The Five Trends Shaping Customer Experience Today

Are you keeping track on what’s happening in the world of customer experience? Our guide to the five CX trends that matter will ensure you stay ahead of the curve.

The benefits of a robust customer experience (CX) strategy are clear. By understanding how your customers interact with your brand you can positively impact your bottom line.

Customer mapping is a crucial, yet relatively new, component of the CX conundrum. Here we look at the five emerging trends set to dictate how the experience and mapping agendas will alter over the coming years.

1) The Machines are Learning –According to Gartner, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will power 95% of customer interactions by 2025. This startling statistic – inspired by brands looking to reduce costs and increase productivity – makes clear the impending shift towards machines making decisions on behalf of brands.

Bots, intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs) and Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled devices are paving the way for machines to take over the way brands interact with customers. Are you ready?

2) Personalization –More of a continuing trend, rather than an emerging one, personalization is much more than knowing your customer’s first name and creating an Outlook macro.

Indeed, customers are becoming more demanding in this area and brands that don’t wake up to the need to personalize communications across all channels will soon fall behind.

Travel brands for example, armed with customer data, have the opportunity to differentiate themselves by customizing experiences on websites and at destinations such as airports and hotels.

3) Mobile –Just as being digital-first is no longer good enough for a brand, being mobile-first is now expected.

It’s another growing trend and one that is having a significant impact in the travel industry as customers use smartphones and tablets to perform research and make bookings.

4) Voice –Transformations in machine learning and mobile technology have also paved the way for the increase in popularity of voice-controlled search assistants. The likes of Siri, Alexa, Cortana and Google Assistant have entered the modern lexicon as personal PAs. As more of these devices infiltrate the market and home, brands must begin to plan accordingly.

5) Shorter journeys –The competition for the customer’s dollar is a fierce one – especial in travel. As brands search for their point of differentiation the trend is in reducing the number of touchpoints that customers experience as they move down the sales funnel.

As the combined effect of cleaner data and improved technologies enables brands to better understand buying behaviour so this trend will benefit both the end customer and the business.

Mapp Cloud showcases our commitment to providing marketers with the tools they need to create the ultimate digital experience. For more information on how to do this click here.

And to learn why creating the ultimate digital experience for the travel consumer is so important download our infographic here.

Or contact us now if you’d like to find out how our team can help.

This article was first published by MAPP. Permission to use has been granted by the publisher.