Merchants’ Customer Experience Trend Report For 2020
In order to stay ahead of the competition, it’s vital to not only understand how trends have impacted customer experience, but to understand what trends are on the horizon and what they might mean for the future. In short: are companies prepared for the changes new technology will bring to how your customers interact with your organisation?
Here are some trends that companies need to keep an eye out for if they want to deliver amazing customer experience not only today, but also into the future.
Increasingly Individualised Customer Experience
The days of generic communication with your customer will be long gone by 2020. Customers are becoming increasingly demanding, with Oracle reporting that 84% of customers want a more personalised experience across a number of different criteria. This need to treat each customer as an individual and deliver a personalised customer experience means companies will need to increase their focus on channels that allow them to connect directly to the customer, such as social media platforms and mobile apps. Oracle recommends gathering customer data to ensure that your hyper-personalised service is:
- Proactive – by gathering customer data you can proactively identify which content and functionality needs to be prioritised
- Relevant – customer data will allow you to create experiences that are relevant to individuals
- Continuous – omni-channel communication will allow your customer to pick up where they left off
- Emotionally engaging – individualised experiences will create deeper engagement and loyalty
Hyper-Predictive Analytics Will Know What You Want Before You Do
Big data will finally come into its own by 2020, with estimated revenue from hardware, software and professional services revenues expected to reach $76 billion globally. Big data will fuel hyper-predictive analytics in many ways, whether it’s a phone’s digital assistant recommending an answer for your customer’s question, a customer’s favourite online store offering them merchandise for the show they’re busy binge watching on their Smart TV, or their mobile provider sending them a great offer on a discounted phone because they have a habit of switching phones every 18 months. Customers will no longer receive information or offers on things they aren’t interested in.
Predictive analytics for customer experience will focus on the needs and desires of the individual customer and give them what they want, and it will all be provided without the customer ever having to fill in a survey. This is only possible if companies are able to correctly leverage big data to improve their analytics. Callminer talks to 35 marketing experts on various ways to do this.
Consistent Omni-Channel Communication Will Be The New Standard
Where multi-channel communication was once enough to satisfy customers, in the future you will need to provide consistent omni-channel support. If a customer places an order with a company via their mobile app, sends them an email to give them specific details about the delivery, and then calls them to change the delivery location, the customer service agent will be expected to have access to all that information.
Communication across channels will need to be unified and consistent in order to deliver the customer experience that customers not only want, but demand. You can achieve this by speeding up your response time on social media, ensuring self-service tools are fully functional, implementing live chat, and staying on top of your emails.
If You Don’t Have A Mobile-First Strategy, You Will Fail
Mobile is becoming increasingly important in how we interact with the web, and this is reflected by how Google has been adapting their search engine since 2014 to prioritise sites that are mobile friendly.
Companies that fail to implement an effective mobile-first strategy don’t just risk their Google ranking, but also the loss of customers as mobile devices increasingly become the default way to interact online.
But what does this mean for customer experience? It means that as mobile becomes increasingly important, you will need to deliver excellent customer experience via mobile in order to keep your customers happy. Experience Matters captures this in their infographic The Rise of Mobile CX. Their infographic not only highlights the increasing usage of mobile, but that only 33% of companies are able to deliver a good mobile experience for their clients.
Merchants is constantly looking to the future and adopting the latest cutting edge technology to deliver a service that’s focused on customer experience. As a customer experience provider, our services are supported by the latest technology in order to deal with the ever evolving needs of your customers.