Customer experience or "CX" has emerged as one of the most important considerations for any brand in the last couple of years. According to the Temkin Group, 86% of buyers say that they would happily pay more for great customer experience.
When it comes to something as important as good communication and collaboration strategies, today's businesses can't afford to take chances. From day one, they need to know that their vendors, service providers, and partners are going to give them the kind of outcomes that they're looking for.
Now that 2020 is on the horizon, it's safe to say that the trend for enhanced CX will continue. Going forward, businesses from all backgrounds will be looking to differentiate themselves with the incredible experiences that they can offer.
To help you prepare for a successful 2020, we've spoken to some of the leaders in CX solutions, including Ribbon, Donoma, Tollring, and Akixi. Here's what today's pioneering brands had to say about the customer experience strategies of tomorrow.
What CX Trends Have Helped to Shape 2019?
Often, to plan for the future, you need to learn from the past.
This year has taught us all a lot about what customers are starting to expect from collaboration and communication brands. For instance, most clients will assume that your communication tools will cover a range of platforms to support today's omni-channel end-users.
Additionally, customers assume that even the most complicated tools will be designed for ease-of-use, to encourage better adoption and onboarding. Here's what our industry leaders have noticed about the trends in CX for 2019:
Colin Gill, Product Manager for Akixi:
According to Colin Gill, the product manager for leading brand, Akixi, one of the major trends that became mainstream during 2019, was collaborative working between teams. Though the concept of collaboration, and team platforms themselves aren't exactly new, the adoption of collaborative environments has accelerated in 2019.
"Collaborative team environments are no longer considered a specialist tool to be kept in the proverbial tech cupboard to be wheeled out for special occasions or projects; they are now considered by many to be the standard as a day-to-day working environment"
Beena Jacob, Director of Product Development for Donoma:
The Director of Product Development for software company, Donoma, Beena Jacob said that 2019 has been an exciting year from a technology perspective. For instance, throughout 2019, Donoma has seen an increased implementation of bot and AI technology.
"While we wish our observations could all be technology-based, we'd be remiss not to mention two in particular. The rise of organisations' effect on social issues and gender diversity. These have become priorities with direct impacts on technology organisations."
The world is becoming a more diverse and complicated place. This means that there are a lot of opportunities out there for companies to appeal to their customers by understanding their individuality, and unique needs.
Patrick Joggerst, CMO and EVP of Business Development for Ribbon:
The CMO and EVP for Business Development at Ribbon Communications, Patrick Joggerst, said that customer experience has expanded over the last year, to include every stage of the consumer journey, from attracting new clients, through to long-term engagement after they choose to buy a service or product.
"One of the trends flagged by Nemertes Research is to utilise “Intelligent Customer Engagement.” Systems provide contextual information to agents or bots to help sell or upsell. This improves customer retention and sales opportunities while lowering capital and/or operating costs."
According to Patrick, in this environment, customers get what they need faster, which leads to higher interaction ratings. Additionally, Joggerst also noted that companies and customers are using more channels to connect these days, and support of multiple channels is arising as a success metric.
"Starting companies with 1-4 channels and growing to companies with 8+ channels, the customer ratings improved from 55% to 90% - an increase by 63%"
Tony Martino, CEO for Tollring:
The CEO for Tollring, Tony Martino said that 2019 is the year when customer experience as a critical discipline began to gain real traction. Based on experiences with customers, businesses began to consider CX to be one of the most important elements for any brand. Today's companies know that they need great experiences to differentiate.
"This has resulted in greater demand for tools that help businesses to evaluate their performance and, by its very nature, this means analytics and reporting across all business communications is important. It’s no longer good enough to only look at a sales or support department – every customer touchpoint can impact customer experience negatively or positively. "
A stronger demand for insights has also pushed a need for data in context, integrations between platforms, and data accessibility.
"It is important, however, to acknowledge the impact this has on providing secure solutions to these organisations – from regulatory compliance to overall data security"
Which Technologies are Creating the Biggest Opportunities?
Understanding the trends that are taking place in 2019 is just the first step in preparing for the new year. Today's companies and brands also need to think carefully about the technology and innovations that will deliver the best opportunities for the coming CX revolution.
Already, we've seen a lot of exciting new opportunities in the CX environment over the last year, driven by things like big data analytics for customised moments, and artificial intelligence. Many businesses are even seeing an increase in the amount of time and effort that they dedicate to creating self-service solutions for their target audiences.
So, what should you be prepared to take advantage of in 2020? Here's what our industry experts had to say.
Akixi's Product Manager, Colin Gill, noted that mobile devices are one of the most exciting new opportunities for today's business. In part, the growth of this technology comes down to the simplicity and speed at which new platforms for communication can be deployed across various devices with cloud technology today.
"To add a new feature or enhancement to a PBX back in the day would take an engineer’s time, a new software upgrade, and even possibly new hardware. Even on hosted platforms, a software upgrade is no small thing and requires careful coordination to minimise any communication downtime. Whereas, with a mobile device, as I’m sure you’re aware having probably done it many times yourself, the user downloads a new or updated app and installs it themselves."
According to Gill, the new environment means that deploying tools and upgrading solutions is a process that can happen according to a user's convenience, without unnecessary downtime across the platform. These benefits, combined with the variety of unique applications now available to run on mobile devices, makes communication tools more flexible than ever.
