Leaving your Customer Experience (CX) to chance in 2022 is like going to the beach on a hot day without sunscreen — you’ll survive (at least, in the short-term), but a little proactive preparation could have saved you some serious pain.
According to PwC, 32% of customers say they’ll walk away from a brand they’ve loved after just one bad experience. Meanwhile, they go on to mention that companies delivering excellent end-to-end experiences are seeing up to a 16% price premium on products and services.
Let’s dig into why investing in purposefully designed CX is crucial to the future-forward business, and which key trends you need to leverage in 2022.
Customer experience is more than just great customer service
Excellent customer service creates excellent customer experiences, but it doesn’t stop there. Customer service focuses specifically on helping your customers solve their challenges with your product or service, in the most efficient way possible. This is different from customer experience, which is generated by all the ways customers interact with your company, and how they perceive those interactions.
By investing in CX, you commit to improving the end-to-end customer journey, for example, by ensuring each touchpoint is immersed in your brand values. But what does it mean to create successful customer experiences?
For the customer, great CX includes interactions that consistently:
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Have a successful outcome. Were they able to do what they set out to do? Or at least take a step forward towards their goal?
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Are low effort. How much effort did they have to expend personally? How easy was it to interact with your company?
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Inspire a positive emotional outcome. Did they leave the interaction feeling satisfied, empowered or relieved of a previous concern?
Success for your company may look like this:
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High activation. How engaged are your customers? Active engagement metrics could include their likelihood to make a purchase or session frequency.
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Effective monetisation. How do you transform active customers into an improved bottom line? How could your CX strategies help increase customer lifetime value, and repeat buying?
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Increased retention. Great CX drives brand loyalty, which in turn sparks Word-of-Mouth (WOM) marketing for your brand.
Companies that get customer experience right are reaping tangible rewards. Delivering successful, low-effort and positive experiences to their customers is fostering loyalty to their brand, improving conversion rates and powering increased brand recognition through WOM marketing. Can you afford to ignore it?
Customer experience trends for 2022 and beyond
What your customers want, and the technology available to help you deliver it changes rapidly. Here are six trends driving successful CX in 2022:
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Mastery of omnichannel experiences. Customers now expect seamless transitions when they engage with you across channels, and smart — but not artificial — interactions on each of them.
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Communicating with authenticity. Less, higher-quality engagement can drive better experiences than overwhelming your customers with low-quality communications. Know your voice, and use it appropriately, without forcing it — you don’t need to respond to every trend or be found on every platform just because they’re popular.
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Holding privacy as a core service value. Today’s consumers value their privacy. However, they’re willing to share the sensitive information needed to complete the buyer’s journey with brands who demonstrate they’re receiving, storing, and using that data with care.
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Hosting hybrid events. Well-executed hybrid events can open up far more possibilities than purely virtual or in-person brand activations. While the pandemic kickstarted serious investment into digital engagement, the post-pandemic customer expects to have a choice between the two.
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Catering to individualised experiences. An excellent CX means different things to different people, and they expect you to cater to their definition of it. For example, hybrid events cater both to those who want to engage remotely, and those who prefer in-person contact.
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High adaptability. What your customers want, and how you’re able to deliver it is evolving constantly. Future-forward businesses are doing more than just keeping up: they’re forming the teams and partnerships they need to operate ahead of the trend.
How Huble can help your brand with customer experience consulting
We help SME and enterprise businesses craft adaptable, delightful end-to-end customer experiences that customers can’t help but rave about!
Our CX consultants work closely with you to understand your customer base, develop customer journey architecture and service design, maximise value from your service technology and ensure 360° management and reporting of your CX programs.
From comms planning and consulting, to helping you define your support desk strategy and more: explore our service and customer experience consulting services or get in touch and find out how we can help you give your customers an experience worth writing home about.
