Top Trends 2023 - Digital Customer Experience

What comes to your mind when you hear the words “Disney World?” Cartoon characters, fun rides and beautiful castles, right? Well, if we say there is another reason to remember Disney World. It is the Magic Band. When any customer books Disney World tickets online, they receive electronic wristbands called the Magic Bands in their mail. Don’t you think, this adds an element of surprise, right from the beginning of their customer journey?

This Magic Band is designed to offer a lot of services to customers. It acts like a digital storage device, a hotel room key and is also linked to the customer's bank account for payments for services availed at Disney World. Above all, you don’t need to carry your smartphone, wallet or anything else into the park if you have this band. Wow! Such an incredible Digital Customer Experience offered by Disney World surely builds loyalty and fosters repeat customers. Consumers often move towards brands that offer an experience that makes customers truly valuable and personalized across all touchpoints.

If that is your aim as well to ace the game of Digital Customer Experience, we present to you the top 5 Digital Customer Experience Trends of 2023. Read on to know them!  
 

Trend 1: Emotive Technology Will Enhance Customer Experiences

 
Tell us if you’ve heard this before – XYZ organization is customer-centric. Of course, you have! However, have you ever given thought to why a company ends up being called customer-centric? Well, any business can be called customer-centric if the brand’s promise is equal to customer experience. Customers' expectations are evolving swiftly in the digital world and organizations must quickly change their CX playbooks to keep up. Although it may seem trivial at first, emotive technology will play a huge part in Digital Customer Experiences in 2023.

Customer experience is heavily influenced by emotion; therefore, how a company designs its own will determine whether it succeeds or fails. Emotive technology can identify the emotions hidden in a person's voice or writing, helping businesses in providing their customers with better digital experiences and support. According to Tom Shapiro, founder and CEO of Stratabeat, people’s decisions and behavior are largely driven by the subconscious mind. By aligning marketing to what the brain is naturally attracted to and influenced by, a brand will be able to deliver successful digital experiences.

The joy of joys is you can achieve that with the help of emotive AI technology. You may collect customers’ behavioral data, get insights into emotions and use them to improve customer-related data to create lasting, dependable and devoted relationships with consumers. Emotive AI tools will be influential in improving customer journeys and providing an exceptional Digital Customer Experience.

TechDogs’ Opinion: We expect that in 2023, emotive AI platforms will become more commonplace for customer-facing businesses. The biggest trend will be that these tools will no longer be restricted to voice. They will be able to understand the emotions and sentiments of the customer through visual and written signals as well. This will also extend to analyzing facial expressions with the help of technologies such as artificial intelligence, deep learning, as well as gait analysis for extracting specific physiological signals from video feeds.

#TechDogs is a fan of this tech as it goes beyond sentiment analysis used on social media, which is not instant and may not be very accurate. We also expect the development and deployment of cameras that can detect a person's respiration and heart rate without touching, making contactless emotive data collection possible. At its core, using these technologies will enable businesses to align their CX strategies to the customer’s emotions for better personalization. #TechnologyBeingEmotional
 

Trend 2: Progressive Web Applications Will Change The CX Game

You must have heard the phrase – change is the only constant. Well, this phrase is doing justice to the changing face of Digital Customer Experience. Improved digital experiences with mobile commerce will now be possible thanks to Progressive Web Applications (PWAs). We presume that in believing that in 2023 brands will abandon native applications in favor of PWAs as they provide personalization, speed and better usability.

With time, people eventually become dissatisfied with using smartphone apps. Moreover, most applications become space-consuming downloads from the app store, have high loading times and take frequent updates. Thus, Progressive Web Apps will take the lead as a replacement for conventional, space-consuming apps on smartphones and mobile devices. A Progressive Web Application combines the greatest features of online experiences and mobile applications by utilizing contemporary technologies. Despite being a website, it has the appearance, feel and functionality of an application. In a report by Emergen Research, the global PWA market is expected to reach a value of 10.44 billion USD by 2027. That’s huge!

Progressive Web Applications improve the Digital Customer Experience by preserving the useful and enjoyable native app experience while requiring less utility development, maintenance work and providing immediate access to upgrades. Furthermore, it can be inferred from the current technological landscape that users are growing more concerned with native apps’ speed and functionality, which is why more brands will transition to WPAs this year.

TechDogs’ Opinion: We bet there are a few applications in your smartphone that you haven't used in a while. However, they continue to take up space. Hence, we expect Progressive Web Applications will become the new standard for digital interactions in the coming years. We believe that in 2023, APIs for PWAs will be developed by businesses to transition to web apps that cater to better customer experiences. Moreover, software developers will work on combining these applications with Artificial Intelligence and online Predictive Analytics services to understand user behavior and tailor experiences based on insights. With the help of advanced PWA APIs, developers will integrate services and features that will be interoperable with contemporary native app frameworks. We think this is important so that customers don't find themselves in a completely new and unknown digital space. #MoveToWPAs 
 

Trend 3: Businesses Will Use Social Media As A Customer Service Channel

Why pick up a phone or compose an email when a tweet will get you a fast and helpful response? Yes, our next trend on the list is social media as a customer service channel. Social media has become an inevitable part of our lives. Its users had excellent communication and accessibility to them, which can help raise customer expectations quickly in real time. This year, we predict that the brands will invest more time and resources into their social customer care strategies as the number of people utilizing it for customer support will increase.

According to a survey by Sprout Social, 88% of customers prefer using social media for customer service over any other method and this number is likely to grow in 2023. This is probably because using social media to connect with businesses in a public setting enables customers to feel heard and valued. We have reached a stage where social media is a significant medium for brand-customer communication and where, at least among larger businesses, certain norms have been established.
Implementing social media customer care is worthwhile since it improves client experiences and your brand in significant ways. Your brand will eventually enhance customer satisfaction by enabling customers to contact you conveniently via the social media of their choosing, which lowers the cost of customer support compared to contacting the contact center.

TechDogs’ Opinion: In the digital world where everyone needs personalized experience, social media will come to the rescue of businesses to cater to customer support and service. We believe a significant driver of this trend will be social audio, as it enables users to have ease and convenience over writing emails or messages. This is primarily because conversational marketing plays a significant part in improving digital customer experiences.

In our opinion, one of the best methods to boost your brand's trust and personalize the customer experience this year will be to develop relationships with your customers through conversational social media interactions. With social audio and live video features, you will be able to give consumers a personalized touch to make them feel valued while raising the bar on digital interactions. #AreYouListeningOnSocialMedia?
 

Trend 4: Blockchain Will Revolutionize Customer Experiences

 
Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency. Blockchain

You’ve likely heard of these words in the news or online recently. However, unless you work in the banking sector, they probably don't play a big part in your daily tasks. Let's face it: Digital Customer Experience and financial technology don't frequently intersect. Yet, beyond its ability to offer improved financial experiences, blockchain technology will power digital customer experiences to completely new heights in 2023.

Enterprises across the globe seem to share this opinion. According to Gartner, the business value-addition of blockchain will grow to slightly more than $176 billion by 2025 and then it will exceed $3.1 trillion by 2030. Sounds exciting! Blockchain has a huge potential to improve Digital Customer Experience by helping customers with better access and privacy, holding companies more accountable and boosting data security in all forms of business-customer interactions.

The best part is blockchain is known for creating a decentralized system, which will enable consumers and businesses to interact directly. Blockchain will eliminate the need for third-party intermediaries, such as call centers or customer service reps, resulting in faster, more efficient and cost-effective customer service experiences. Moreover, blockchain-based customer services will create a more secure system for storing customer information, which generally has personal and sensitive data.

Consumers will be confident that the blockchain will preserve their personal information and prevent it from being accessed by outside parties when they supply it, such as credit card details or social security numbers. This will lower the possibility of identity theft or other online fraud and enhance consumer trust in the brand.

TechDogs’ Opinion: Blockchain technology is expanding at a rapid rate and it's no wonder businesses are adopting it this year for applications other than creating native cryptocurrencies. We feel when combined with blockchain, enterprise platforms such as CRMs and ERPs will significantly enhance digital customer experiences in 2023. By providing a secure environment to automate and encode business transactions and data while maintaining enterprise-level privacy for all participants, blockchain will revolutionize the way businesses work with customer data. We expect this integration to help innovate and develop solutions that benefit businesses by enhancing operational effectiveness, transforming the customer experience and adopting new business models that are safer, more private and decentralized. #DontBlockTheBlockchainRevolution
 

Trend 5: Video Will Remain Worth A Thousand Words

 
A video is no longer just a tool for advertising; it's a simple way to get your brand into people's homes (and minds!) without requiring them to interact with you. In recent years, video has been shown to be an effective tool for businesses to increase consumer connection, engagement and retention. It's time for businesses and brands to think about using video as a tool for improving the digital customer experience rather than just an inbound marketing or digital marketing approach.

Businesses are realizing that videos are not just another digital medium but a format that has the power to drive more eyeballs toward their business. According to a report by Kayako, 79% of businesses recommend live chat videos as a medium to provide customer service has a positive impact on sales, revenue and customer loyalty.

Video formats of interaction will also offer more intimate and personalized experiences when a company wants to engage with its potential customers. Video content will also become the standard to provide customer service, helping customers be seen and heard by a representative in real time. As a result, consumers will feel more valued and connected to the business, while helping the business enhance the experience it offers. Thus, improving the perception by offering a speedy, customized and human connection through video will make all the difference in 2023.

TechDogs’ Opinion: In an era where Reels and Shorts rule the digital space, businesses are also transitioning to video formats across services. We expect most brands to do the same for customer support and service, with video interactions offering higher customization, engagement and personalization. In 2023, we believe that businesses will look at ways to add video interactions across touchpoints to make customer experiences easy, quick and convenient. However, we also expect this to entail better training and instruction for agents on video communication norms. Businesses will be more aware of how their representatives are perceived on video chat, as the format will be more visual and reflect the company culture.
 

Conclusion

Digital Customer Experience Trends are driving businesses to engage with customers beyond selling the goods or services that customers purchase. Being aware of trends will enable businesses to personalize interactions, offer seamless issue resolution, round-the-clock customer support that empowers rather than stifles the customers and a non-intrusive, well-rounded, memorable digital customer experience.