Customer experience in 2018 so far

At the beginning of this year we set out some predictions for 2018. Let’s have a look back and see if our predictions are now reality.

CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS INCREASE

We predicted that customers were only going to become more and more demanding, and organisations must be prepared to keep up. In the digital age with so many channels readily available for customers, this prediction was obvious. But, organisations are still lagging behind in keeping up with the expectations of their customers – with many just thinking about the Customer Experience strategy. If you don’t work hard to dedicate time to closing the loop with customers, your competitors will.

SHIFT FROM TRANSACTIONAL TO EMOTIONAL LOYALTY

We also predicted customer engagement levels will focus on feelings, rather than the purchases that customers make. Advances in machine learning have allowed computer software to analyse customer input and determine customers’ emotions. These programs can listen in on phone calls, evaluate how a customer is feeling, and feed this information back to the customer service representative on the line in real-time so that the representative can respond accordingly based on that intelligence.

This is also happening now offline as well as online. Customer service teams are encouraged to personalise customer experiences by using previous customer behaviour to evoke a conversation or show gratitude to loyal customers by sending offers on their birthdays. By targeting messages relevant to different customer personas, organisations can tap into emotions and make them feel very valued, whilst ensuring those customers keep coming back.

FEEDBACK PLATFORMS PREDICT BEHAVIOUR

Finally, our prediction that feedback platforms will clearly map and predict customer behavioural patterns is certainly happening right now. It was forecast for 2018 that 10% of transactions will be predicted by CX software – intelligent platforms will bring together behaviours, emotions and comments and provide rich detail about customers and their spending patterns.

With the introduction of GDPR comes an opportunity for organisations to actually become clever with their data and begin to clearly map out behaviours. If organisations have the right level of trust, their customers will choose to share their new behaviours and preferences, knowing that they will protect and respect their personal data.

First published here