What would you consider your top priority when it comes to retaining customers and increasing customer acquisition? Top business leaders will likely agree: It’s customer experience.
As competition intensifies across industries, customers are looking for more than just a great product at a great price. They are looking for a business they can rely on, a great experience, and exceptional customer service. As a result, you’ll notice that the top brands don’t differentiate themselves based on their products alone, but the experience they create around each purchase is a key part of what their brand is all about.
Today, customer experience has emerged as the new battleground whereon businesses compete to win customers with a high lifecycle value and unlock sustainable, consistent growth. The rise of the subscription economy, a customer-controlled purchase environment, and data-driven personalization saw businesses realize the potential of CX; at ~31%, it was the highest spending area for companies, even more than operational improvement, and innovation and growth.
Let us look at the top CX investments in 2023 which are set to take on the industry in an even bigger way in 2024:
Trend 1: Omnichannel Orchestration
Creating an integrated omnichannel experience has been both, a top priority and challenge, for most organizations since the pandemic. 2023 saw top CX companies rising to adopt a fundamental shift – not stopping at CRM solutions for a streamlined, real-time customer view, they realized the value of Customer Engagement Solutions (CES).
Unlike CRM solutions, which only help create a unified data-led view of the customer, CES tools ensure aligned interactions. In that sense, they don’t just track the customer journey but orchestrate it, enabling enhanced CX without relying entirely on manual interventions.
2023 saw a tremendous increase in the adoption of such tools and subsequently, powerful omnichannel orchestration; 41% of companies invested in CES-led omnichannel CX management.
As companies look to up their investments in CX areas that directly impact business in 2024, such orchestration is only set to become the norm. Not just every channel, but every touchpoint, such as chatbots, will be aligned to interact and nudge the customer basis deep, intuitive data.
Trend 2: Real Customers
The year saw hyper personalization emerge as the big, bold, hairy, and audacious new kid on the block. As every team – from marketing to finance, and sales to product – saw the value in aligning their offerings to match unique customer needs, hyper personalization grew 3x in 2023.
Basing customer understanding on real-time data before responding with relevant, personalized CX is set to evolve further in 2024. Apart from real-time data from interactions, businesses will leverage Voice of the Customer, sentiment scores, predictive analytics, and digital twin technology to arrive at the real customer. The global digital twin market alone is expected to grow at a staggering CAGR of 61.3% between 2023 and 2028.
While most businesses will up their budgets in tools and technologies that help them decode the real customer with precision, the top CX leaders will do so with a distinct purpose – forge high-value, meaningful relationships instead of just sell. They will also be innovative in how they leverage technology to introduce the customer to their own, virtually manifested self. Perhaps gift them a well-generated avatar in the metaverse.
Trend 3: Data Security
You simply cannot deliver a superior CX without flawless data security and privacy. This holds across industries and business sizes. With global cybercrime set to cost the world a whopping USD 10.5 trillion every year by 2025, the year has seen top CX leaders collaborate with CTOs to prioritize investments in customer data security and privacy.
No longer an additional layer to core operations, it has become a key consideration in every business decision. This is also owing to the accelerated adoption of cloud-based business environments; end customers want extra assurance that businesses are not compromising their data security and privacy while partnering with third-party vendors for scalable solutions in the cloud. Growing public regulations too, have accelerated this CX trend.
2024 will see companies increasing their data security and risk management budgets by more than 14%; this will be key to surviving and thriving in a business environment where 75% of the global population will have their data security and privacy rights protected by regulations at a public policy level.
Trend 4: Sentiment-led CX
At the end of the day, we customers are emotional beings. And no amount of behavior-tracking algorithms and predictive models can make up for that. A growing number of businesses realized the value of peeking into and impacting sentimental moments through the customer lifecycle.
The year saw them leveraging real-time sentiment analytics to identify and engage with the emotional side of customers at every touchpoint. It helped every team member make their next move mirroring the warmth and intuitiveness of one-on-one, in-person interactions. From deciding on the ideal channel for resolution updates to launching a personalized campaign, sentiment-led CX served as the gut feeling for top CX companies in 2023.
As we enter 2024, leaders will innovate in how they leverage speech, facial expressions, and body language analysis using AI to gain deeper insights into sentiment complexities. They will also draw the link between sentiment-led CX and direct business correlatives such as loyalty and advocacy. The sentiment and emotional analysis software market alone is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.80%, starting next year.
The takeaway
Irrespective of your business priorities for 2024, one thing is certain – you must ensure CX orchestration is aligned across every aspect of operations. This is key to scaling and innovating on top trends in a manner that unlocks maximum business value. With a majority of leaders, especially in the US, expecting to up their CX budgets in 2024, you need to stay up to speed on these top trends, because the customers are already expecting it.
Looking to learn how you can do better and optimize your CX strategy? We can help! Let’s get on a quick call, and we’d love to show you how SogoCX can help you better understand customer expectations, decode trends, and streamline your strategy.
