Customer Experience Trends in 2015: Predictions and How You Can Leverage Them
Customer Experience Trends in 2015: Predictions and How You Can Leverage Them
During 2015 customer experience became a
core focus of CIOs and marketing professionals for gaining and retaining
customers for businesses. It gained traction because of a fundamental shift in
consumer expectations as they engaged with brands online through
multiple-channels and across multiple devices.
As 2015 draws to a close, it’s time to look
back on the challenges customer experience posed for customer-centric companies,
look at insights, draw conclusion, and forecast the trends that companies must work-through
and integrate into their business strategies during 2016.
Below I will discuss the top six trends in
customer experience that I think should become the cornerstone of business
strategies for every customer-centric company.
1. Customer Expectations Will Only Increase
As social interactivity increases, brands
are witnessing a change in customer service expectations from their users. According
to Zendesk, 87%
of the customers believe that brands need to invest more in creating seamless
customer experiences.
Customers are expecting practically 24/7
service from their brands. They want to have meaningful conversations with the
agents and have shown a strong disliking when their communications are
structured and overly scripted. As a result, customers want to engage in conversations
from customer service agents who:
·
Are well-versed in common
problems,
·
Can readily identify the problems
and issues that the customer has, and
·
Can offer personalized answers
to their queries in the shortest time possible
This is a call for an omni-channel support
where the brands can readily access the interaction/visit history of the
customer in real-time, and so are able to address their queries and resolve
their problems across a wide range of devices (mobile to desktop) and through multiple
communication channels (email, chat, social, etc.).
Understanding the new expectations of
customers is crucial for creating a more streamlined and relevant customer
experience. This is because social media has empowered customers. It’s easier
for them to voice out their opinions, if not to the service agent, then to your
existing customer based and the other target audience through social media.
Hence, the only way to create the right
customer experience is to consistently remain abreast of their qualitative
feedback (instead of the normal star-rated quantitative feedbacks) and
progressively improve the experience.
2. Customer Experience Management will See Greater
Investments
As customer experience becomes the defining
differentiator in the online space, companies will invest in more robust tools
and technologies, and professionals to enable a better, more streamlined, omni
channel experience for their customers. In a phrase, they will increase their
investments in customer experience management (CEM).
According to Deloitte, 63%
of the organizations are investing in better customer experience through contact centers. Additionally, the 2014
Gartner report found that top marketers were focused on investing in a more
streamlined customer experience, balancing their budget between retaining
customers and gaining new ones.
This is because better Customer Experience
Management (CEM) allows companies to differentiate themselves, establish brand
value, and gain a market competitive edge. The Forrester Customer Index
has shown a strong co-relation between performance gains and loss between
customer-centric companies (43% gain) and those who neglected customer
experience (33.9% decrease).
Hence, in 2016 as well, companies will
invest heavily in customer experience to improve their customer satisfaction,
loyalty, and retention rates. As the market landscape becomes more dynamic,
customer retention will become volatile and retention strategies will heavily
depend on creating a streamlined customer experience.
This will directly affect the professional niche
for customer experience professionals who will be required to lead new customer
experience strategies. Google Trends reports show a clear rise in the demand
for customer experience professionals
Google Trends: Dramatic
increase in customer experience jobs
This will be followed by an increase in
search for qualified professionals for building, consulting, leading customer
experience teams and the right set of technologies dedicated to improving
customer experience.
Hence, companies will be heavily investing
in hiring and retaining customer experience professionals, and deploying the
technologies needed to streamline their efforts.
3. One-to-One, Personalized, Cross-Channel Interactions
Will Gain Prominence
83%
of online customers need some form of support in successfully completing
their purchase. Hence, creating cross-channel communication and personalized
experience for customers has been the cornerstone of CEM for several years now.
Although companies have tried and managed to deliver a multi-channel customer
support across Chat, web, mobile, and SMS, however, these channels are not
integrated, and do not effectively share customer data across the channels.
As a result, they create separate
experiences — sending the customer and the service agent to square one whenever
the customer changes the channel.
For instance, a customer who has already
stated and explained her/his problem through one channel (e.g. email or chat)
often has to restate and explain the problem when they shift to another channel
(e.g. social or call). This is because the customer’s data is not collected
centrally nor available to the service agent in real time.
Hence, if a customer has been engaging with
company’s content for a specific topic and turns to social media for an answer,
the only way the support team can effectively respond to their query is if they
can promptly bring customer data and use it to address their query
individually.
Additionally, these channels do not offer a
path for escalation to voice channel. As a result, companies are realizing the
trend and moving towards “call-back” functionality where customers who want to
avoid waiting and holding on call. A survey
by SoftwareAdvice found that 63.1% customers preferred a callback in case
of longer hold times.
Investing in call-back-functionality makes
perfect business sense as they work on two fronts:
·
Customer satisfaction — Customers feel
respected and happy for getting their time back
·
Business savings — Reducing customer
bounce because of waiting times saves considerable money for companies by
reducing wastage of precious employee hours.
Software device Survey:
Customers prefer callback functionality
Hence, in 2016 companies will continue to
strive to personalize communications and create one-to-one relationships with
their customers across their preferred communication channels through
technology and tailor the experiences to their individual needs.
4. Companies Will Merge Existing Marketing Technology With
Customer Experience Technologies
A better customer experience requires that
existing marketing automation and CRM tools, and CEM systems and tools can
easily share data. This is only possible when marketing can be merged with new
CEM platforms and tools. This is essential so that marketing efforts can are
based on customer experience requirements instead of the other way around.
Companies have been searching for creating
a holistic solution where Customer Experience Management (CEM) systems and performance
metric can be tied to existing marketing tools and technologies currently being
used by the companies.
Hence, during 2016, we will see companies
finding and leveraging new integrate-able CEM technologies and tools to address
various facets of customer experience.
5. Tracking and Measuring ROI on Customer Experience
Management (CEM) Investments Will Gain Prominence
The Temkin
group asked thousands of customers to rate different companies for their
Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS is a measure of how willing a company’s customers
are in recommending the company’s products/service to others. The score’s range
is between -100 and +100.
The survey reported that a strong
correlation existed between customer experience and customer loyalty factors
such recommending the company to others, overlooking mistakes,
repurchasing/rehiring, and trying new offerings from the brand. The report
differentiated between ‘detractors’ (unhappy customers that damage brand
reputation) and ‘promoters’ (satisfied customers that evangelized the brand).
Companies need to assess the ROI their
investments in customer experience are garnering by consistently tracking and
measuring different metrics. Prominent KPIs include the impact they have on
their NPS, the number of repurchases/rehires from customers, and the
correlation between quantitative and qualitative feedback given by users.
6. Companies will Prioritize Mobile-First Policies
Mobile customer experience has become a
core concern for successful companies. According to
Vision critical, 84% of CIOs in customer-centric companies are focused on
improving customer experience on mobile. They are prioritizing mobile
experiences to cater the rise of smartphone devices and the increasing reliance
of millenials on their mobiles for searching for information online.
Hence, we will see the trends towards
mobile-first policy, i.e. working on the user experience on mobile first and
then moving towards creating experiences for bigger screens. A clear inversion
of the traditional desktop-first policy.
According to Google and ComScore, mobile
search has overtaken searches from desktop. This clearly indicates a
dramatic shift in customer preferences. Mobile offers immediacy in results, and
unless companies adapt to these changes, they risk losing customers because of
their indifference to their expectations.
Hence, a shift towards mobile-first will
trend in the coming year. Companies will start with designing web experiences
and marketing communications for mobile first (which allows them to better
personalize their content for the individual) and moved outwards to bigger
screens (tablets, laptops, desktops, etc.).
How Prepared Are You?
Customer experience management (CEM) has
already become a core element of business strategy. Given the competitive
market dynamics, competition, and changing consumer behavior, remaining abreast
of evolving customer expectations is crucial to the success of your company.
By increasing, improving, and investing in
customer experience you will not only increase customer satisfaction, but win
new business, grow and retain customers, gain competitive advantage, and
sustain your business’s growth in the long-run.
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