In 2019, as predicted, customer experience has become one of the crucial business strategies for leading brands.
Customer experience is the new battleground for leading organizations worldwide. It helps in differentiating the brand from one another. As per research by Salesforce, almost 75% of the consumers want a consistent experience wherever they are engaging, be it in-person, social networks, phone, or online.
It also has been found that almost 86% of the buyers are willing to pay extra for rich customer experience.
In the age where there are high consumer expectations, and organizations work day-and-night to provide competitive services to their customers, the positive experience which a specific customer goes through while purchasing the product or asking the troubleshooting service, adds up to the credibility of an organization.
In 2019, customer experience has already become one of the crucial business strategies for leading brands. Companies have realized that nobody owns the customer experience. Providing quality service to the customer should be the only focus of every business, which needs complete involvement of all the employees in an organization.
For example, Amazon’s secret to success is, all the employees follow a customer-centric approach. The organization understands that when customers are happy with the service, they return back for more.
All said, let’s discuss what the future holds for customer experience? For example, in 2020.
There are 7 customer experience predictions which will shape CX in the upcoming year:
Video analytics (the wow factor)
Video analytics will help in analyzing the facial expressions of the customer. A simple analysis of the facial expressions and tracking eyeball can help in understanding whether the customer is satisfied with the product on the shelf. It can entirely change the paradigm of the shopping experience.
Check the below video from Cisco to have a better idea:
Involving all the employees
As per a report, almost 4 out of the 10 mature companies believe themselves as the customer-centric companies.
It means they give high priority to their customers and make them the center of every action they execute.
In fact, 2020 might witness employees of the majority of the organizations to be involved in the entire customer experience process. When there is a complete dedication from all the employees to provide the best customer experience, it becomes a cakewalk for organizations.
Call center software for the small business
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has progressed by leaps and bounds, which is not used for simply collecting the data but predicting the outcome based on the data. AI is being developed to mimic the cognitive functions of the human being. Companies are utilizing them in different roles to improve productivity, such as handling customer queries in the customer service department and others. When you resolve the customer queries and handle the issues effectively, it automatically helps in good customer experience.
System-of-records (SoR)
Consolidating the crucial information of customer personas, service history, sales, and product details facilitates a 360-degree view of the customer thus providing better CX. System of records or records management improves the response time, facilitates in better decision making, helps in effective retrieval of records, access to the crucial data, and preserves vital information of the customer.
Amazon Connect, which is a cloud-based contact center for delivering better customer service, helps to integrate data from S3 and the EC2 instances, providing a complete 360-degree view.
Identifying the customer’s milestone
You need to identify the customer’s milestone to facilitate a better customer experience.
We have an example of a jewelry e-commerce company Taylor & Hart based out of London, whose goal was to convert reluctant customers into one-time buyers and then to turn one-time buyers into loyal promoters who would recommend the service to their friends and family. They identified two of the customer milestones for setting up the net promoter score, a measurement for customer loyalty and satisfaction level:
The moment an order is placed by the customer
The moment it is received by the customer.
In the coming years, almost all the leading organizations and SMB’s will be implementing this process for better customer experience.
Reinventing customer journey with AR technologies
As per research, it was found that 25% of the customers will defect after having only one bad experience.
In such a scenario, reinventing the customer journey with better technologies can redirect the customer experience to a new level.
Augmented reality is reinvigorating the in-store experience. The beauty brand, an American cosmetics company, opened the flagship store in Times Square with a makeup station having an AR facility. Here, shoppers tried almost all the range of products and shared their complete makeover on social media.A study by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), even found that companies that embraced digital transformation are found to be 26% more profitable than their competitors.
AR is expected to generate 118 billion US dollars of revenue from the AR devices and 68 billion US dollars from the AR services.
VR (Virtual reality)
Virtual reality helps in bringing consumers closer to the product with an immersive experience.
Ikea, which is ready to assemble furniture, home accessories, and kitchen appliances organization, helps the prospective customers in exploring different ideas for designing the kitchen. Customers no longer have to visualize or guess how their kitchen would look like with the accessories and appliances. The solution helps the customers in choosing the potential design suitable for their kitchen.
The practice immerses the customer into a virtual world with 360-degree audio and video.
The above image also shows how a customer can be transported to a virtual world of beautiful scenery. The customer can feel the surroundings, whereas, in reality, the person is not at the location.
Conclusion
Customer experience has become an absolute necessity for organizations, without which they cannot achieve the best results for their business. As time goes by, the next-generation technologies such as 4-D printing, persona-based interactions, video analytics, gesture controls, and motion recognition are going to shape the customer experience, while building a good reputation for the organization.
Customer experience will be the first priority of organizations worldwide, and in the process, a healthy relationship with the customer can help to develop the best version of the product or service.