TechDogs-"5 Digital Customer Experience Trends For 2021"

Marketing Technology

5 Digital Customer Experience Trends For 2021

By TechDogs Editorial Team

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Overview

Imagine heading into a long night of work at the office. You'd surely need (oodles of) coffee to bulldoze through the sleepiness and fatigue, right? So, what do you do? Of course, you rely on everyone's favorite coffeehouse - Starbucks!

No matter the time, you can count on Starbucks for a quick coffee run. In-store, website or mobile app - ordering from Starbucks is always a hassle-free experience. The Starbucks mobile app even provides recommendations based on weather, time of day, community preference and previous orders - if that isn't fantastic customer experience, we don't know what is! Yet have you ever wondered what it is that helps Starbucks deliver such consistently exceptional service?

They do this by implementing cutting-edge technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, predictive analytics and cloud computing to their business processes. It's all part of creating an exceptional customer experience (CX) which is the responsibility of every customer-facing team, from sales to marketing to operations. Without the right technology, CX teams cannot offer the best experience to customers.

Hence, businesses must step up their CX game and focus on delivering experiences that drive what the customer (not the business) wants. To this end, we've listed five impactful digital customer experience trends for 2021 to help you shape your 'the-customer-is-always-right' approach for the coming year.
TechDogs-Where's This Wonderous Digital Customer Experience Thou Speak Of? -"5 Digital Customer Experience Trends For 2021"
Providing a good user experience to customers is not a new concept. The phrase "the customer is always right" was coined more than a century ago by a man named Harry Gordon Selfridge. He owned a department store in London (Selfridge's) Duh!. The store prioritized delivering excellent customer service by putting the customer first. Selfridge's idea of putting the customer first still endures across many industries including retail, hospitality and travel but much has changed in how we view customer service today, versus what was considered normal (and acceptable) in a turn-of-the-20th-century department store.

Over the past 11 decades, customer service has morphed into the broader concept of customer experience (CX). This change is reflected in the way companies interact with their customers. Businesses have stopped focusing on the idea that the customer is always right and started asking a different question: how can they make the customer happy at every stage of the buying and business relationship?

The aim is to deliver an exceptional customer experience but what does that mean in today's always-on digital world? Quite simply, delivering a good customer experience focuses on meeting customers' needs and expectations improving customer relationships. Increasingly, it means responding quickly to customer requests across all touchpoints, delivering personalized product recommendations or curated, customized content based on customer segments and profiles and placing an emphasis on agility so that you can pivot to meet your customer's needs if they change abruptly (think of the last two years!).

Understanding CX trends can help businesses provide exceptional experiences-and service-to customers. Below, we list five of the most interesting, exciting and cutting edge CX trends for 2021.
 

Trend 1: Trust Is Now A Key Element Of A Good Customer Experience (CX)


TechDogs-Trend 1: "Customer Experience (CX)"-2D Image Of Trust Knob Button Switch With A Hand Turning The Button To - Low, Medium, High
One of the biggest CX trends to emerge in the past year is the need for consumers to trust the organizations they do business with. While trust isn't a new concept, it's never been as closely connected to CX as it was in 2020-a year that saw us sanitizing every surface, donning face masks and gloves and avoiding people and businesses that didn't take our safety seriously. Despite the importance that consumers place on trust, a survey by Forrester revealed that many companies (particularly retailers) lack the ability to provide effective guidance through the pandemic, with only 13% of consumers indicating they trusted retailers.

Trust will remain a top CX trend and consumer priority throughout 2021. Customer experience platform GetFeedBack listed trust as the number one CX trend to watch in 2021, specifically in the category of health and safety visibility. GetFeedback writes: "Customers want evidence, not just talking points. How will this brand take care of me from a health and safety perspective? How will this brand ensure employee safety and wellness? How will this brand deliver on their promises?"

TechDogs' Opinion: Businesses must remain transparent and forthcoming about the issues customers care about. They must also be problem solvers, creating products, services and experiences that address customer concerns. An example of this is a fun little acronym that's risen to the top of retailer's vocabulary over the course of the pandemic-BOPIS which stands for "Buy Online Pickup In Store" and it's really the only way to purchase a giant jar of pickles from Sam's Club (do you have a better way?).
 

Trend 2: Messaging Apps Are Redefining Customer Expectations And Experiences


TechDogs-Trend 2: "Messaging Apps" - "Customer Expectations And Experiences"-2D Image Of Human Hand Holding Mobile Phone With Text Messages
Almost overnight, the pandemic changed not only the way customers interacted with businesses but who they did business with. Research from Zendesk revealed that almost one-third of customers began buying from new companies during the pandemic, with over 60% of people using new channels. Out of all the different ways customers connected with businesses over the past year, messaging was by far the most popular communication channel.

Messaging via social media, SMS, or chatbots embedded on websites, messaging apps and standalone apps saw a surge in first-time users in 2020. Customers liked this new communication channel, with customer support requests on messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger increasing by 100% and 60% respectively. Add to this that more than 80% of people who began buying from a new company in 2020, plan to keep buying from them and it's clear that companies must find ways to meet customer expectations sooner rather than later.

TechDogs' Opinion: To keep these customers happy throughout 2021, it will be important for businesses across all industries to add messaging technologies to their CX strategy. There are many digital platform and tools that integrate messaging into your website and social media channels (Zendesk is one of them). If you're not sure where to start, then a good place is with embedded messaging for customer interaction on your website and social messaging live chat bots, the two most preferred messaging communication channels by customers.
 

Trend 3: Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Enhance Customer Experience


TechDogs-Trend 3: "Artificial Intelligence (AI)"-2D Image Of Cloud Robotics Relating To Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is great at making customers happy - anybody else had a nightmare-ish flashback of Viki from iRobot? No one? AI is so great with customers that last year Oracle reported 80% of businesses had implemented or planned to implement some form of AI for customer service. This is in line with customer expectations. According to a 2017 piece in Chatbots Magazine, nearly 70% of people expect to use messaging apps when talking to a business. Many chatbots use AI technology to intelligently process digital interaction with customers. Chatbots are available 24/7 and respond instantly, something consumers have come to expect from businesses.

In an MIT survey of over 1000 business leaders, over 70% of respondents indicated that by 2022, customer service would be the most active area of AI deployment in their organization.

TechDogs' Opinion: AI will continue to change and improve the customer experience, particularly in industries with large consumer cohorts (e.g., Travel, Hospitality, Retail and Telecommunications). That makes sense, right? AI doesn't just make chatbots work better, it's also good at improving efficiency and effectiveness when resolving customer problems (for example, by routing calls to the right representatives instead of keeping you on hold for 24 minutes!). AI can also improve the customer journey of buying by personalizing product recommendations, service offerings and content, based on real-time customer signals and behavior.
 

Trend 4: Good CX Increasingly Means A Good Mobile Experience


TechDogs-Trend 4: Good CX Increasingly Means "A Good Mobile Experience"-2D Image With Two Male Characters Giving Organic Flat Feedback -Online Feedback-Online Customers Opinion-Rating And Review
Customers demand good experiences from businesses on all touchpoints including (and especially) their mobile devices. In 2020, customers did more on their mobile phones than ever before. That makes sense; we were watching Schitt's Creek reruns, playing video games and Facetiming with grandma on our phones too! Mobile shopping grew by 55% in 2020 versus 2019. It's not just shopping. It's ordering food, navigating travel hubs and planning ahead to understand safety protocols and requirements before visiting a business or store. GetFeedback writes: "Mobile devices are becoming necessary to view restaurant menus and avoid touching kiosks in airports, hotel lobbies and other populated places. QR codes are becoming integral to interact with these experiences. Mobile users scan the code to see the menu, make selections and more."

Mobile apps facilitate and streamline hybrid digital-to-in-person experiences. For example, Starbucks and Chipotle both have apps that make it easy to order from your phone and pick up at a store location - remember BOPIS from Trend 2? Mobile-friendly websites translate to more sales, with 61% of consumers saying they're more likely to purchase from mobile-friendly sites. Also consider that over 50% of website traffic already comes from mobile devices (this is predicted to increase 25% by 2025).

TechDogs' Opinion: Mobile channels promise to be a be an important touchpoint for both B2B and B2C customers in the coming year. There are several app categories that people access almost exclusively via their mobile device (social media, news, weather and dating to name a few). Updating and streamlining your mobile marketing and website strategy, particularly on the channels that people tend to access via a mobile device, with digital touchpoints creating a worthy endeavor. If you're not optimizing the mobile experience for users, then you're missing a big piece of the CX pie - and we assure you, it is a damn tasty pie!
 

Trend 5: Predictive Analytics Will Enable Hyper-personalization Of Customer Experience


TechDogs-Trend 5: "Predictive Analytics" - "Hyper-personalization" Of Customer Experience-2D Image With Male Character, Checking The Analytics-Site Stats -Business Statistics-Real-Time Data
When it comes to enhancing customer experience, customer data is quickly becoming the new gold. As organizations seek to develop more intimate relationships with consumers, predictive analytics will enable them to create uniquely tailored customer experiences based on individual consumers' distinct preferences. This will give rise to hyper-personalized customer experiences - conveying the right information at the right time on the right channel.

Predictive Analytics will help businesses suggest relevant products, identify the most practical combination of products, choose the best communication channels and timing based on consumers' past behavior. Paul Gaynor, a partner at professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, says, "Predictive analytics help you know what might happen, prepare a response ahead of time, get ahead of the risks, and influence the outcomes. It's like looking ahead with a telescope, not glancing through the rear-view mirror."

However, there's a lot more to predictive analytics than just forecasting a customer's needs and provide a good customer experience. Organizations can leverage predictive analytics to identify customers who are dissatisfied or not entirely sold on the brand and hence, risk switching to another brand. Businesses can then offer discounts and bargains to such customers to reduce the chance of them leaving.

 TechDogs’ Opinion: Imagine a world where businesses know precisely what you want - even before you do! That’s what predictive analytics will bring to the table in 2021. Predictive analytics promises to revolutionize operations of customer-facing teams by providing accurate forecasts for customer demands, reducing customer churn, improving allocation of resources and hyper-personalizing customer experiences as a whole.


Conclusion


Customer experience trends in 2021 touch on technology, business culture and changing consumer preferences (and expectations). Companies that want to improve the overall digital experience platform for their customers must do so from a whole-organization perspective, ensuring that customers' needs, expectations and concerns are addressed at every level of the organization and from within all customer-facing teams. The days when companies touted the mantra, "the customer is always right," are gone. Now organizations are tasked with a more challenging mantra: "the customer experience must always be good." Luckily, modern technology is facilitating the shift to a customer-centric approach and helping companies as marketer with digital channels live up to the task of creating customer satisfaction.

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