Happy New Year
Over the past few years, customer facing brands have seen a renewal in the importance of great customer experience.
Customers aren't as loyal as they once were and expect a lot more from their favourite brands and companies. Gone are the days when customers were loyal to just one brand, and now, companies have to go to greater lengths to ensure they can gain new customers and retain their old ones.
As we're coming towards the end of January and are starting to look forwards to the rest of 2023, we thought it would be pertinent to outline some of the trends in the CX world that we feel will be most important this year. So without further ado, here are our picks for the top 4 CX trends in 2023.
Personalise, Personalise, Personalise!
That's right!
Our first CX trend for 2023 is a classic, the rise in importance a customer places on personalisation.
While the rise of personalisation in customer communications is by no means something new, it's definitely still one of the most significant trends in the CX realm. Customers want to feel a real connection between themselves and a company, and their expectations for the depth of this connection are still growing.
Personalised communications allow you to develop a real relationship with your customers, leading to an increase in brand loyalty, customer retention rates and even boosting customer satisfaction.
A recent report produced by Statista found that 60% of shoppers believed that if brands did not deliver personalised communications, they would lose their loyalty.
"Will Robots Inherit The Earth?"
This question from computer scientist Marvin Minsky has never been more pertinent!
Our next CX trend for 2023 is increased investment in Artificial Intelligence.
Investing in AI gives companies even greater control over their customer experience, helping them understand their customers better and use this understanding to provide them with a greater experience.
AI can be used to develop customer facing chatbots, helping companies handle customer queries, free up their service agents to deal with more complicated issues, and provide their customers with a truly omnichannel experience.
Recent advances in AI technology have unlocked a whole new realm of possibilities for the customer experience industry. It can help you understand large pools of customer data, analyse it and generate reports about your customers, saving companies both time and money.
A recent study by Talkdesk, found that 79% of customer experience professionals intended to increase their spending on artificial intelligence and automation in 2023 to give them a leg up over their competition.
Tightening Purse Strings
Our third CX trend for 2023 is reduced spending and shrinking budgets.
We currently live in an incredibly uncertain economic environment, with fears of a recession just around the corner. As such, companies are starting to tighten their purse strings and looking to save money wherever possible.
Companies may think about reducing spending within their customer experience departments; however this would be a mistake. Now, more than ever, it's vital that we continue to deliver exemplary customer experience. Keeping your customers happy is the only way to ensure that you retain them, but it will also help you gain new customers, even in these uncertain times.
CX professionals will need to prove to their companies that they are getting the most bang for their buck, providing clear evidence to their managers and leaders of high levels of ROI on their CX strategies.
Go Ahead, Make My Data
Sorry to paraphrase the great words of Dirty Harry in Sudden Impact, but our fourth and final trend for CX in 2023 is sophisticated data collection and storage.
One of the components of customer experience companies mention to us most frequently is data. They want to know how to collect their data, how to store it and how to use it.
In this digital age, companies have access to more information about their customers than ever before, but they need to find new ways to collect it. They should be looking towards implementing newsletters, competitions, sign-ups or even just collecting more data from user accounts.
Once companies have collected this data, they'll need to ensure it's stored properly. In 2023, companies will increasingly be looking to move away from siloed data storage towards centralised data storage systems. These centralised data storage systems allow companies to capture changes in their customers' needs and help with segmentation, personalisation, and even targeted messaging.
What's Next?
Those are our top 4 CX trends for 2023!
What do you think? Did we miss anything important? Why not reach out and let us know.
Keep your eyes open for our new blogs this year, where we'll be covering all things ranging from customer experience strategy and systems as well as public services and other technology news.
From all of us at CX Consultants, we hope you managed to spend some time relaxing over the holidays, and we're wishing you all a Happy New Year!
If you have any questions or want to discuss your CX strategy, system or customer journey, get in touch, we're here to help.