One of the reasons for this delay is that businesses are still unsure how the customer experience sector is moving, and the benefit is not tangible. This uncertainty becomes even more complicated when several new concepts and technologies are coming into the picture every passing day.
In this article, we will look into the customer experience trends that are going to become widespread in 2022 and will only get stronger in the time to come. But before we head there, let us look into the things that are not going to change in the customer experience domain anytime soon. The pandemic has also influenced some of these trends, accelerating customer support speed in specific industries.
The Importance of Customer Experience
The need of customer experience across domains is not going to die off any time soon. As the world evolves, people will keep looking for personalized services, delivered to them in real-time and across a variety of channels.
1. Use of Big Data:
In the past few years, we have been seeing big data coming to the forefront in the customer experience space. The trend is only going to grow in the time to come with more unstructured data coming in with social media integrations. More and more businesses will be seen incorporating the technology to make informed strategies.
2. Prevalence of Omni-channel Experience:
The time that went by saw omnichannel experiences coming to the forefront. Customers were seen connecting with businesses from different platforms — website, social media, email, SMS, telephony contact, etc.
Now that we have looked into the tools and practices that are not going to change in the domain, let us now look into the factors or elements that will either get added in the sector or will see advancements happening in them.
The Top Customer Experience Trends 2022
1. CX will become AI-driven:
Businesses will incorporate Artificial Intelligence to its entirety for enriching customer experience. Intelligently devised chatbots will be added in the business processes for making businesses 24*7 working entities.
The role of AI will be injected beyond simply keeping the visitors hooked until the human representative is online. It will extend to the technology aligning the call with the right representative depending on the context. And why just align calls? AI today can handle calls as well. 2022 will see more and more voice bots handling calls with an exceeding level of complexities. AI will also double up as Agent assistant and help them in responding to customer queries and appropriate disposition.
2. Local Agents will rise:
When it comes to business, the world has become one place. The one-world phenomenon that we operate in has led to the need for the agents to be present at all times. This, in turn, will see the rise of remote agents and distributed team in the coming time. We predict investment in such distributed, remote agent system will increase and will make a business omnipresent in real-time, when the customers need them.
3. Massive Digital Transformations:
As per the customer experience’s future prediction, a variety of services will undergo complete digital transformation by next year. We already see businesses trying to reduce the gap in experience between their offline stores and online presence. Businesses will aim at measurement of digitalization effectiveness at different stages of the customer journey. For businesses to be in trend, they will have to draw and map the digital journey of their customers, and draw parallels between conversations happening between one channel and another. This would mean the replacement of cold calls with social selling, reaching out to the customers through categorical email marketing, along with offering seamless multi-channel, real-time experience.
4. Video enabled Customer Interaction:
Even though the boomer generation is on the path of exiting the workforce, their slight dependency on looking at people when seeking help, stays.
Taking this forward, the time to come will see businesses incorporating video services to more and more of the channels they use. This would enable the customers to associate a face with the brand and get solutions to their issues sooner. More than that many services require to show artefacts to the agent or vice versa like KYC process, insurance claim or even remote diagnostics. This brings Video interaction at the forefront.
5. Customers will not take outdated processes and documentation easily:
The millennial generation is used to finding solutions themselves, without taking help from a company’s customer support team. Noting that, self service support will be on the rise. An extension of this spurt in self-service requirement will be the need on the company’s side to keep the help guides and support details updated with all the new content and information.
6. Global-Local:
Today it is a good practice to deliver customer experience in the language of the customer. With brands aiming to become global-local or Glocal as it is commonly called, we predict this trend will gain more importance. The year 2022 might see more businesses offering multi-lingual support that will give rise to the need of technological advancement in that direction.
It will become important for agents to talk to customers in the language that they understand, while showing them through their tone and action that they care for them.
7. A Common Brand Voice:
The brand voice will have to be the same across platforms. Businesses will have to prepare for customers to come in from a range of different areas — social media, website, through emails or calls, etc.
On that front, it will be important to have a common brand voice. When we talk about brand voice, we mean the tone, the content updation, and the response time. The crux is that your customers should get a common friction-less experience throughout platforms.
8. Rise of IoT:
According to Gartner’s report, 20 million ‘things’ are going to be connected to the internet by 2020. However, in 2022 we are one step closer to this possibility. The global pandemic and the need for social distancing have triggered innovations that elevate existing customer service quality.
This will be a fascinating phenomenon when customers become things. Providing customer service to IoT-enabled devices will be an entirely new dimension that will become visible where proactive maintenance or warranty will be gaining traction.
Conclusion
So, while the customer experience trends mentioned above are gaining visibility, these are likely to become mainstream in 2022. They are also a sign of how massively important the customer experience sector is today and how it would be a mistake not to pay attention to them, going forward.
As you embrace these trends for your business, you are in the journey of creating happy customers around you. Should you need to discuss on these trends please put your comments below or contact us on contact@c-zentrix.com
