5 Digital Customer Experience Trends You Should Know in 2023
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Research done by a famous Stock Market Exchange in America – Nasdaq, found that by 2040 almost all shopping purchases will be made online (approximately 95%). While digital purchasing was already increasing, the pandemic only hastened it. Brands are now even more burdened to improve their offerings and provide customers with effortless, pleasing, and memorable digital customer experiences.
More than 65% of companies revealed that they would increase their Customer Experience or CX expenditure by an average of 24% in 2023. Companies should already be gearing up to future-proof their strategies to improve customer experience. Here are the top 5 trends in CX that businesses should be looking out for in 2023:
1. Omnichannel
The Customer Service Department will no longer be the only team to offer assured exemplary customer satisfaction to customers. All the other teams working in a company should be equally involved in providing customer satisfaction and ensuring customer loyalty. For this omnichannel approach to work flawlessly, it is vital that knowledge sharing should be done across teams.
The social media team of an organization should be able to interact efficiently with the customers and provide satisfactory answers about the inquiry made on products or services. Similarly, all issues faced by them should also be resolved to ensure the service provided is seamless. Customer feedback should be shared with all departments, and if required, products and services should be improvised or created accordingly.
Customer Service today has evolved to something more – a long-term relationship that a business is trying to establish or create with their customer. Businesses should not just solve their customers’ problems but ensure that they are fully satisfied by the resolution and happy.
An omnichannel experience can be created with the tools available at an organization. They will require a CRM system to organize all their customer information available in a single place. This will allow easy access to the customers so they can act accordingly. Integrating CRM to CMS will allow easy management of customers or content from a single central location. Using API with CMS further enhances the omnichannel experience delivery.
2. Social Media
Social Media can be said to be the backbone of the digital experience. It is dynamic and evolves quickly. It is crucial to provide a complete digital experience to the customers. From Instagram to Tiktok and from Facebook to Twitter, brands have to be present on all the important platforms. Their presence is imperative if the platform is creative, genuine, and used by its target people.
Social commerce is on the rise, and since customers begin and end their day with social media, brands must create an engaging social media experience that reflects their values and offers a promising journey to their potential customers.
The world has witnessed several brands that began their journey on social media and are now successful known businesses. They built strong communities, interacted with people, learned from them, and gave them the products or services the customers wanted, which is why they were instantly welcomed and accepted by their followers.
The pandemic drove several people to the extent that they started small businesses from their kitchen or backyard to survive but soon bloomed into full-fledged businesses that are now recognized and known by the world.
3. Brand Transparency
The key to gaining the trust of customers is transparency – product descriptions, price, processes, materials, ingredients, etc., everything should be revealed to create an attractive and memorable digital customer experience. Complete brand transparency reveals that the business is confident about its offerings – it instantly builds customer trust.
All businesses should clearly reveal the shipping costs along with the price of products, taxes charged, monthly fees, or any other financial information that the customers need to be aware of. The delivery dates should be mentioned honestly, and the availability of the product and user reviews given to the products or services should be displayed so the customer knows they are making an informed and trusted purchase. Driving customers to third-party websites just to look up reviews about products and services in your business will only drive them away from your brand.
For instance, Everlane – a successful American online retailer that primarily sells clothes, holds “Choose What You Pay” sales, where the customers are given a choice to select one of three prices for a piece of merchandise they purchase – the lowest price covers production and shipping cost, while the higher prices cover additional costs like overhead. CEO of Everlane clarified the sale as an effort to make the brand more transparent. They were a small business that began with nothing but is now a $100 million company.
Sharing behind the scene content with the customers is also a way to reveal to them what a business is genuinely offering. There are some companies, such as Coke, Chipotle, etc., that are using this thought to show the customer that their brand is relatable, and like them, the business/brand also makes videos to post on social media. Showing the customers, the secrets help in enticing new customers and retain the old ones.
Sharing business data with customers is another effective way to show how transparent the business is. In a Consumer Survey conducted in 2021 among 3400 global consumers by PingIdentity, it was found that 85% of customers wanted to know how online services share their personal information, and 72% said it’s difficult to find how the information is shared. 63% of survey participants said they would feel great about a brand/business if they knew how their personal information was being used. 60% of consumers dropped the survey account over privacy concerns, and 46% of these customers have done this before too.
4. Personalized Experience
All businesses know and understand the importance of providing a personalized experience to customers. However, they need to step up their game. Customers seek better or more tailored experiences. The fact that local shops have recently taken a front stand shows that people, especially the new generation, look forward to personal or more human shopping experiences.
Businesses can achieve this if they embrace the community they are serving. They must learn and adapt to their behaviors, expectations, and style.
Take the example of the brand J.Crew. They are known to have chic and sophisticated stores, but when they inaugurated a new store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, they chose to give the store a more crude look to give it the industrial feel and vibes that the locals staying there have. They simply adapted to the environment they stepped into and made the locals feel welcome.
5. Smarter Real-Time Data Technology
Real-time data technology innovations are both cool and thrilling. They can also be completely lucrative. Real-time data technology is exceptional – it can help your business respond to customer decisions made in haste. Say, for instance, smart speakers and voice technology. They instantly respond and serve a product or service when the customer calls on them. Wearable technology and IoT or Internet of Things like smart watch that can track fitness or a pair of NFT sneakers, overflow with potential for impeccable interaction with customers. This type of personalization is cool, and the customers really seem to love it. They look forward to innovative technologies that allow them to feel hi-tech and advanced.
Following these few CX trends can allow your business to deliver customer delight and build a strong relationship with your customers.