Customers expect to be able to move across multiple channels throughout the shopping experience , and they expect to be able to go wherever it leads them. It begins with the initial point of contact and continues even after they have achieved their goal.
Intelligent Conversation
Adopting conversational platforms to build chatbots and virtual assistants is becoming essential. By 2026, one in 10 agent interactions will be automated, an increase from an estimated 1.6% of interactions today, using artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics technology to deliver deeply personalized journey engagement. Conversational AI is expected to be transformational to customer service, with significant cost savings and reduced serving time benefits. 2
Emphatic Listening
In today's experience age, digital interactions are becoming more intuitive and human-like. Brands can drive positive purchasing decisions and deeper customer relationships by consciously building emotional connections and providing empathy. Emotion AI is an emerging technology that analyzes and processes customer emotions to progress from predictive engagement to prescriptive action. 3
Contextual Offerings
The explosion of data accelerates time to market. Brands can be at an advantage by understanding customer needs and offering what they may need through real-time contextual computing including customer intelligence analytics and location technologies.
O2O Experience
Customers easily engage across multiple channels, from awareness to action, and frequently fail to distinguish between online and brick-and-mortar shopping. In exchange, brands should strive for meaningful omnichannel engagements and provide a truly seamless selling, serving, fulfilling, and delivering experience. This includes increasing the convenience and ease of shopping via a website, mobile app, or e-commerce platform, as well as continuously serving, even if they switch channels in the middle of a request or start, stop, and restart a request in-store. The O2O experience is becoming popular and receptive, it should be digital first but not exclusively digital.
CX is being driven by digital and data, which enables innovation, personalization, engagement, and next-best actions. The groundwork has been laid for a competitive differentiator delivered through customer-centric efforts to design the CX strategy. Recognizing what and how technologies fit into end-to-end customer journeys will aid in the discovery of opportunities that inspire customer satisfaction and loyalty.
