As we enter another new year, we are stepping into a whole new era of customer experience. It is defined by digital-first, data-infused interactions that also are transforming the way we work and live.
Think about it. Our mobile phones contain and curate our carefully crafted worlds and manage our multimedia lives. Many of us refer to them as our brains. They orchestrate our interests, identify our needs, conduct our commerce, coordinate our connections, monitor our heartbeats, and fulfill almost all our desires—billions and even trillions of interactions generating infinite streams of data, all happening everywhere, all the time, all at once.
The result is a global datasphere that's expected to reach more than 175 zettabytes by 2025. And all that data is key to unlocking the secret to customer satisfaction. Every interaction is informed by unseen constellations of morphing algorithms, carefully calibrated to give us exactly what we want, when we want it, before we are even know we want it.
The reality is that customers expect businesses to know as much about them as they do. Perhaps, more. A recent Gartner survey confirmed that 86 percent of B2B customers expect companies to be well-informed about their personal information during service interactions. Indeed, this is a brave, new era where consumer demands for privacy, security, and intimate brand connections are inextricably intertwined.
That puts the CX industry leaders at the center of cultural transformation. We are now tasked with rapidly elevating all previously held notions of exceptional customer service to keep up with accelerating customer expectations. And the impact on businesses is seismic, triggering an urgent imperative to catch up, to digitally optimize every customer interaction every time, no matter where, when, or how it happens.
That means marketing, sales, and service functions must merge into a reconfigured, fully integrated, AI-powered approach to doing business that more effectively manages digitally enabled customer relationships. In fact, research by NICE found that more than 80 percent of customers start their journeys through digital channels rather than through in-person interactions. And most of their inquiries begin with a Google search.
As companies begin to adopt artificial intelligence tools to navigate their digital frontiers, here are some key trends to consider in 2023:
Empowering the Intent Economy
The most potent differentiator for companies will be the ability to use AI to identify intents before they become needs. Leaders in this category will operationalize their data more effectively, learning to put insights to work across siloes, warehouses, and platforms as they recognize that the voice of the customer is not limited to voice calls, but is also derived from the web, chat, social, and multiple digital touchpoints. These companies will harness the power of AI and automation to optimize every customer experience in real time as they learn from every interaction.
As an example, airlines will increase their investment in digital self-service by 30 percent over the next year to avoid future disruption and customer frustration. Over the next five years, many airlines will eliminate voice interactions completely, as Frontier Airlines recently announced, to push consumers to interact through digital channels only.
Harnessing the Cloud
In addition to AI, the ability to deliver effective customer experiences in the new era of CX will rest in the adoption and implementation of agile cloud-native platforms that can scale to enhance CX sophistication and customization.
While patching together a complicated tech stack of solutions and/or APIs has served as a CX Band-Aid, the concept of a SuiteForm, or single platform solution, will play an increasingly significant role. These two concepts will merge, consolidating point applications with a complete, scalable cloud platform to deliver a new standard of cost-effective customer experience made easy.
Supersizing Interactions
Imagine a digital world of super interactions with multiple companies engaged within a single interaction. As all interactions go digital, communication barriers will tumble, ushering in an intricate partnership model for companies to offer better, bundled experiences. Companies will join forces to win business, trading competition for convergence.
Furthermore, channels as we know them will dissolve as the customer journey becomes a new, data-optimized landscape of proactive and often asynchronous interactions. Ultimately, customers will spend more money and time with fewer companies; winners will prioritize proactive service and building relationships across multiple interactions and timelines. Quality, function, and service will no longer be enough.
Personalizing Chatbots
As chatbots get faster and smarter, companies will offer customized virtual reality assistants to meet and assist customers wherever they are, anytime, anywhere. Moving away from one-size-fits-all, prefab experiences, intelligence will prevail as companies leverage historical CX data to satisfy needs one on one and in real time with personal virtual assistants who will customize every interaction.
Navigating Workforce Changes
As the competition for top talent becomes more urgent and job candidates become increasingly motivated to choose only employers that align with their lifestyle preferences, employee experience will be as critical as customer experience. Going forward, company culture and values will be as important as what they sell.
For employers, this will require treating agents as talent who command commensurate compensation for technical, interpersonal, and management skills and expertise. These trends might compel some companies to rely on smaller workforces, which are more selective about what they do and how they do it. Flexibility, autonomy, and mobility will be paramount. Investments will shift to technologies that can replace labor activities at a time of increasing shortage and shifting work-life balance expectations.
As a new year and a new era of CX dawn, the concept of customer service likely will become an anachronism. Proactivity will overtake response as real-time satisfaction becomes the norm in concierge-style brand relationships that are no longer reserved for luxury or premium labels.
It is time to flip the CX script. And it is only possible with the technology to predict every need before it happens. This will be the new business baseline.
Barry Cooper is president of the CX Division at NICE.