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Six customer experience trends and how to embrace them
- Customer Touch Point
We know how much CX is on the minds of UK businesses right now – many of whom are struggling to meet a surge in online and telephone contact whilst many stores still remain closed under social distancing measures.
So, we’ve pulled together some of the latest statistics and insights, against which we have provided you with practical tips to help you embrace every single one …
Trend #1: Balance is key – tech can’t replace the human touch (not yet anyway)
Yes, automation is great, but some people still distrust chatbots, with human contact still crucial to the success of digital CX.
Top Tip: Consider how best to integrate digital with telephony for a more complete, and effortless, customer experience. We touch on this in more detail in our blog, Bridging the Gap between digital and telephony.
Trend #2 - The channel you choose affects the response
Age, in particular, influences the channel customers use to provide feedback and is influenced again depending on whether they are providing good or bad feedback.
Top Tip: Make sure you understand how age, and whether a customer has received a good or bad experience, affects the channel they use when asking them for feedback. Having an omni-channel strategy and tools in place ensures you can reach everyone equally.
Did you know that 80% of retail companies are now investing in omni-channel compared to 10% ten years? (Source: PwC)
Trend #3 - The absence of negative feedback does NOT mean customers are happy.
They’ve probably just chosen to go elsewhere. PwC states that 1 in 3 customers leave a brand after just one bad experience.
Top Tip: The right customer feedback strategy here is crucial. Know when to contact your customers and by what channel. Get in touch if you’d like help reviewing your feedback channels and strategy.
Trend #4 - Self-serve is on the rise
Research shows that 67% of consumers prefer self-service over speaking to a company representative (although we believe this to be for more basic enquiries and needs which you can read more about here). To cope with this growing demand, businesses are looking for AI powered solutions to help them.
Top Tip: Consider using tools like Dynamic FAQs which work by predicting queries from web behaviour, and directing online visitors to other channels such as chat, phone or email, with the contact agent then able to see the full FAQ journey the customer has taken. But don’t forget trend 1 and 2 above!
Trend #5 - Customer expectations for simplicity are at an all-time high
Whilst this was research conducted for B2B companies, we’re seeing the same trend across consumer brands.
Top Tip: We call this creating effortless customer experiences. Achieving this is down to several factors, all working well together: understanding what customers want, need and experience (customer feedback and customer journey mapping), and helping them to solve or answer queries quickly and easily – whether by phone, or with CX technology across online or chat.
Trend #6 - Success, effort and emotion affects customer loyalty
Out of all three, emotion had the biggest impact of all according to the ROI of Customer Experience, 2019, report from The Temkin Group.
Top Tip: Make sure you understand emotion in the customer journey and keep it centre-place of any CX programme. Our Engage to Influence methodology – a means of ensuring you put the customer centre-stage of your CX strategy – helps you to do just that.
If you need help with your customer experience strategy, get in touch with us here.
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Customer Touch Point
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