Top 5 Predictions for the Future of Consumers

Customer expectations are increasing, compelling businesses to reconsider their customer service strategies. Connected devices, digitization, plus artificial intelligence (AI) are all helping enterprises to better answer their consumers’ demands.

By MANSI DHORDA

By 2022, experts believe, 85 percent of customer support transactions will be conducted without the assistance of a human employee. However, as an omnichannel customer support environment evolves, it is vital for businesses to anticipate shifts in consumer expectations, engage in their people, and adapt their technology strategy appropriately.

From automated processes to self-service enablement for customers, here’s what companies, CEOs, and service professionals need to know about the future of customer service.

1. AI-Assisted Personalization of Customer Service

It’s no secret that artificial intelligence is reshaping how companies connect with their consumers. Microsoft expects that by 2025, AI will account for up to 95% of consumer interactions.

Sales and customer experience teams are using AI-enabled commercial VoIP services to swiftly respond to client inquiries and enhance communication. The transportation sector is anticipating upheaval as a result of autonomous vehicles. In finance, financial institutions use AI to provide individualized product and service recommendations to people. It’s evolving at a breakneck pace, and companies must keep up to be competitive.

With AI, companies can be instantly accessible to their consumers at any point in their journeys. Utilizing AI enables organizations to get a deeper understanding of their consumers and create a superior customer experience, resulting in more conversions and lower cart abandonment.

One of the most significant customer experience trends now underway is the difficulty customer support teams are having managing an increase in service calls, emails, as well as social media questions. Customer service organizations may use AI to solve low-level support problems in real-time and to collect preliminary data for live agents prior to their involvement. As a consequence, wait times are reduced and consumers are less annoyed.

2. The Future Is Omnichannel

A successful customer experience strategy has become more complicated, with 51% of organizations using at least 8 channels for customer service alone. This isn’t surprising as many customers have moved online thanks to fast-speed internet and multiple platforms. However, many organizations are still adjusting to new tactics for delivering digital customer service and refining their customer experience efforts in order to meet client expectations in a virtual arena.

As customer experience businesses adopt critical customer experience innovations for 2022, they must prioritize offering a seamless, multichannel customer experience in order to nurture brand equity and boost sales.

Consumers want consistent and highly tailored interactions with companies across a variety of digital platforms. For instance, individuals may begin communicating with a company on Twitter then continue the engagement via e-mail. They’ll anticipate a unified and integrated experience regardless of the platform.

From the beginning to the final point of contact, an effective omnichannel CX smoothly connects online and physical communication channels to provide a cohesive and memorable experience.

When a customer base interacts with a company via phone, e-mail, online chat, social networking sites, and SMS, in addition to offline interactions, a cohesive customer experience is critical.

In 2022 and beyond, we’ll see more firms accelerate their digital transformation by using immediate communication to eliminate friction across the customer journey, and by leveraging customer data to tailor the customer experience. As companies prepare their customer experience strategies for 2022, we can anticipate significant changes as brands adapt to an omnichannel customer care approach with increasing virtual help.

3. Integrating Data into the Consumer Experience

Businesses are increasingly conscious of the importance of consumer data in influencing business results and return on investment. Customers want tailored, in-the-moment online experiences, emphasizing the need for real-time data insights.

Currently, predictive analytics enables merchants to enhance their profit margins by up to 60%. This amount is expected to climb as AI advances in capability.

Brands gather transactional, behavioral, and sensor data to create a customer ID that helps them achieve their business objectives. This client data is critical for determining how well their CX performs and how well it does not perform.

Businesses are getting deeper consumer insights via the collection of transactional data, the analysis of customer behavior, and the segmentation of personas. Once all of this data has been gathered and saved, predictive analytics may assist firms in determining if they are meeting or exceeding their goals.

As organizations continue to gather relevant data in order to create an Omni-touch, real-time environment that empowers consumers to feel valued and appreciated, this will become one of the CX developments in 2022 that will persist for years.

4. Remote Customer Service

Customer support services have indeed been able to enhance operations online due to recent technological improvements. This has altered not just best practices and initiatives, but also the expectations of consumers. 

This tendency has a significant influence on organizations, workers, and, maybe unintentionally, consumers. Remote employment provides several advantages for all involved. Businesses may save considerable amounts of money on rent plus technology, as well as a recruit from a more varied pool of people. 

On the other hand, workers may work remotely (even from their beds) and significantly minimize commuting time. No surprise the majority of individuals who try remote work wouldn’t want to return!

Adapting to this adjustment might be difficult. Remote teams must acquire new skills in order to provide excellent customer support from their residences or coworking spaces. Additionally, they must identify tactical strategies to simplify project cooperation and data and customer data sharing.

As customer service moves to the cloud, customer support teams will be able to confront problems in providing an exceptional CX without stepping foot in the workplace, but it is achievable with the correct technology that enables remote collaboration and monitoring.

5. Faster Internet For Less Cost

Establishing cellular bases in rural areas is expensive and inefficient. Low orbit satellites offer a cheaper, more flexible solution. They’re able to provide islands of connectivity, so networks can deploy directly where the customers are, rather than rolling out across a county in a linear fashion. Also, launching new satellites can be launched to address the increased needs. As the internet becomes more widely available, it will add billions of newly connected “netizens” shifting the internet in terms of content and culture. We have already seen this shift happening with the introduction of 5G. 

Conclusion

That concludes our list of 5 consumer experience trends to watch in 2022. These developments are being fueled by significant improvements in artificial intelligence and data collecting, the benefits of an omnichannel strategy, and a worldwide move toward remote labor. We’re likely to see more progress in these areas in the future, which would continue to influence and enhance CX.

Mansi Dhorda is a Marketing Technology Consultant, helping clients and businesses achieve their objectives. You can connect with her at Linkedin.