Customer experience is constantly on the climb for change and betterment. A few years back, the customer experience was only a “nice-to-have” feature for companies. But now, personalized customer experience has become a mandatory feature for a company to stand out.
Machine-learning and artificial intelligence, the technologies enabling the trend for personalized customer experience are bound to develop rapidly over the next five years. Moreover, customer behavior and expectations have been evolving over the years and the way customers interact with businesses will look way different by 2022.
If you own a business, then you need to act quickly to lay the foundation for technologies that would revolutionize the customer experience journey in the coming years. We provide you a list of customer experience strategies that, analysts all over the world predict, will rise in importance.
Customer Experience Trends
1. Sensors and smart device will play a large role in collecting feedbacks from customers
Over the years, electronic devices have become part and parcel of our lives. And they are getting smarter day-by-day. Be ut the TVs, wearable, or your phones, every day new devices are coming into the market with advanced features. These devices are now capable of connecting with each other and collecting feedback on the world around them with the help of sensors. The feedback collated is then used to initiate action.
These devices house millions of data and businesses have discovered an opportunity to gain actionable insights from these data. They are able to more clearly understand and influence their customers’ behavior. According to a survey, customer interactions via connected devices is expected to increase 20x by 2022.
Sensors can also help brands and retailers in shipping and logistics. Here, companies can track and alert customers of the whereabouts of their packages in real-time with the use of sensors. This provides an added advantage as it increases trust as well enables brands to float personalized offers. By the time the shipment reaches the customer, they may have ordered a complimentary product.
2. Chatbots will take over the customer service
With the development of artificial intelligence, chatbots have been equipped with the ability to answer customer queries. They are bound to get more efficient and it is expected that by 2022, chatbots and virtual assistants would gain an 80% accuracy rate.
Incorporation of chatbots into your customer service would take a load off of support agents’ shoulders. The best way to implement a chatbot is to have the chatbot take over the starting part of the conversation which involves categorizing the type of issue and understanding the problem. Post that your support agent can take over to use intuition or complex problem-solving and derive at an answer. Chatbots can be very efficient for small textbook problems.
3. Self-service is the new black
Companies in 2017 have witnessed that customers go for self-service more often than requesting help from a human support agent. A major contributing factor for this trend has been the rise in chatbots.
More the coming years, FAQ pages, help centers, and other self-serve knowledge bases will be favored by customers as well as brands. This method entails that customers receive answers to their questions in very less time, eliminating the need to wait in line to talk to a support executive, thus enhancing the overall customer experience. New information will get added to the customer’s knowledge base as more and more customers choose to interact with a chatbot or a self-service system making the system smarter each passing day.
4. Send quick texts is the new social
Millennials today are famous for ignoring phone calls and opting for quick messages instead. Messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, WeChat, etc. have gained enormous momentum in recent years. It is expected that by 2019, the frequency of customer support requests through consumer messaging will increase and will take over the current social media norm.
And businesses ensuring that their customers are able to utilize the customer messaging platforms will see happier customers and in turn better sales. The use of messaging apps offers numerous advantages such as an unrestricted communication option for customers, no or minimal charges unlike SMS options, and the option to reach out and solve the issues privately. This encourages customers to provide sensitive information for an efficient resolvement of their issues.
If as a business you are yet to lay the foundation for these technologies, then it’s high time that you do so. Let us know the other technological strategies that you might have implemented in your company in the comments.
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