In today’s diverging world, customer experience (CX) is creating a new benchmark for almost all industries to rely upon it. CX is not just limited to delivering product or services to the customers and generating revenue. It has now expanded to delighting your customers every time in their purchase journey as it is more important not only for the brand image but also for the brand value. 

To offer seamless customer experience, brands need to focus on new 4E’s of CX:

• ENABLE – Omnichannel services to enable better preference for customers
• EXCITING – Overwhelming the customers with personalized values
• EXPERIENCE – Keeping the core value of providing smooth and effortless delivery 
• EVERY TIME – Availability on every step on demand

CX forms a direct heart connection/relationship between businesses and their customers. Typically, when everyone talks about CX they mean the traditional concepts of sales & marketing and connecting them with consumers via front desk interaction along with the customer journey. For example: fancy and attractive stores for the sales of products with attentive staff reflects look good-sell good format. 

But after the Covid 19 pandemic, CX has bloomed as a new differentiator in the market and truly emerged as a stronger pillar for any business. Businesses start regulating their offerings with online concepts and adopting new technologies to provide digital customer experience (DCX). For more understanding of this new and emerging demand of customers; let us try to understand what current meaning of customer experience is and its importance. 

A great customer experience (CX) is how the business is engaging with their consumers via their marketing, sales and customer services throughout the customer buying journey at each step and get connected with them for their solution. This process is termed as end-to-end CX which is divided into two phases: Primary (direct customer experience) and Secondary (Auxiliary customer experience) which includes each department of the business and not just those historically viewed as customer facing. 

The Primary Phase comprises of the Brand Experience (BX), User Experience (EX) and Physical Experience (PX). While the Secondary Phases includes Service Experience and Employee Experience to create complete human-centric experience brands that need customer experience consulting to execute seamless customer experience and ensure that it yields good investment results. 

According to a report by McKinsey & company,’70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated.’

Importance of Good Customer Experience for Business

According to the Gartner 89% of companies surveyed by Gartner consider customer experience to be the new competitive battlefield.

• Reduce churn 
• Increase revenue and sales 
• Gain competitive advantage 
• Increase loyalty and retention 
• Increase advocacy and referrals

New Bent in CX to Embrace New Height

1. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: Adoption of AI-powered orchestration will help brands to reshape the customer experience. According to the finding of Deloitte, 56% of contact center leaders are leveraging AI and stated that it is our focus point, and they are ready to adopt and board the digital customer experience. 

In today’s hyperlinked era, DCX is the business prerequisite. Digital relationship with customers is a new demand of the market. Organization who are proactively connecting with the customers based on advance and predictive analysis throughout business channels will increase the business efficiency and by streamlining the AI-ML, the brands will become more profitable and productive.

2. Use of Omni-Channels: After the lockdown in 2019 the use of mobile and social media is hyped in the Gen Z and millennials who are available online more. This customer segment more frequently swaps between apps, emails, social media, and websites. So, ignoring the fact and not providing omnichannel support is not an option now.  This generation looks for quick, accurate and crips information which can be available on their preferred channels (channel of choice). To provide frictionless and seamless customer experience the brands have to collate omnichannel experience in the front to deliver customized service: consistency and clarity across all the channels.

According to Zendesk’s Customer Experience Trends Report 2021, customer service must be more potential, fast, and friendly. Hence, now the services should be more relevant and responsive towards the customers’ unique preferences. On the roadmap of achieving this, companies are offering omnichannel support and multichannel platforms that help brands to establish customer engagement via their choice of channels.

3. Human-centric CX Architecture: Customers have always been kept as the central point while devising any CX strategy. Curating values according to customers increases business chances of growth. Customer will likely be returning and providing more business if the customer journey is smooth and effortless. It is here that customer experience consulting helps in personalizing values for every customer. This would be difficult thus it requires a lot of interaction and understanding from the company’s side. However, certain simple steps can help to achieve it. For instance:

• creating a form based on possible preferences
• generating a survey at the end of sales
• adding self-help channels like chatbot, live agent, and confirm 24*7 service providing customer grievances redressal helpline 

According to the Personalization increases marketing spend efficiency by as much as 30% next few years by 2025 – McKinsey & Company.

4. Metaverse in CX: Tech has always been a catalyst in enhancing customer experience worldwide; be it choosing products from vendors overseas to provide after sales services remotely. Metaverse is the virtual playground which is said to be very lively and takes customer interaction to another level. It is achieved by utilizing AR (Augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) and internet. It is said by the year 2026, Metaverse will transform CX in the same way e-commerce shook up retail in the 1990s and mobile reimagined social interactions in the early 2000s.

25% of people will expend at least of one hours every day by 2026 on Metaverse reported by Gartner.  So, this a big new market for brands. Some companies are now developing strategic ways to embrace metaverse in CX. According to a Citi research report. The Metaverse may increase up to worth of the $13 trillion by 2030, with almost 5 billion total userbase.