81% of executives believe they will compete on customer experience alone in the coming years. While many people realize the importance of the digital customer experience, that doesn’t mean they are doing everything they can to give their customers an experience that will blow their minds.
The good news for your company is that you’ll be able to work on your customer service and compete with even big companies if you know what you’re doing. Instead of operating in the dark, continue reading this article and we will go through some of the top trends that are going to make a difference in customer experience.
Going Next-Level With Customer Experience
As you learn more about customer experience and where you’re lacking, it might seem a little daunting. If you work with the following trends, however, you’re likely to be ahead of much of the competition.
1. Personalization to the Max
If you think your smartphone, Google and other devices can read your mind now — just wait for what’s coming. If your company can’t personalize the customer experience, you’re going to lose your customers to companies that can make it happen.
Failing to send customers emails with product recommendations based on previous purchases, wishing them happy birthday with special offers and more is going to hurt your business.
Pay attention to how other successful companies are already using personalization and see how you can improve upon it.
2. Voice Commerce for the Win
Alexa, buy my favorite toilet paper. Siri, it’s time to reorder in the kitchen. Voice commerce is going to make life easier on the customer but it is also going to make it easier for your business to get the sales you want.
3. AI Help You?
Instead of hearing, “May I help you?” from a human, you may be talking to AI customer service in the near future. If you’ve dealt with any of the current less than stunning attempts at AI customer service, you might not be impressed.
Get excited though because AI in virtual agent customer service is going to grow leaps and bounds before it is rolled out on a mass scale to consumers.
4. We <3 Our Employees
You might not think of your employees as customers — but they are. Beyond buying your products, they are buying into working for you. If you don’t treat your customers the way they believe they should be treated, they will be on to another company that does keep their needs in mind.
5. Bots Are Here for You
You don’t have to worry about Skynet but the bots are coming and they are increasing in use. Bots are becoming even more popular for helping people on websites when there are no customer service agents available.
If you go to many popular websites, you’ll see a little chatbot pop up and ask questions about how they can help you. Use chatbots to start a conversation with your potential customers and find out how you can help them.
6. Staff Training is Going Online
Instead of spending money on expensive conferences and taking people away from their jobs, staff training can be taken care of virtually. You may even have your staff learn from home in their PJs.
7. Augmented Reality for Brands
If you want your customers to buy into your brand, what is a better way than to have them step into your brand experience with augmented reality? Augmented reality is a great way to help people shop for products online and make sure they get what they want which can decrease the number of returns you have to deal with.
8. Security at the Forefront
Customers want to feel safe when they are using your website and products. As the years go by, hackers get smarter and keeping information secure is a must. You’ve likely seen more than a few cyberattacks that succeeded and caused problems for their customers and you don’t want to be one of those companies that get hit.
9. Omnichannel Delivery Focus
When your customers view your website, social media platform or another touchpoint, they don’t want to have to start all over again each time. They want you to know it is them and pick up from the last bit of contact you had with them.
10. Predictive Analytics
While you can’t read minds, you can make educated guesses when you use predictive analytics. While predictive analytics might not be as on point as you’d like it to be right now, soon, it will be like you can see the future.
11. Transparency, Please
Customers want to know what is going on with their accounts, with the companies they support and more. The best thing you can do when you want to give people a good experience is to let them know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and how it is going to affect them.
Make the Digital Customer Experience Count
If you want to keep your customers and have them bring their friends along for the ride, you need to make the digital customer experience count. Now that you know more about the trends that are taking place this year and in the years to come, you’ve got a lot of information that can help you succeed.
Do you feel like you still need more information? There’s no need to stop learning here because our site has many other articles along the same topic that can help you be even more effective.
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