Emerging technologies, evolving customer attitudes, and new CX theories are challenging many preconceptions of digital customer engagement.
"Customers will readily adopt new engagement channels if we promote them." Many customers will revert to the channels that they are most comfortable with.
"We must eliminate customer dissatisfaction across the entire customer journey." Not necessarily, as a more emotionally stimulating experience is often more memorable.
"By becoming more proactive, we will seize a new opportunity for positive engagement." Recent Gartner research summarized that "flawed proactive customer service does more harm than good."
Avoiding these traps is tricky, especially when such customer engagement myths are widespread.
Luckily, a recent Puzzel webinar shared the thoughts of two CX experts with their fingers well and truly on the pulse. They were:
- Alexander Michael, Vice President of Information and Communications Technology at Frost & Sullivan
- Jeremy Greenwood, Sales Engineer at Puzzel
Digging deep into many recent CX studies, the duo discussed the current state of customer engagement, pinpointing many critical trends that are changing the field. Here are five of the most thought-provoking examples.
1. Digital Intensity Changes Customer Thinking
In unravelling recent Frost & Sullivan research, Alexander concluded: “Consumers are more impatient and anxious, but also more thoughtful and selective in their decision making.”
What is fuelling this trend? In part, digital intensity.
Since the pandemic, digital intensity has accelerated in numerous aspects of consumer lives. In Germany alone, the analyst found that companies have pushed digital engagement strategies forward by 6.4 years.
As such, customers are becoming more familiar with quick, online solutions to simple queries. Indeed, 69 percent of customers are now willing to interact with a bot to solve their problems, perhaps creating a new expectation for immediacy.
Yet, there is also easy access to alternative options, with a third of consumers discovering new brands online after the onset of COVID-19. The result is a more thoughtful, autonomous customer.
To engage this customer, embracing AI to support customers is a strategy that will likely gain momentum. Yet, empowering agents with tools such as agent assist and competitor analysis is another. These will add to the persuasion capabilities of human agents and help turn the decision-making process in the company’s favour.
2. Practical AI Applications Come to the Fore
42% of British companies plan to invest in conversational AI and self-service to lower inbound contact volumes and support customer service agents. As a result, it is the second most significant investment priority – only behind unified communications.
In Germany, it is the greatest priority, with 52% of organizations planning to invest in the technology.
Such an acceleration suggests that customers are becoming more receptive to the technology. The following statistics support this notion:
- 87 percent of customers expanded their use of digital channels as a result of the pandemic.
- Automated channels are the first choice for customers under 25 years old.
Yet, the practicality of implementing these solutions is also increasing. As a recent Opus Research study suggests: “If you can play a videogame, you can build a bot.”
What’s more, it is not just bots that have become easier to deploy. According to a Harvard Business Review article, more companies are successfully implementing “low-hanging fruit” use cases for customer engagement AI. It states:
Ambitious moon shots are less likely to be successful than “low-hanging fruit” projects that enhance business processes.
Perhaps the following statistics exemplify the rise of these practical use cases, with many British companies investing in various other AI applications. These include:
- 38 percent have invested in speech recognition technologies (such as speech analytics software and voicebots).
- 30 percent have invested in sentiment analytics to measure customer emotion.
- 25 percent have invested in robotic process automation (RPA)
Growing confidence in such AI technologies, paired with increasing ease of use – thanks partly to the rise of low-/no-code tools – will continue to change digital engagement plans.
3. The Home Becomes a Work, Entertainment, and Welfare Hub
Hybrid working is now very much the norm, with Frost & Sullivan research highlighting that only three percent of British and German companies expect to have their full workforce in office by 2023.
Such a pattern can offer a better work-life balance. Yet, spending more time at home risks social isolation, with many employees finishing work and immediately playing online games, interacting on social media, using streaming services, and maybe heading into the metaverse.
This increased penetration of immersive technologies plays a part in why one Washington Post article concludes that hybrid work is "messy and exhausting."