. Context is critical, and 2022 will be all about harnessing data to enrich customer interactions.
Consider that 84% of consumers get frustrated when they repeat information to an agent. The modern support experience, for many brands, focuses so much on listening but forgets to listen to consumer preferences and commit them to memory. This is achievable by collating a single timeline view of all the customer’s interactions with the brand to understand them individually and foster a relationship, not just one-off interactions.
What Did We Know? Customer Experience Trends of 2021
2020 brought massive changes to the business world and impacted customer service and operations. Next year will undoubtedly bring even more fascinating developments.
We predicted five emerging customer experience trends will shape customer experience in 2021.
- 1. Personalized Customer Service With AI
- 2. Chatbots
- 3. Virtual Assistants
- 4. Connecting Data to the Customer Experience
- 5. Customer Service Goes Remote
Looking Back at Customer Experience Trends in 2022
Powerhouses like the Kustomer CRM make creating a cohesive, convenient customer experience more accessible than ever. Let’s discuss some of our favorite ways to increase efficiency and satisfaction throughout the customer journey.
- Hyper-Personalization
According to a Kustomer survey of 2,000 Americans, 67% of consumers expect retailers to know them and personalize how they interact. The steps to implementing this customization are simple: know your customers, meet them where they are, and use AI to interact more intelligently. An actual CX strategy should ensure that every touchpoint with every customer should be rooted in empathy and respect. In a world of chatbots and dynamic data, personalization must be strategic. Always avoid robotic and ingenuine interactions that can leave customers feeling undervalued.
- Omnichannel Support
Omnichannel support provides consistent service across communication channels that allow one conversation to start where the other ends, no matter what channel a customer or agent is on (not to be confused with multichannel support). 79% of consumers report getting frustrated when they can’t contact customer service through their preferred medium or platform.
- Proactive Support
Proactive support allows brands to solve issues before customers can reach out. Proactive customer support aims to avoid problems by contacting customers, offering self-learning resources, and being honest when something goes wrong.
- Increased Availability
Like omnichannel support, establishing a culture of increased availability to your customers can reap countless rewards. This applies to platform and time availability. No matter the location or time that a customer needs help, there should always be an option for them. Though seemingly straightforward, this tactic can make all the difference in your CX strategy.
- Self-Service Tools
Self-service tools have become so popular with customers that recent research shows that 88% of consumers now expect brands to offer at least one self-service option. Another convenient customer experience tactic is self-service tools, which allow customers to find the information and solutions they need without contacting the company. Self-service empowers customers to find answers, how-to tutorials, and other support content without interacting with agents.
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Delivering exceptional customer service requires companies to empower their team with the tools they need to succeed. Feel free to request a free 14-day trial and start creating e-commerce stellar customer experiences today.
