We mentioned it in the customer contact trends of 2022: customers want the best service as well as personal contact. This year that has only increased. Partly due to the crisis of recent years, consumers have raised the bar for customer service. They are more likely to switch to a competitor after just one bad experience. With all the changes, such as increased use of digital channels due to the pandemic and developments in technology, customer contact trends have not stood still. We picked them for you and these are the 6 customer contact trends 2023.
Trend 1: Seamless omnichannel approach
It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that consumers contact your organization through more and more (digital) channels and that they expect you to be active on their preferred channel. They assume they can switch channels at any time without having to repeat themselves when they contact your organization again. Customers choose whether to contact a company physically, traditionally or digitally. Even then, customers expect a conversational and consistent customer experience. A good omnichannel approach here ensures a seamless customer experience across multiple (digital) channels.
A good example is Thuisbezorgd.nl. You order food from one of your favorite restaurants in the app. After ordering, you are sent a wait time and updates when your food is prepared, ready and delivered. The food is delivered by your chosen restaurant and a few hours later you automatically receive an email from Thuisbezorgd.nl how you experienced the food and service. An example in which all contact moments and channels run smoothly into each other.
With the blurring line between the physical and digital experience, consumers are less forgiving toward companies that don’t have their omnichannel service in place. That’s why more and more organizations are deploying a seamless omnichannel approach, allowing communication channels to flow flawlessly alongside, through and into one another.
Trend 2: Self-service
Self-service is a predominant and growing customer expectation. According to CXNetwork’s Global State of Customer Experience 2022 report, 52% of customers want self-service. This allows them to quickly find answers to questions and problems themselves without having to contact customer service. Examples include a knowledge base, community forums and FAQ pages.
The preference for self-service has increased due to increased wait times on the phone to speak to a customer service representative. Let’s face it we just don’t like waiting. It’s not that they don’t prefer to speak to a human employee either, but self-service is now widely recognized as a faster and easier route to customer support.
It offers companies a unique opportunity to improve customer service while reducing the cost of and pressure on support staff. This can result in shorter phone queues and customers finding the information they need faster.
Trend 3: From automation to forecasting
The idea of technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) within customer contact is not new. In the past two years, this technology has become an essential part of a successful customer experience strategy. In particular, it is applied to providing self-service through AI chatbots and/or reducing employee workload by automating tasks.
For example, technology can be used to automate employee tasks, predict customer behavior, scale customer service and improve customer experiences. Companies are deploying the following technologies within their customer contact, among others:
- AI chatbots to answer simple customer questions and handle customer contacts without agent intervention
- RPA to retrieve customer data, automate simple tasks and put data into the right systems
- AI to analyze data and make suggestions to provide proactive customer service, as well as to understand patterns in customer behavior and recognize emotion
- A combination of both to initiate (automated) workflows, create a 360-degree customer view and offer 24/7 customer contact
Customers especially view companies’ use of artificial intelligence positively. 65% expect AI to save them time and 64% expect not to have to repeat themselves. All in all, robotization can put a positive spin on customer contact, with the goal of an even better customer experience for your customers.
Trend 4: Personalization in the customer experience
From McKinsey’s 2021 Next in Personalization report, 71% of consumers expect a personalized experience. Using various technologies such as artificial intelligence, employees can analyze customer behavior based on previous questions or service requests. But also to research what resonates with the target audience. With this data, you can accurately address your customers’ needs and personalize the customer experience. Or just create the need.
This allows you to provide proactive service. You then anticipate problems rather than react to them. It’s about finding solutions to problems that customers don’t know they have. You are, as it were, letting the customer know things you think they are interested in before they have asked for them.
Customers expect all experiences to be personalized. In fact, it turns out that 90% of customers will spend more with a company that personalizes customer service. So a great opportunity. Netflix, for example, personalizes your account. Using AI models, it maps your viewing behavior and presents series and videos that most closely match your interests.
Trend 5: Conversational CX
Consumer spending growth is expected to slow in 2023. Most customers are feeling the pressure of inflation and an impending recession. Non-essential spending will decline, meaning every experience matters. Brands need to show empathy and build relationships for the future.
This is what conversational CX contributes to. What is meant by this? It is the process of interacting with customers through a natural conversation at any point in their purchase journey. It is meant to simplify every interaction between customer and organization, from marketing to customer service and everything in between. With the goal of providing an ultimate customer experience to (potential) customers.
Communication between the customer and organization should be effortless. At its core, conversational CX is about ease in the customer journey. It should be used to provide convenience to customers at every step of their customer journey. The entire process should be made simple and intuitive, in which the customer is not treated as a stranger and can contact the organization in an approachable way. Several surveys show that more than 60% are now willing to switch after just one bad experience.
Trend 6: Satisfying your agents
A company’s revenue increasingly depends on the success of its service agents. A trend report found that 78% of companies agree that agents play a crucial role in customer retention. Only 15% of agents are extremely satisfied with their workload. Only 20% feel this about the quality of the training they receive. Ultimately, less than 30% feel they are able to do a good job.
Customer satisfaction goes through the entire charge of the organization, but customer service has the biggest share in this. Numerous studies have shown that happy people are better employees, thus making for a better customer experience. This is why more and more organizations are investing in their customer service employees, including better training and the right technological tools.
Using modern technology platforms, organizations can take repetitive tasks away from employees, reduce their workload, increase CSAT and keep remote employees connected. Convenient features like ticket classification with AI and automatically routing incoming customer contact to the right person are things that save employees up to 1.2 hours a day. That gives them more time to do what they do best: make customers happy.
Customer contact trends 2023 revolve around customer experience
How you treat customers makes or breaks your organization. It is about how you care about them and then how they judge you to others. All trends aim to meet and exceed the customer’s needs and expectations. An ultimate customer experience without putting pressure on the service staff. If your organization can provide this, you create competitive advantage. It’s no longer about product or price, but about the customer experience around it. And that is what more and more companies are adapting their strategy to.
A good start, with a CX platform, is half the battle
Responding to customer contact trends 2023 and thus creating competitive advantage does not happen overnight. It starts with a central CX platform in which you can merge all channels, (customer) data and operations and in which all systems and employees can work together.
Sprinklr is one such platform. An all-in-one solution with all customer-facing functions, such as marketing, advertising, customer care, customer feedback management, sales and engagement. A platform that can handle 42 different customer contact channels and several languages. It offers self-service tools, such as integrated knowledge base, AI chatbots and insights to continuously optimize.
The platform uses more than 100 AI models that listen to everything online 24 hours a day. Fully AVG-compliant. Thanks to these AI algorithms, it’s possible to harvest that information and turn it into information that you can use to answer the questions, “What do people mean?”, “What do people encounter with our brand?”, “What resonates with our target audience?” and “How do people experience the service, the brand?
In addition, it provides an overview of whether customers are satisfied or dissatisfied. When an agent is in conversation with a customer via chat or phone, the AI engine recognizes the customer’s emotional state based on words, tone-of-voice and/or speech. All contact moments with a person are recorded with the data known about that person. Thus, you can see what was previously discussed, requested and/or ordered. In addition, you can see the contact, order history and customer satisfaction that make up the 360-degree customer view.
All aspects to give your service staff, and all other departments within the organization, the tools they need to respond to customer contact trends 2023 and communicate in a tailored way: quickly, but personally, without extra workload.
Wondering what Sprinklr can do for you? Contact one of our professionals without obligation.
Create the ultimate customer experience with Sprinklr
Consumers are increasingly looking for convenience and good service. It’s not just about product and price anymore. How you deal with them as an organization makes or breaks your business. And they are only too happy to let each other know that. They talk to and about your brand through the channel of their choice. How do you get a grip on that? Get in touch with us.
