It’s clear that customer expectations keep changing over the next few years, as well as technologies keep getting more advanced. These changes will affect how organizations work and how they manage their customer’s experience (CX).
Gartner research on the future of work is useful for leaders to strategize how their organizations and their employees can keep up.
What are 3 main customer experience trends?
- The “everything customer” will challenge employee problem solving skills in a positive way.
- “Total experience” elevates the role of the employee in delivering great experiences.
- Machine customers will change the way we think about customers and how to serve them.
What strategies should businesses employ for best practice customer experience?
Leaders should empower employees to find solutions and make decisions focused on the customers satisfaction. Gartner states that companies should provide a simple, flexible and responsive user experience (UX).
Gartner has predicted that by 2030, at least 25% of all purchasing decisions will be delegated to machines. So, leaders need to ensure the “digital workplace application portfolio can support selling to, marketing to and serving machine customers by prioritizing capabilities such as self-service, artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) and the ability to transition between omnichannel modes.”
Also, an important part is to create employee experience journey maps to visualize moments that matter to both customers and employees.
Strategic planning assumptions for 2022
Gartner makes specific assumptions on these trends, such as the below:
- “By 2026, basic buying and selling experiences will be commoditized, and businesses will differentiate based on connected customer and employee experiences.”
- “By 2026, 60% of large enterprises will use total experience to transform their business models to achieve world-class customer and employee advocacy levels.”
- “By 2030, a billion requests for customer service will be raised automatically by company- owned bots.”
So, not only is the customer experience (CX) changing but also employee experiences and the ways that employees get work done. Major changes in how companies manage their customer relationships have been brought on by the pandemic, as new customer behaviors have been created, and new technologies have advanced.
There’s no doubt that in order to create an amazing customer experience, positive employees are needed. As Gartner states: “When CX and EX are disconnected, it often leads to upset employees and upset customers.”
Gartner states that “as many as 80% of B2B organizations and 65% of B2C organizations are at the beginning stages of CX maturity”.
This means there is plenty of opportunity to change mindsets and do a better job of connecting the future of work to the future of the CX.
The everything customer
Gartner predicts that: “By 2026, basic buying and selling experiences will be commoditized, and businesses will differentiate based on connected customer and employee experiences.”
What is the “everything customer”?
According to Gartner it’s a mindset: “The everything customer is a mindset — a growing set of attitudes that we see emerging due to technology and the continuous actions of digital giants and other bold companies that use customer insight to do amazing things. It is based on the idea that digital technology has created a customer who wants seemingly conflicting things at the same time.
For example, a customer may want all the features in a mobile application while also wanting it to be easy to use, wanting personalized attention while being treated like everyone else, and wanting to be simultaneously connected and left alone. To customers, wanting opposing things at the same time is perfectly normal, but it does create dilemmas for all types of organizations seeking to serve them”.
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FAQs
What are 3 main customer experience trends?
- The “everything customer” will challenge employee problem solving skills in a positive way.
- “Total experience” elevates the role of the employee in delivering great experiences.
- Machine customers will change the way we think about customers and how to serve them.
What strategies should businesses employ for best practice customer experience?
Leaders should empower employees to find solutions and make decisions focused on the customers satisfaction. Gartner states that companies should provide a simple, flexible and responsive user experience (UX).
Gartner has predicted that by 2030, at least 25% of all purchasing decisions will be delegated to machines. So, leaders need to ensure the “digital workplace application portfolio can support selling to, marketing to and serving machine customers by prioritizing capabilities such as self-service, artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) and the ability to transition between omnichannel modes.”
What is the “everything customer”?
According to Gartner it’s a mindset: “The everything customer is a mindset — a growing set of attitudes that we see emerging due to technology and the continuous actions of digital giants and other bold companies that use customer insight to do amazing things. It is based on the idea that digital technology has created a customer who wants seemingly conflicting things at the same time.
For example, a customer may want all the features in a mobile application while also wanting it to be easy to use, wanting personalized attention while being treated like everyone else, and wanting to be simultaneously connected and left alone. To customers, wanting opposing things at the same time is perfectly normal, but it does create dilemmas for all types of organizations seeking to serve them”.
Gartner, Future of Work Trends: Top 3 Customer Experience Trends, Don Scheibenreif, Tori Paulman, 18 October 2021
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