We had previously looked at trends for the year ahead in business communications, and a key feature driving these changes was the need to enable better conversations between organisations and their customers. With this in mind, here are some of the trends gaining in traction that businesses can harness in order to further improve the customer experience – including increased personalisation, improved convenience, multiple payment options and more.
Personalisation
Personalisation is not new in itself, organisations have long used a variety of business strategies that pursue either operational excellence, product leadership or customer intimacy – or all three combined but with a main focus on one aspect. But today more customers than ever are demanding personalisation and competing on price and product alone is not good enough, with a recent report showing that a third of customers left due to a lack of personalised interactions with the brand.
Creating personalised interactions can include using the right data to identify customers, including their past history of interactions with the brand and reducing customer efforts through intuitive data segmentation as well as providing recommendations based on previous purchases. They can also turn to digital enablement whereby routine and repetitive transactions are handled by self-service channels with live agents focusing on customer care.
Tackling this challenge will require that there is alignment between organisational goals and their personalisation strategy and that departmental silos are broken down. Only then will they begin to understand their customers better and determine the right strategy to serve them in a more meaningful manner.
Omni channel
Taking the omni channel approach is key to creating seamless experiences for customers who are engaging with an organisation. Conversations between people and brands are now taking place across multiple digital channels and having a single intelligent platform that synchronises these disparate channels becomes key. Some of the crucial elements to offering exceptional omnichannel customer experience includes identifying the preferred touchpoints, investing in the right tools, and personalising engagements across all channels.
Then, they have to map customer journeys (which will be reworked or customised as personalisation comes into play), track customer experience metrics in order to gauge improvements. Finally, there is a need to integrate these engagements into their customer relationship management (CRM) systems, allowing organisations to build a fuller picture of their customers and agents to interact with customers in a more personalised manner.
Chatbots and instant messaging
There is a growing preference from consumers for website chat, and the ability to engage in live conversation with human agents, or chatbots that can provide some level of automated assistance has been around for a while now. However, with developments in artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are capable of doing far more than before. Tools such as Chat GPT, which have risen to prominence, are an example of how this technology is growing in maturity and potentially at the start of a new S-curve that sees increased adoption.
Video content
The proliferation of mobile devices and improved affordability of connectivity has gone together with the sharp rise in consumption of video content. The smartest product or service stories can be told through short video for quick wins, while video can also be used in areas such as product demos and testimonials or case studies in order to enhance the customer experience. Video content can also be edited and used across multiple platforms for broader visibility.
Speed and convenience
Customers are placing more importance on speed and convenience and businesses will have to focus on how to make the customer journey as quick and seamless as possible, for example through features such as single sign-on options, one-click checkout and fast delivery options. A significant number of consumers have abandoned a purchase because the service wasn’t convenient enough, showing that eCommerce players need to compete on more than just price.
Social proof
It can be seen that the latest cohort of young people, Gen Z, place far more importance on recommendations or references from peers over information from other sources when it comes to making purchasing decisions – and are also using social media to share their views. Brands will have to look at ways in which best to utilise these customer reviews, ratings from across a variety of digital platforms, as well as social media mentions in order to build trust and credibility with potential customers.
More ‘as-a-service’
We are increasingly seeing that the subscriptions or a recurring billing model is being embedded into more of the services that people consume, including now for media, entertainment and more – they are also looking to pay one price and then get everything included. This is especially appealing for businesses that provide certain kinds of services, as it eliminates the barriers to consumption that previously existed in the form of high upfront costs.
This model does not work as well for all kinds of businesses, though eCommerce players are also exploring ways of bringing additional or exclusive benefits to their customers in return for a subscription.
Is your business looking for multichannel or omnichannel platform that synchronises voice, video and chat in order to enable better quality customer conversations? Get in touch with us today.
By David Meintjes, CEO at Telviva.
