"Customer is the king" is an age-old mantra for providing exceptional customer service along with premium-quality products and services to the end users.
Many brands believe that their products will be enough to build a loyal customer base, but in today's highly competitive market exceptional customer experience (CX) is critical.
People usually have a varied understanding of what CX means based on the type of marketing techniques they use or the industry they belong.
Whether you're a traditional marketer or a digitally savvy marketer, it's clear that customer experience has emerged as one of the most important factors in differentiating a company from its competitors.
Nasdaq reports that by 2040, 95% of all retail transactions will happen online. Given that this shift in customer purchasing habits is already well underway, it's not surprising that improved customer experience has become the differentiating factor between a successful and average business. Brands are under more pressure than ever to provide buyers with satisfying, hassle-free, and memorable customer experiences.
Last year has been eventful; the world has changed dramatically since the global epidemic. New expectations and demand have been emerging and with that new strategies to meet those needs. As the new year begins, we can assess and forecast some of the customer experience trends that will dominate the 2023.
With rising product costs and a high inflation rate, brands must make drastic changes to face the current challenges. Despite the economic recession, more than 65% of businesses expect to raise CX expenditure by an average of 24% in 2023.
Understanding your customers and being willing, ready, and able to adjust and evolve has never been more important. On that note, let's look at some customer experience trends to watch in 2023!
What is customer experience?
Gartner defines customer experience as the perceptions, impressions, and associated emotions that a customer has due to one-time or repeated interaction with a brand's employees, systems, channels, products, or services.
The customer experience is more than just a set of activities. It emphasizes emotions. What do your existing and potential customers think about your brand? Every time a consumer interacts with your brand, you have the opportunity to strengthen or weaken their opinion of you.
As a result, critical decisions must be made at each touchpoint in the customer journey. The outcomes of those decisions have an impact on the success of your brand.
Why does customer experience (CX) matter?
Statistics can help us to understand the real impact of a good or bad customer experience:
According to Zendesk, more than 80% of customers believe a favorable experience would influence a choice to make a future purchase.
Whereas 61% claim a single unpleasant experience will immediately cause a relationship to be abandoned. This has increased by 22% over the previous year.
In fact, two negative encounters can cause 76% customer attrition.
More than two-thirds of clients demand personalization in every interaction.
Customer experience is viewed as the new battleground for competition by 89% of the brands studied by Gartner.
As products become increasingly commoditized, customers make decisions based on interactions with a brand rather than particular product features and functionalities. In other words, CX has emerged as the fundamental competitive differentiating factor.
Customers desire a personal connection with their favorite brands as well as recognition and respect. Brands must ensure that their customer experience strategies can provide personalized, pleasant interactions at every consumer touchpoint.
These interactions impact your customer's opinions of your brand Customer Experience (CX) is, therefore, essential for a brand's success and growth. Let's look at some customer experience trends 2023!
12 Customer experience trends
Understanding your customers, anticipating their needs, and being willing to change and adapt accordingly has never been more important. The customer experience is central to every brand's presence and success. Here are some of the most influential digital customer experience trends, according to industry experts.
1. Personalization
Customers now demand personalization so frequently that brands can no longer consider it just as an option. It is rapidly becoming the standard and has been shown to be profitable. For businesses that adopted personalization, revenues have risen by up to 15%.
Individualized customer experiences increase the likelihood that they will make a purchase. The information you have gathered about your consumers can help you personalize their experiences. Brands should create detailed personas for their customers, then use them to guide the content they offer with each one.
2. Self-service options
Modern customers are self-aware, digitally savvy, and have attention spans far shorter than in the past. As a result, when people have to wait a long time for their problems to be addressed, they become impatient.
According to data from Zendesk, 67% of consumers prefer self-service over interacting with a corporate professional. A study by Harvard Business Review shows that 81% of all consumers try to resolve their problems on their own before contacting a customer service professional.
These numbers unequivocally demonstrate that given the appropriate tools, customers would prefer to resolve a problem autonomously. Businesses can offer a better, round-the-clock customer experience and dramatically save operating expenses by offloading a sizable portion of customer support activities to AI-powered chatbots. With adoption rates averaging 40% and accelerated by the pandemic, most businesses have found chatbots revolutionary.
Brands can benefit significantly from investing in these technologies since they would give their customers the power to solve their own problems in the simplest way possible.
3. Predictive analytics
Brands now have access to far more customer data than ever before. Customers are open to sharing information if it benefits them better. Businesses that want to stay competitive and enhance their customers' experiences should increase their investment in predictive analytics.
Although traditional data-collection techniques, such as surveys, are valuable for businesses to measure and analyze customer satisfaction, they fail to address the diverse data needs of modern brands.
Brands can now use predictive analytics to get precise, impartial data on customer interactions. It serves as a more accurate indicator of customer happiness and experience. Using predictive analytics strengthened by AI to drive business choices can assist brands in meeting customers' requirements.
4. Data privacy
The importance of data privacy and the use of data by brands will increase drastically in 2023. GDPR and the California Privacy Act (which won't take effect until 2023) will significantly impact future data management practices for brands.
Customers are becoming increasingly concerned about how their data is being used as businesses collect and keep a lot of data. Governments from all across the world are attempting to enact laws to safeguard customer data.
Brands must keep up with new data privacy and protection laws and regulations. It is crucial to make sure your business is following the necessary guidelines. Companies can gain their clients' trust by being open with them, adhering to well-defined security guidelines, and implementing effective data security measures.
5. Phygital experiences
In 2023, phygital experiences that blend the real and digital worlds will reign supreme and penetrate new industries. Beyond only kiosks and applications, phygital reality will enable cutting-edge experiences that customers utilize to make expensive purchases like automobiles and homes.
Although the name "phygital" only recently became popular, the idea is not new. To offer an integrated omnichannel experience, phygital blurs the distinction between physical and digital channels. No longer are there distinct physical and digital strategies, but rather one physical and digital strategy that integrates the two to provide customers with a fully immersive experience wherever they buy.
6. Each experience will matter
The rise of consumer expenditure is anticipated to slow down in 2023. It is because most customers are already suffering the effects of inflation and an impending recession. As spending on unnecessary items declines, each experience will become more valuable. Therefore, future connections require brands to demonstrate empathy, honesty, transparent communication, and personalization.
7. Transparent communication
Businesses increasingly use transparency to set themselves apart from their competitors. Customers can better compare brands now that they have access to a lot of information. Customers often choose to go with the one that is upfront and honest about the transaction and the post-sale interactions.
Customers appreciate it when companies are open and honest about all aspects of their products and services. Customers prefer brands that embrace and own their authentic selves. To embrace genuine and transparent communication, brands must be able to answer questions like:
What's your pricing like?
Who are your competitors?
What challenges do your current customers face?
What's it like to work with you?
In addition, employees should be encouraged to practice empathy when dealing with customers. Customer service representatives should engage in understanding and empathetic conversations bolstered by digital platforms that track the customer's journey and ensure that each interaction is better than the previous one.
Customers want to talk to live agents, not robots. Thus, it is essential to establish human transparent and empathetic communication. Chat is an excellent method to communicate with customers, and Layerise provides exceptional chat facilities for our partner brands.
8. Online experiences and subscription models
Brands should reconsider interactive strategies to provide distinctive experiences tailored to digital media. Even a physical business can organize live online events that bring together customers and followers worldwide, eliminating geographic restrictions and reaching a much larger audience than ever before.
Offering subscription alternatives for your products or services can help brands retain customers and improve their perception of your business by converting one-time transactions into ongoing ones. Customers love the ease subscription models provide. They also help brands scale growth by gaining long-term knowledge of their customers through the data obtained over the subscription period.
9. Improved employee experience
Businesses with the happiest employees also have the most satisfied customers. It has been statistically demonstrated in a study by Glassdoor.
As a result, brands should focus on offering an enjoyable and engaging employee experience in the upcoming year while keeping in mind their well-being. It may significantly increase staff motivation, resulting in better results, products, customer interactions, and, ultimately, a better customer experience.
10. Immersive experiences will become more popular
Many industry experts predict that virtual and augmented reality will become mainstream. Customers already have access to various retail websites and services that allow them to view things in virtual or augmented reality.
Brands will implement technologies that allow customers to interact with products online. Customers will even be able to digitally test products on their virtual avatars to see how they would look. Beyond trying on clothes and makeup virtually, immersive experiences will also showcase items and companies and create virtual worlds centered on them.
11. Behavior-based information will become superior
According to Zoe Allen, CRO and Personalization Lead at Decathlon, companies should adopt a behavior-based strategy to future-proof personalization and prioritize the needs of their clients.
The way most businesses segment their customers online needs to be updated. To enhance the user experience for the typical user, brands need to go beyond demographics.
There is no such thing as an "average user," according to Zoe. Therefore, when segmenting an audience, brands should consider their behavior rather than their qualities. Businesses must delve deeply into their customers' preferences, influences, and particular life experiences. Because actions, not demographics, define who customers are.
12. Growth in proactive customer service
Proactive service is a step ahead of self-service by using technology and customer data to identify situations when a bit more support might be required. Using technology like in-app messaging to get in touch with the consumer before they ever inquire, brands can create an improved customer experience and reduce costs.
Brands should analyze customer journey data to identify points when customers are most likely to become stuck, impatient, or abandon the process altogether. These are the areas where proactive service can truly make a difference.
These were some customer experience trends brands need to know for 2023. The coming year brings new challenges and possibilities for brands. Brands can get ready to adapt and provide outstanding experiences in the new year and beyond by understanding client needs and emerging trends.
How can Layerise help provide exception CX?
Layerise helps brands seamlessly gather customer details and create a detailed customer profile that allows for personalized interaction between the brand and consumer.
By partnering with Layerise, you can boost customer experience and at the same time leverage data to create new selling opportunities. This means we are not only creating a wonderful experience for your loyal customers, but we are also creating new selling opportunities for you.
Book a demo with us today to learn more about how Layerise can help brands provide a state-of-the-art user experience.
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