If you want your business to succeed, you need to pay close attention to the quality of your customers’ experiences. Specifically, you need to ensure that you’re always providing top-notch services and a seamless buyer’s journey.
However, customer preferences always change. It’s often influenced by the latest technology, as well as their growing awareness about certain issues. For example, there are now more consumers in the UK using their mobile phones to shop. As such, if you’re operating a retail company, it’s wise to update your e-commerce site to make it more mobile-responsive.
What all of this means is simple: you have to stay on top of customer experience trends. This way, you’ll always be able to cater to the needs of your target market satisfactorily. That said, here are some trends you might want to look out for so that you can adapt to them accordingly:
Omni-Channel Experiences
Nowadays, a significant part of the population is almost always online. What’s more, they use more than one device to visit their preferred platforms to consume content and avail of services. For example, one may use a smartphone to browse their social media feed and then go on their laptop computer to play video games. Thus, you need to be prepared to respond to a customer no matter which channel they use to engage with you.
One way to do this is to employ contact centre solutions. Aside from efficiently handling calls, this kind of business software allows you to interact with customers through various platforms like email, messaging apps, social media, website live chat, and more—all in one place. With an omni-channel presence, you can communicate with your customers quickly and easily, no matter what their preferred channel may be.
Another way to provide an omni-channel experience is to familiarise yourself with various technological options. Consider how performance artists conducted virtual concerts or how traditional supermarkets shifted to e-commerce during the height of the pandemic. Through the use of digital solutions, even a brick-and-mortar store can provide a multi-channel experience.
Self-Service Options
There are customers who prefer having a company representative talk to them regarding their concerns. At the same time, there are also customers who prefer to handle matters independently. Perhaps they’re well-versed in technology and are capable enough to resolve their issues, or perhaps they’re extremely busy and don’t have time to wait for an agent to become available.
Whatever the case, it’s important to provide an option for self-service in your customer service options, as many consider this the most seamless way for resolving issues. It can also reduce the workload of your customer service agents, allowing them to give more of their time and energy to more complicated customer concerns. This goes to show how providing a reliable self-service option results in great experiences not only for customers who prefer this type of assistance, but also for customers that require hands-on assistance.
Hyper-Personalisation
It’s good practice to always address your customers by name in all forms of communication. From email newsletters to automated chat responses, personalisation is one effective way to ensure a positive customer experience.
Nowadays, however, this level of personalisation is no longer enough. With the amount of technology and information available to businesses, customers expect hyper-personalised experiences for their convenience and satisfaction. Going back to the earlier example of online shopping, e-commerce sites can use historical data like purchase history and website behaviour to tailor-fit product recommendations to each customer in their directory.
In order to do this, though, your company needs to not only know how to properly do market research, but also invest in data collection systems and analytics. Through these tools, you can gather meaningful insights that can then help you develop better, more personalised products, services, and programmes for your consumers.
A Focus on Privacy
This may seem counter to the previous point, but it’s true. While consumers are definitely looking for hyper-personalised experiences, they’re also concerned about their privacy. In particular, customers are wary about their personal data being used for marketing or other purposes without their explicit consent.
Unfortunately, you’re going to need to collect some data in order to provide top-notch products and services to your consumers. As such, you will have to collect and store such information to provide them with better customer experiences.
However, what you can do is be more transparent about how you use the data that you do collect. In addition, you should let your consumers know how you plan on protecting their data. While you’re at it, make it a priority to invest in strong security measures in case you haven’t done so yet.
Keeping up with trends is crucial for the success of your business. There’s no way to predict what’s going to happen, but these trends are a good way to forecast what will and will not work for your business in the future.
Read more:
4 Promising Customer Experience Trends (and What They Mean for Your Business)