Are brands ramping up their investment in AI and CX personalization? 夜色视频 Market Research teamed up with CXPA to conduct global research on the current state of CX personalization 鈥� and we discovered some intriguing trends and insights.

Thanks to smarter AI, brands can now better personalize interactions with their customers on a larger scale, with the potential to make every experience tailored to individual preferences. The possibilities are endless 鈥� and this is just the beginning.听

With certain personalization technology (like ) being so new, it鈥檚 fair to ask: Are the world鈥檚 leading brands staying ahead of these trends? And what does this look like for the practitioners who need to gain executive buy-in and implement this new generation of CX personalization?聽

To explore these questions further, our 夜色视频 Market Research team recently partnered with the to look into the current state of personalization among brands worldwide. This research, combined with , has shown us that there鈥檚 still a huge opportunity for brands to greatly improve the level of personalization they deliver to their customers 鈥� and why it鈥檚 worth the investment.

Let鈥檚 dive into the research.

Which types of CX personalization should brands focus on?

To start, let鈥檚 look at what consumers think of the level of personalization that they see in their buying journeys. , we鈥檝e discovered that these elements improve consumer satisfaction the most:

• Continuity of knowledge, or the seamless recall of the customer鈥檚 history and requests across channels and service interactions, without needing to provide the same information over again
• Rewards and recognition, or value-based appreciation based on customer loyalty status and milestones
• Flexibility of service, or service channel and payment methods options, plus forgiveness for deviating from the ideal process for payments and returns

As consumers ourselves, we鈥檝e all experienced the joy of an effortless transaction with a brand, whether it鈥檚 with a healthcare provider, retail store, airline, or hotel 鈥� but if you suspect these highly personalized experiences are still rather rare in most industries, you鈥檇 be correct! 贬别谤别鈥檚 how consumers rank personalization across industries:

And brands know this 鈥� only 24% of CX practitioners believe their personalization capabilities are high, similar to how .听

Now let鈥檚 explore some of the other interesting findings from our research.

3 key takeaways from the 2024 State of Personalization report

1. Advanced CX personalization is associated with higher revenue potential

CX leaders who reported their brand鈥檚 personalization capabilities being the

highest are two times as likely to achieve major revenue growth (10%+) than brands that report their capabilities lower.

Many of these brands believe they at least deliver baseline personalization, reporting that their capabilities are higher for personalized content and recommendations (63%) and experience orchestration (55%), than for other popular customer experience capabilities like predictive churn modeling (47%), next best action (44%), and generative AI customer communications (33%).

2. CX professionals say improving personalization is their top priority this year

Brands are getting privy to the importance of tailoring experiences for customers: Personalization is the number one business priority in 2024.听

Other plans they鈥檙e considering, including making better use of existing data sources and improving generative AI, can contribute to improving CX personalization, but overall these leaders believe delivering more personalization is imperative 鈥� even over optimizing advertising spend or new product development.听

3. More brands are investing in AI than last year

Over a third of CX leaders, including smaller companies under $25m in annual revenue, say their organization will be making significant AI investments for 2024, which is a notable increase over last year.听

And while public discourse is still abuzz about generative AI, these leaders are also recognizing AI鈥檚 potential in other use cases, such as , automating actioning for customer interactions (31%), and segmenting their customer base (25%).听

Is your organization investing in CX personalization?

No matter where your brand is on the CX personalization maturity curve, it can be helpful 鈥� if not downright illuminating 鈥� to explore the current sentiment of similar practitioners, across industries and geographies. Many face similar obstacles when driving forward personalization, like budget constraints and concerns about process change disruption.听

Understanding the current state of CX personalization can help drive change within your organization. Go ahead and dig deeper into the 夜色视频 Market Research and CXPA report:The 2024 State of CX Personalization

The post Exploring the State of CX Personalization appeared first on 夜色视频 Customer and Employee Experience Blog.

The top consumer trends impacting customer experience in 2024 are being shaped by inflation, digital channels, and evolving lifestyles.

What are the latest consumer trends that brands need to know about in 2024? For answers, 夜色视频 Market Research conducted a survey of 2,000 consumers and an analysis of the credit and debit transactions of 8 million U.S. consumers to find out what changes we can expect to see across customer spending and savings, dining, ordering, travel, shopper journeys, product discovery, content streaming, and more in the year ahead.

惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 Head of Market Research Insights, , revealed the latest findings from this study in a report: . He shared that this year consumer behavior is being shaped by three major forces: macroeconomic influences like inflation, technology 鈥斅爄ncluding generative AI and digital channels 鈥� and evolving lifestyles.

In this article we鈥檒l share the highlights of this presentation, including the top 18 consumer trends impacting customer experience we鈥檙e seeing unfold in 2024 and what brands can do to adapt in line with changing consumer behavior, interests, and preferences.听

Top 18 Consumer Trends in 2024

1. For the fourth year in a row, price is the number #1 factor driving household purchase decisions, but fewer consumers are citing cost as their top concern compared to in 2022 and 2023.

In 2021, 鈥渃hange in prices鈥� was a top influence shaping purchasing behavior for roughly one-third of adults in 2021.

鈥淏y the time we got to mid 2022 and early 2023, though, this number had jumped up dramatically, and this was in the face of the heaviest periods of inflation,鈥� explains Custage. 鈥淲hat we have seen over the past year, though, is that this number has receded back down to near where it was in 2021. It still is the top-ranked factor individually, but it's shrunk as far as how often it's cited, and it's now once again at around a third of households that are selecting it as one of the choices.鈥�

The uptick in 2022 to 2023 and now downtrend in 2024 follows the rise and fall of the rate of inflation rate itself. The main takeaway for brands: Inflation and high prices are still important for consumers, but not as influential as they used to be.

2. As consumers have adjusted to inflation, consumer transaction volume is down slightly, while spend per transaction has remained steady.

What we鈥檙e seeing unfold is a mix of prices settling down, paired with shoppers either slightly easing up on the number of items purchased per transaction or trading down and purchasing cheaper alternatives in place of the products they鈥檇 normally buy.听

3. Some consumers may be racking up debt to get by, but it might not be a growing problem.

The majority of consumers (66%) say they鈥檙e finding ways to cut back on non-essential spend. Meanwhile 41% say they鈥檝e increased their income to compensate, such as by landing a new job or promotion or taking on extra hours.听

Roughly one-third of consumers are in the position of having to save less or take on more debt to compensate for rising costs. Though this behavior isn鈥檛 sustainable, Custage doesn鈥檛 see this trend ultimately affecting economic growth for three key reasons:

• The proportion of respondents who say they're dipping into their savings or adding on more debt isn鈥檛 growing 鈥� this percent has remained relatively steady for the past two years.听
• Retail activity remains fairly unchanged, as illustrated in trend #2 above. In other words, there haven鈥檛 been the kinds of cutbacks in spending that are drastic enough to lead to a recession.听
• When we surveyed consumers this year about their debt over the past 12 months and whether it鈥檚 grown or declined, the percent of consumers who say they have more debt than they used to is roughly equal to the percent who say they have less debt.听

4. As inflation persists, consumers are adjusting their purchases and focusing on essentials vs. nice-to-haves.

The biggest differences consumers cited between their spending in 2022 and 2023 were that they made lifestyle changes to reduce their purchases and that they learned to accept higher prices and plan financially based on these expenses.听

鈥淐onsumers have just gotten used to what the new normal is and their behavior has adjusted accordingly and, to some extent, permanently,鈥� says Custage.听

As part of this trend toward adjusting spending, consumers appear to be favoring retailers that offer need-to-have items, he adds.

The winners are ecommerce platforms, grocery stores, dollar stores, and club retailers, and the ones that are trending downwards fall into categories like leisure, home improvement, and fitness.听

5. Despite cost concerns, consumers aren鈥檛 cutting back on dining out.

Spending on food is one of the biggest expenses for individuals, and, with rising inflation, many thought consumers would cut back on dining out as a 鈥渘ice to have鈥� as well and instead shift to spending on groceries.听

鈥淲e really haven't seen that trend play out, and a lot of it can be due to the built-in convenience and time savings of restaurants that turn many consumers away from groceries regardless of what prices are,鈥� Custage explains, adding that the rate of inflation was also higher for groceries in 2022 to 2023 compared to restaurant food. 鈥淎nd that helped at least restaurants win the sticker shock concerns that consumers would experience when seeing how much grocery prices had gone up and just turn them away from that and towards restaurants, even if the cost per meal is still higher at a restaurant.鈥�

As a result, the balance of the share of wallet between grocery stores and restaurants hasn鈥檛 changed much due to inflation. And the rate of switching from dining at costlier full-service restaurants to dining out at more budget-friendly fast casual establishments has been modest.听

鈥淭here鈥檚 been a little bit of a trade-down effect where more often if people are buying restaurant food, they're going to turn to quick service and fast casual instead of casual dining or family dining or sit-down dining, where it's a little more expensive per meal,鈥� he says.

In response, restaurants have rolled out some pretty creative strategies, such as Applebee鈥檚 launching a subscription model offering guests greater savings per visit.听

6. Today鈥檚 shopper is conducting more research before making a purchase.

To adapt to inflation, consumers are more likely to price compare the cost of buying the same product at different stores, the same product online vs. in person, an off-brand item vs. the brand-name version, and an item second hand vs. new.

鈥淎s consumers are becoming a little bit savvier, I think a big takeaway for restaurants, retailers, hospitality, and anybody else in the space is to be more aware of the shopper journey and what's visible to consumers in terms of price, being cognizant of whether you're competing on price to begin with or if you're competing on another attribute like experience, value, service speed, or product quality,鈥� says Custage.听

For brands that are losing out on price, they need to make sure they鈥檙e differentiated in another way to win over increasingly savvy and discerning consumers.听

7. Generative AI is becoming part of the shopper journey.

More than one-third of Millennials and Gen Zers say they鈥檝e used artificial intelligence for ideas about what to buy or where to shop.听

While there may not be much that retailers can do right now to try and improve their standings within the results AI tools produce, this new consumer trend is important to be aware of, one that will undoubtedly grow over time, explains Custage. It鈥檚 also worth noting that there鈥檚 some level of consumer comfort with engaging with AI to assist with shopping and retail decision-making, a trend that brands could ultimately use to adapt their strategies and offerings on their owned channels.

8. Consumers are noticing the increased pressure to tip 鈥� even in situations where tipping wasn鈥檛 previously expected 鈥� and the cuts companies are making that are having a negative impact on the customer experience.

Most consumers observe that there鈥檚 a greater pressure to tip these days and that there have been changes for the worse to the customer experience and customer service companies offer as a result of cutbacks, with retailers, restaurants, and airlines cited as the worst customer service offenders in 2024.听

9. Consumers say they鈥檙e more likely to speak out about negative customer experiences.

More than three in five consumers (62%) say that they鈥檙e more willing to speak up when a company provides them with a poor experience in 2024.听

In response, brands should collect customer feedback through internal channels to learn from these insights and adapt their strategies accordingly. Companies that aren鈥檛 proactive run the risk of customers sharing their poor experiences on public forums, which could impact their overall brand reputation and turn potential customers away.听

10. Buy-now, pay-later鈥檚 growth continues to soar 鈥斅爊ot just as a payment option, but in shaping the entire customer journey.

These payment platforms, which have grown by 20X over the last five years, influence the brands that customers decide to shop with and where they make purchases, based on the availability of third-party buy-now, pay-later partners, says Custage. For many, the shopping process starts with seeing where their preferred payment option is accepted or whether platforms like Klarna or Afterpay are offering promotions or deals.听

11. Third-party ordering platforms have become a permanent part of the digital retail and restaurant customer journey.

Collectively, the industry is stable and experiencing all-time highs in terms of sales, even as the initial drivers of third-party ordering platforms鈥� success 鈥斅爏tay-at-home orders and social distancing guidelines 鈥� are no longer factors.听

鈥淓ven in the face of rising costs and the issues that consumers have with tipping or added service fees or price increases on one channel versus another, the built-in convenience and habit forming that platforms like DoorDash and Instacart have been able to achieve over the past few years, beginning at the height of COVID-19 and really continuing not giving up much ground at all, has shown that these platforms are really here to stay,鈥� Custage explains.听

One factor fueling the success of these platforms? The rise of Gen Z, many of whom are members of the workforce, live on their own, and have only been consumers with purchasing power in an era in which these platforms existed.听聽

The goal for restaurants and retailers should be to have a clearly defined customer experience strategy for their presence on third-party ordering platforms, to use these platforms strategically as an acquisition tool, and, ultimately, to encourage customers to migrate over to direct, first-party ordering.

12. Amazon just keeps on growing.

The online retailer is now the go-to for consumers for tentpole shopping events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, ahead of traditional mass retailers and department stores.听

The company has built momentum with their own retail holiday, Prime Day, a bandwagon other brands are attempting to hop on by rolling out their own competing retail holidays to win back some share of wallet.听

13. Omnichannel journeys are the new normal.

While about half of consumers continue to browse and buy groceries in person (a single-channel experience) and online-only retailers are dominated by digital-only journeys, most other kinds of retailers 鈥� from department stores and dollar stores to office supply stores and jewelry stores 鈥斅爃ave a much more nuanced, omnichannel customer journey, with a mix of behaviors that include browsing in store and buying online for delivery, browsing online and buying in store, and browsing and buying online for curbside pickup.听

There鈥檚 a clear call to action for retailers: These experiences and touchpoints must no longer be managed in silos.听

鈥淭here's really a need for this more cohesive view of the customer and having a continuity of knowledge of the activity customers have from one channel to the next鈥onsidering how often consumers are starting in one channel and then are jumping across to another,鈥� explains Custage.

聽14. Brands鈥� mobile apps are the most popular digital touchpoint for customers.

Consumers are most likely to interact with brands digitally via a mobile device, either via the company鈥檚 mobile app (35%) or company鈥檚 website via a phone (27%).

For businesses, that means enhancing the app and mobile experience need to be a top priority to drive repeat engagement, conversions, upsells, and crossales, says Custage.听

15. Social media is playing a bigger role in the product discovery journey than it did a year ago.

More than half of consumers agree that social media is having a bigger influence on how they find out about products in 2024 than in 2023, with Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok being the top sources of product information.听

Brands should pay attention to differences in product discovery by generation, and, as Gen Z becomes a more powerful consumer group, it will be important to keep an eye on the channels younger audiences use to learn about and engage with brands.听

16. Not surprisingly, Baby Boomers are more likely to watch live TV, while younger generations are more likely to consume user-generated content on streaming services and play video games.

鈥淕en Zers are engaging with media much differently than their older counterparts,鈥� explains Custage.听

As such, for brands looking to reach younger consumers, they鈥檒l need to become proficient in creating short-form user-generated content with influencers, he adds.

17. Consumers are streaming more content in 2024 than they did 12 months ago.

Both streaming video and audio content are gaining traction, with consumers reporting an uptick in each by 12% and 6%, respectively.听

18. Consumer optimism about travel is at a three-year high.

Even in the face of inflation, travel continues to grow as we get back to normal after the temporary declines the industry experienced related to COVID-19.听

For 2024, the most popular types of travel include heading to the beach, visiting friends and family, and exploring cities.

Prepare for Future Consumer Trends in 2024 and Beyond

Find out how 夜色视频 Market Research can help your company stay ahead of changing market dynamics and the latest and emerging trends in consumer behavior, customer experience, and digital experience so you can take action with confidence to capture more market share.听

The post Top 18 Consumer Trends Impacting Customer Experience in 2024 appeared first on 夜色视频 Customer and Employee Experience Blog.

How to Measure Customer Service

Customer service is one of the most important interactions you have with your customers, and the customer service experience you offer can either make or break your business.

Customer satisfaction can be directly attributed to great customer service. A satisfied customer is a paying customer, right? A record .听

If customer service is this important, then it鈥檚 a no-brainer to track the metrics that have the highest impact on the customer experience and your bottom line. But how do you know which ones to prioritize?聽

In this article, you鈥檒l learn how to measure the top customer service metrics, why they鈥檙e important, and the best practices to enhance your customer service team鈥檚 performance.

1. Identify Your Key Metrics

Before you can evaluate your company鈥檚 customer service, you first have to identify the right metrics to measure. The key performance indicators (KPIs) below reveal important insights into customer sentiment, operational effectiveness, and overall contact center performance.

Customer Satisfaction Metrics

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score

Customer satisfaction score,聽 CSAT score, measures how satisfied or dissatisfied your customers are with your products, services, business, or the overall customer service experience.

It is measured at transaction or interaction touchpoints using dedicated CSAT surveys. Organizational and agent-level customer service teams then use the responses gathered from this customer feedback to gauge customer sentiment, monitor service quality, and spot opportunities to improve performance.

CSAT scores are calculated by dividing the total number of satisfied customers by the total number of survey respondents and multiplying this amount by 100 to get a percentage.

Net Promoter庐 Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score庐 measures customer satisfaction based on the likelihood of an individual recommending your products, services, or business. Customer responses are graded on a classic 11-point scale, with inputs ranging from 0, being "not likely at all," to 10, being "extremely likely"

Based on their responses, customers are then classified into promoters, passives, and detractors, with promoters being the most likely to make recommendations and detractors being the least likely.

To derive your NPS庐, ranging from -100 to 100, subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. A high score will indicate that more customers are satisfied.听

Customer Effort Score (CES)

This customer satisfaction metric measures the effort it takes a customer to receive a response from your business, such as getting their question answered or ticket resolved.

Customer effort scores are calculated with direct surveys, usually sent after the customer interacts with a customer service agent.听

As with NPS庐, CES tells us who our promoters (5+ ratings), passives (neutrals), and detractors (<5 ratings) are.听

Operational Efficiency and Customer Support Metrics

First-Call Resolution Rate (FCR)

First-call resolution rate, also known as first-contact resolution rate, measures how effective your contact center is in meeting the needs of your customers without further follow-up or call-backs.

If you have a high FCR rate, meaning fewer tickets come in after the first customer call or contact, this is a good indicator that time and resources are being channeled in the right direction. The reverse is the case for low FCR. Having customers follow up on unresolved issues indicates your processes need improvement.

FCR is also a direct way to measure customer experiences, as the higher your FCR score, the聽 more likely your team is successfully closing out customer service interactions during the initial touchpoint and, in turn, the less likely your customers are to churn.听

First Response Time (FRT)

First response time, or first response rate, measures the time between a customer鈥檚 first ticket outreach and when your contact center responds.听

To find your average first response time, divide the total FRT for received customer inquiries by the total number of interactions your agents receive within a given period of聽 time.

Average Handling Time (AHT)

Unlike FRT, which measures the time it takes for an agent to respond to a customer's initial inquiry, AHT, or average handle time, calculates how long one interaction takes your agents and customers from start to finish.

Average Response Time

Another metric to measure customer support efficiency is the average response time.听

Also called average reply time, this metric calculates the total time it takes your customer support agents to respond to a customer ticket on average.

To find your average response time, divide the total response time by the total number of replies your agents provide within a given time period.

Resolution Rate

Resolution rate is the percentage of customer service requests successfully resolved by your customer service agents within a certain timeframe. This is a healthy indicator of your contact center's effectiveness in satisfying customer needs.听

To calculate your resolution rate, divide the total number of resolved tickets by the total ticket volume your agents receive and multiply by 100.

2. Choose Your Methods for Measurement

The next step after identifying your key metrics to measure is choosing how to do it. Effective options include using real-time feedback surveys, AI-powered technologies, and social listening tools.

Capture Real-time Customer Feedback After Every Interaction

Real-time customer feedback about your agents鈥� performance can be captured via a variety of channels,聽 via website forms, email, and in-app messages. Whether solicited or unsolicited, survey feedback collection is most effective when it is personalized, brief, and gathered at optimal times.

The best time to collect customer feedback about contact center agents is during or immediately following service interactions when the experience is fresh in the customer鈥檚 mind.听

Your support team can then translate customer feedback into insights that not only help you understand customer sentiment but also improve your company鈥檚 customer service and business processes.听

Use AI Text and Speech Analytics to Monitor 100% of Customer Service Interactions

What happens when you use AI-powered conversation analytics tools to review your customer service agents鈥� performance? You can analyze every single interaction to drive contact center training, engagement, and rewards, and ensure faster, more efficient, and more personalized service delivery.

惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 Text Analytics and Speech Analytics natural language software solutions analyze transcripts from customer service interactions 鈥� such as live chat interactions and recorded customer service calls 鈥� to identify patterns, common issues, and areas for communication improvement. These tools additionally track and automatically measure KPIs like CSAT, FCR, and customer sentiment.

Social Listening

Social listening, a proactive customer feedback strategy that involves monitoring social media mentions of your brand, is one of the most important ways to evaluate customer sentiment.

Not only can you listen in on your brand, product, or service mentions, but you can also discover what your customers are saying about your competitors and industry as a whole.听

Implementing a social media monitoring strategy at scale provides your customer service team invaluable data points to build public rapport and also safeguard your brand reputation by nipping negative feedback in the bud before it escalates.

3. Analyze Touchpoints in the Customer Service Journey

Your customer service journey starts as initial contact and ideally ends with a resolution. But in between those milestones exist a variety of other potential touchpoints, such as in person interactions as well as digital ones across social media, live chat, and phone support, that are critical to customer satisfaction.

, 80% of customers consider customer experience as important as a company鈥檚 products or services. And personalized experiences can be incredibly powerful. In fact, 夜色视频 researchers have found that most consumers are willing to spend more if they can offer a customized experience (61%) 鈥� and even more (82%) say tailored experiences influence brand choice at least half of the time when shopping.听

Consider tracking conversations and interactions across your omnichannel customer service journeys and touchpoints 鈥� and find and implement strategies to improve personalization during these customer service experiences 鈥� all of which have the potential to increase conversion rates, customer retention, and overall customer satisfaction. :

1. In-person customer service touchpoints
2. Customer service touchpoints on your company鈥檚 website
3. Customer service touchpoints on your company鈥檚 app
4. Contact center support channels (self-service portals, chatbots, call support, live chat, SMS, email, support tickets, etc.)
5. Customer feedback (surveys, social media, forums, online reviews, etc.)聽聽

4. Iterate and Improve

Analysis identifies areas your support team needs to optimize to meet and exceed customer expectations. But It鈥檚 one thing to analyze data and another to act on the insights.

As a best practice for customer service measurement, regular reviews should be embedded into your support team's internal processes. Don't let analytics data sit idle 鈥� iterate on gathered insights from customer-agent interactions and performance to identify weak spots and improve your customer service strategies.

Best Practices for Customer Service Measurement

The success of any business depends not only on profitability but also on maintaining a strong reputation.

Customer service contributes to shaping your brand perception. This is why customer service efforts should be measured 鈥� to understand customer sentiment for performance evaluation.听

Consider these best practices for measuring customer service.

Combine Quantitative and Qualitative Data

The first step is to combine quantitative data, such as survey scores and analytics, with qualitative data from customer feedback, live chat transcripts, phone call transcripts, and social media monitoring.

This combination comprehensively measures hard data with other insights around sentiment, trending topics, and recurring themes聽 that help us understand customer satisfaction, such as customers鈥� feelings and opinions, and help us make better-informed customer service decisions.

Utilize Omnichannel Feedback

Sometimes, the best way to know how a customer is feeling about your product or service is to ask. But if you complicate feedback collection by asking people to open another platform or window, chances are you won't receive any responses.听

The best way to gather omnichannel feedback and capture real-time sentiment is to meet your customers right where they are 鈥� whether that鈥檚 via聽 email, your website or app, or social media. Make things as convenient as possible for customers.

H3: Monitor Real-Time Customer Interactions

Use AI-powered tools such as 惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 Text Analytics and Speech Analytics software to monitor and analyze real-time customer interactions.听

These insights measure customer sentiment to not only proactively resolve issues but also personalize and improve the overall customer experience.听

Understand Customer Sentiment

How can you deliver excellent customer service if you're not sure how your customers perceive your brand?

Customer sentiment reveals how your customers feel about your business. These feelings could be negative, positive, or neutral.听

Not only do metrics such as NPS庐 and CSAT provide insights into customer sentiment, AI-powered analytics can assess sentiment in real time, as can social listening, giving customer support agents actionable learnings for how to address pain points and improve customer satisfaction.

Benefits of Customer Service Measurement

The benefits of measuring customer service performance are manifold and collectively contribute to overall business success. Let鈥檚 review the key advantages below.

Improved Customer Experience

Negative customer service interactions motivate most of us 鈥� 65% of consumers 鈥� to consider switching to a competitor brand.听

This clearly indicates the need for concentrated efforts to improve customer experience by using customer experience management to maintain excellent customer service standards 鈥� at scale 鈥� or risk losing customers.听

Effective Resource Allocation

By identifying which aspects of customer service require additional attention, businesses can allocate resources strategically to areas that will have the most significant impact on customer satisfaction and business outcomes.

These insights can only be gained from customer service measurements.

Competitive Advantage

What differentiates you from a competitor offering a similar product or service in the same industry is not your brand colors 鈥� it鈥檚 your competitive advantage.

One way to gain a competitive advantage in today鈥檚 business world is by delivering exceptional customer service. Customer service measurement hands you the insights you need to improve your internal processes to aim for standout excellence in service quality.

Proactive Issue Resolution

With real-time metrics from effectively measuring customer service, your support teams can proactively handle emerging issues before they escalate.听

Resolutions become less reactive and more anticipatory as measurement provides useful insights that reveal customer sentiment in the moment.

Improved Service Quality

Customers' needs and preferences are in many cases fluid 鈥� sometimes due to age, season, and other external factors beyond the control of your business.

Regular customer service measurement empowers your support teams to pick up on trends to stay ahead of customer service interactions.

Enhanced Customer Satisfaction

Satisfied customers are highly likely to make a repeat purchase or recommend it to other people.

Customer service measurement allows businesses to gauge customer sentiment accurately to implement personalized strategies that heighten customer satisfaction across all touchpoints.

Improve Customer Service with 夜色视频

Done right, a customer-centric approach is invaluable to business growth as feedback is tailored to the customer鈥檚 needs at every point in time.

夜色视频 offers a comprehensive range of social listening, real-time customer feedback, and AI-powered Text and Speech Analytics solutions to revolutionize your customer service performance and help your customer support teams make informed and effective decisions.听

Connect with a 夜色视频 expert today to learn more.

The post How to Measure Customer Service appeared first on 夜色视频 Customer and Employee Experience Blog.

How do you know your customers aren't having any trouble using your product or services? Answer: When they (almost) never reach out for support.

So, if your customers are blowing up your support channels, that's your sign to invest in customer self-service systems. Offering these systems and keeping track of how customers use them will also make a world of qualitative and quantitative data available to help you make your company鈥檚 products and services better.

Along with offering stellar products, servies, and experiences, making sure your customers are finding and using your available self-service options is a surefire way to lower customer churn rate and the usually high costs of running a contact center.

This article will cover the ins and outs of using self-service systems to reduce your customer churn rate and improve your overall customer experience.

What Is Customer Self-Service?

Customer self-service involves equipping customers to perform tasks, troubleshoot, resolve issues, or find quick answers to pertinent questions on their own without interacting with a live agent.听

Frequently asked questions (FAQs) pages, chatbots, how-to guides, help centers, community forums, and authenticated self-service portals, where customers have to log in to manage their accounts, are some common examples of digital channels that facilitate customer self-service.

How Does Customer Self-Service Work?

Customers want answers and they want answers fast. And the longer it takes to get answers, the more likely it is that they will be frustrated with your service. Worse case, they switch to a competitor and that's not good for business.

Customer self-service provides step-by-step guidance for completing a task or resolving an issue with as little effort as possible on the customer side.听

Simple self-service materials, like how-to guides, tutorials, or in-app guides, help customers make the most out of your products and services and are a great way to retain active customers with high customer lifetime value (CLTV).

Components of Customer Self-Service Systems

Customer self-service systems are made up of interconnected components designed to empower users to find information, troubleshoot issues, and perform tasks by themselves.

The best customer self-service systems offer the components below, giving individuals a variety of ways to solve the issues they鈥檙e encountering on their own.听

Centralized Knowledge Base

A knowledge base is a repository of information and solutions for customer queries, accessible even after business working hours.

Mobile-Friendly Interface

A good self-service system is accessible and responsive on mobile devices.

Automated Chatbots

Chatbots are proactive virtual assistants that use natural language processing to respond to customer queries.听

Self-Service Portals

A customer in need of support will usually first look for a self-service solution. Self-service portals are online platforms for account management, FAQ pages, and how-to guides.

FAQ pages answer the most frequently asked questions that come up at different stages in the customer journey 鈥� either during sales or support calls. You can also use written or video how-to content to guide your customers through using your product or services.

Multilingual Capabilities

Self-serve systems with multilingual capabilities cater to a diverse customer base by offering support in various languages.

Smart Callback Technologies

If given the chance to receive a call back instead of staying on hold, 66% of survey takers say they鈥檇 use this option.听

With Smart callback technologies 鈥� a coveted contact center solution 鈥� customers can skip waiting on hold to get support on their own time, improving contact center experience.

Benefits of Customer Self-Service Systems

Implementing customer self-service systems can yield a wide range of benefits for both your organization and customers.

Here are some of them.

Increased Contact Center Productivity

Customers will usually first look for a FAQs page or knowledge base, instead of opening a ticket or calling support. As your contact center handles fewer tickets and queries, support staff become more productive and have more time to focus on high-value tasks like addressing more complex customer issues or supporting sales, upselling, and customer retention efforts.

Insights gathered from self-serve systems can also be used to train your customer service team members and optimize internal processes for increased operational efficiency.

Lower Cost to Serve Customers

Customer self-service can achieve significant cost savings for your organization. By reducing the need for manual intervention, the time and resources needed to resolve customer enquiries is minimized.

Customer self-service also reduces the volume of inbound calls and emails, lowering operational costs expended in serving customers. Ultimately, the more self-service options you have, the less you spend on managing your contact center.听

Faster Resolution Times

Only 60% of people are willing to spend at most 10 minutes trying to find solutions before taking another action. With self-service systems, customers can quickly find answers and solutions to their queries, leading to faster resolution times. This is one way to reduce customer churn.

The less time a customer spends on resolving an issue, the more positive their experience is and the higher their CLTV becomes.听

Improved Customer Experience

Customer self-service contributes to a better customer experience by providing quick, convenient, and round-the-clock access to information and solutions.

Eliminating the need to deal with long virtual queues and wait times, self-service platforms empower customers to find solutions to their questions independently, increasing customer satisfaction and the overall customer experience.

Fosters Customer Loyalty

Ultimately, the customer experience that self-service systems provide leads to increased loyalty and brand advocacy and satisfied customers with a higher likelihood of making repeat purchases, referring friends and family to your business, and leaving positive reviews.听

Best Practices for Implementing Customer Self-Service

Done right, customer self-service adds a layer of ease to your customer experience and reduces churn rate.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when implementing customer self-service systems.

Provide Help in Real-Time (and Even Before Customers Reach Out)

Experience orchestration technology allows you to provide contextual assistance right where and when your customers need it, across all digital channels.听

This intervention intelligently identifies real-time customer behavior and uses the insights to provide timely help at common friction points and detractor moments 鈥� at scale. What this does is segment and personalize your customer experience before they even contact customer support.听

By analyzing intent at every stage of your customer journey, experience orchestration allows you to add value at every self-service opportunity, whether it be resolving an issue or upselling a relevant product.

Create a Resource Center

Today鈥檚 customers expect to see self-service options on your website and would prefer to use these instead of speaking to your customer service team. (After all, as those in the industry like to say, 鈥淭he best interaction with the contact center is no interaction at all.鈥�)

Investing in a resource center 鈥� that customers already expect you to have 鈥� provides easily accessible self-service support and information. This investment then reduces the volume of tickets on minor inquiries handled by support teams, freeing up time and resources to provide higher-value assistance to customers.

Resource centers provide multiple ways for customers to solve issues and may include video, audio, case studies, FAQ pages, tutorials, and infographics.

Note that resource centers are not a one-and-done investment. Be sure to set up ae plan to consolidate duplicate or conflicting information, especially after product upgrades or redesigns, and also update content regularly, based on recurring inquiries from your sales and support calls.

It鈥檚 also a good idea to optimize and index your resource centers so your solutions appear in search engines when a prospect or customer is looking for quick answers to a pain point.

Design User-Friendly Interface

Even though people often prefer self-service channels, if brands aren鈥檛 thoughtful when designing these, they can be difficult to use. A well-designed self-service portal UX significantly lowers your customer effort score. To meet the needs of your customers effectively, design an intuitive and user-friendly interface.听

Make your self-service portal responsive and easy to navigate as customers should be able to quickly find what they're looking for with minimal time and effort.

Offer Personalization

When offered a personalized experience, 61% of consumers are willing to spend more with a company 鈥� and 82% say personalized experiences influence the brand they choose at least half of the time when shopping.听

To personalize customer experience, use behavioral data from interactions and conversations to tailor content and suggestions based on user preferences.

Future Trends in Customer Self-Service: AI and Machine Learning

Your customer self-service portals can be upgraded with AI and machine learning. Coveted features of these technologies include predictive analysis and precise personalization at scale.

Instead of one-size-fits-all responses, AI proactively uses natural language understanding (NLU) to discern conversation topics, intent, customer sentiment, preferences, and behavior to provide precise and personalized responses to each query.听

That鈥檚 the case with 惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 AI-powered Smart Response tool, a solution that provides contact center agents with personalized, empathetic, and accurate responses to customers鈥� questions in real time. Organizations can use this technology to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty by empowering employees to solve issues faster than ever. Unlike other AI solutions, employees have the final control and say over what gets sent ensuring the use of artificial intelligence aligns with your brand voice and values.听

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夜色视频 offers a suite of advanced solutions for managing and optimizing digital, in-person, and phone-based customer interactions, enabling teams to provide better experiences, reduce the burden on the contact center, and strengthen customer retention and satisfaction rates.听聽聽

Speak to a 夜色视频 expert to see we can help you improve customer outcomes for your organization.听

The post A Deep Dive into the Benefits of Customer Self-Service Systems appeared first on 夜色视频 Customer and Employee Experience Blog.

Customer churn might seem straightforward enough 鈥� essentially, losing customers is bad for business. And no, a high customer acquisition rate won鈥檛 savel you, either. Your sales team might be busy closing deals, but if your customer churn rate is also high, you鈥檙e likely to be caught in a vicious cycle that will burn out your team and burn through your revenue.

So what is customer churn on a more nuanced level? While understanding that churn has a negative impact on your company鈥檚 financial health and growth potential is the first step, it鈥檚 essential to know how to calculate customer churn, why customers are leaving in the first place, and what you can do to retain them.

What Is Customer Churn?

Customer churn, also referred to as customer attrition, is the measure of how many customers stop purchasing or engaging with a company鈥檚 products and services. For example, a subscriber canceling their streaming service or a shopper no longer buying from their preferred retail store are both tangible examples of churn.听

Churn Rate vs. Growth Rate

While churn rate focuses on customer loss, growth rate measures customer acquisition.听

It鈥檚 calculated by determining how many first-time customers your business gains within a specific timeframe. As we discussed earlier, a high growth rate is not an indicator of positive business outcomes on its own. A high customer churn rate can cancel out positive acquisition gains.听

Understanding Customer Churn

If you want to learn how to reduce customer churn, there are a few metrics and formulas you need to brush up on first. When you know how to calculate customer churn data correctly, you can use that data to power an effective customer retention strategy.听

Customer Retention Rate (CRR)

CRR is the percentage of customers retained over a specific period of time. This key metric sheds light on customer loyalty and satisfaction.

• Formula: CRR = Number of customers at the end of a period - Number of new customers acquired during that period) / Number of customers at the start of the period 脳 100.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer lifetime value indicates the total revenue a business can expect to earn from a customer throughout their entire lifecycle, underscoring the importance of nurturing long-term customer relationships.

• Formula: CLV = (Average purchase value x Purchase frequency) x Average customer lifespan.

Net Promoter Score庐 (NPS庐)

NPS庐 is a customer loyalty and satisfaction benchmark, based on a single question: 鈥淗ow likely are you to recommend our product/service/company to a friend or colleague?鈥�

The answers fall on a 0-10 scale (0 being not at all likely; 10 being extremely likely). Promoters respond with 9 or 10, passives respond with 7 or 8 and are not included in the formula, and detractors respond with 0-6.听

• The Formula for NPS庐 = (Promoters - Detractors) / Total respondents x 100

Time-to-Value (TTV)

TTV is the duration between a customer鈥檚 initial purchase or sign-up to the moment they first recognize significant value from the product or service. A quick TTV can drive customer satisfaction and retention by demonstrating the immediate benefits of a purchase.

• Formula: Depends on your business and offering. Here are two places to start.

• • Measure the duration between when a customer first becomes aware of your product or service and when they purchase it
  • Measure the time it takes to upgrade to higher subscription tiers聽

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score

Your CSAT scores is an important metric for assessing customer sentiment and is used to measure your customers鈥� satisfaction with your products or services.

• Formula: (Total number of satisfied customers / Total number of responses) x 100

Impact of Customer Churn

A high customer churn rate affects a business鈥檚 ability to generate reliable, sustainable revenue from loyal, high-value customers. It also forces leadership to invest in customer acquisition to fill the gap, further impacting the overall profitability of the business. If left unchecked, the negative impacts of customer churn can spiral quickly and lead to several unfavorable outcomes.

Decreased Market Share

High churn rates can erode your market position as your business potentially loses its customer base to your competition.

Reduced Customer Lifetime Value

Customer churn directly depletes CLV, as churn cuts a customer鈥檚 potential revenue stream to your business short.

Loss of Revenue

Customer attrition is an immediate hit to your bottom line. But it goes deeper than that. Not only do you lose a paying customer; you also lose the opportunity to nurture and grow your relationships profitably and derive referrals over time.

Poor Employee Experience聽

Customers and employees are intertwined in your business鈥檚 ecosystem 鈥� what affects one affects the other. Unsatisfied customers risk severely dampening employee morale, negatively impacting your business鈥檚 health in more ways than one.听

How to Measure Customer Churn

If you want to know how to reduce customer churn to minimize its negative effect on your business, you first need to learn how to measure your customer churn rate. Your churn rate is typically calculated by dividing the number of customers lost over a specific period by your total customer count.

1. Choose a Timeframe

For your churn rate data to be useful, you have to measure a specific timeframe. You can start by breaking it down on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis, depending on the unique needs of your business.听

2. Determine Churned Customers

Based on your business model, what constitutes a churned customer? It鈥檚 important to define the criteria and disseminate it across the business. For subscription-based services, for example, a churned customer might be one who cancels their paid subscription 鈥� even if they stay on a free option. In retail, it could be a customer who hasn鈥檛 made a purchase within a specific timeframe.

3. Gather Total Customer Data

To accurately measure churn, compile comprehensive data on your entire customer base at the beginning of the measurement period. This includes all active accounts, buyers, or subscribers. Having foundational data sets to benchmark against will allow for more precise calculations when determining your churn rate.

4. Calculate Churn Rate

贬别谤别鈥檚 how to calculate customer churn.听

Formula: Churn Rate = (Lost customers / Total customers at the start of a time period) x 100

5. Analyze Churn Rate

Now that you have your rate, it鈥檚 time to dive deeper by segmenting your customer data. A segmented analysis can reveal patterns and trends, giving you insight on which types of customers are more likely to churn. Armed with this information, you can tailor your retention strategies to be more effective for different segments.

Strategies for Churn Prevention and Retention

Uncovering how to reduce customer churn hinges on implementing personalized, data-driven approaches. At the end of the day, it鈥檚 about developing deeper, more fruitful connections with your customers.

Let鈥檚 get into some effective churn prevention tactics and invigorate your approach to customer retention.

Improve the Customer Experience Across Channels

Optimizing the customer experience across all channels has a huge impact on boosting retention. Data shows that 65% of consumers consider switching to a competitor after a negative customer service interaction

Investing in a customer experience management (CEM) software platform that can monitor, analyze, and enhance customer interactions at every touchpoint is a powerful solution for your business. The right CEM not only fights customer churn, but also drives ROI in other aspects of the business as well. Improving the customer experience is linked to business success and is the key to taking the lead in a competitive market.听

Offer Personalized Customer Experiences

Tailoring products, services, and communications to individual preferences is inextricably linked to improving the customer experience. The result? Deeper relationships that last longer and are more profitable.听

In fact, 61% of consumers are willing to spend more with a company that provides customized experiences. Plus, in a market with endless choices, 82% of buyers confirm that personalized experiences significantly influence their brand choices. If you don鈥檛 take personalization seriously, it鈥檚 likely your competitor will 鈥� and benefit from your high customer churn rate.

Deliver Responsive Customer Support

Efficient and professional customer support can transform potential detractors into your business鈥檚 biggest promoters. Nearly all consumers (97%) in the US and UK confirm they would stay loyal to a company that transforms negative experiences into positive ones by prioritizing quick resolutions. On the flip side, 67% likely to abandon a brand after 2-3 poor interactions 鈥� so you need to get customer support right.听

Invest in contact center technologies, such as omnichannel solutions and customer analytics, to supercharge support efficiency and agent performance. By enhancing your customer report, you鈥檒l be reducing churn, too.

Collect Customer Feedback and Act Upon It

Your customers want to have a voice, and are ready and willing to help you improve, as 73% of consumers express a desire to leave feedback after a customer service interaction. But gathering customer feedback is a waste of time and resources if you don鈥檛 act on it.

Business leaders who truly recognize the value of customer feedback analyze and act on it, using the valuable data to enhance the customer journey and ensure issues are promptly addressed. There鈥檚 a direct correlation between customer feedback, experience enhancement, and business success. So give your customers a voice, and then listen to it.听

Utilize Advanced Analytics

Leveraging advanced analytics, including Text Analytics to evaluate written feedback and Speech Analytics for customer call sentiment, will provide a deeper understanding of your customers and their behaviors.听

By identifying patterns that can predict which customers are at risk of churning, your business can be proactive in addressing concerns and customizing retention strategies to mitigate attrition.听

Case Studies: Successful Churn Reduction Stories

What is customer churn, applied to real-world contexts and situations? Let鈥檚 take a look at the tangible impact customer churn has on businesses by examining case studies that demonstrate practical and effective churn reduction strategies.

T-Mobile Captures Real-Time Customer Feedback to Reduce Customer Churn

T-Mobile is on a mission to 鈥渃hange wireless for good.鈥� One way they鈥檙e driving this mission forward is by boldly shifting their focus from cost reduction to implementing a transformative customer experience strategy that prioritizes satisfaction.

By implementing 惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 solutions, including 惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 Conversation Intelligence and Text Analytics, T-Mobile enhanced its ability to listen and act on customer feedback in real-time. This customer-first approach led to T-Mobile achieving the lowest churn rate in its company history, less than 1% year over year, and underscores the effectiveness of listening to and addressing customer feedback to foster loyalty and reduce customer churn.

• Less than 1% churn rate year over year, the lowest in company history.
• Reached $45B in total revenue over four years, with a 4% increase year over year.
• Over 41k users leveraged role-specific dashboards for insights into customer experiences.
• Experienced a huge 25-points increase in NPS庐 within four years.

Zurich Insurance Invests in Customer Experience Management to Reduce Churn

Zurich Insurance, operating in the competitive general insurance sector, decided to tackle the challenge of customer loyalty and retention head-on. Recognizing how easy it is for customers to switch providers, Zurich made the strategic move to enhance customer experience and implement a CEM platform.听

Using this new system, the company meticulously measured, analyzed, and acted upon customer feedback to achieve amazing results and insights.

• Achieved an incredible 20-point increase in NPS庐, a testament to the positive shift in customer sentiment and loyalty.
• Zurich Insurance promoters contribute 27% more in premiums monthly compared to detractors.
• Promoters are 5x less likely to leave within 12 months, reducing churn significantly.

Such strong outcomes not only underscore the benefits of prioritizing customer experience, but also highlight the effectiveness of Zurich鈥檚 strategy in building a loyal customer base of promoters who can actively refer new business.

Retain More Customers with 夜色视频

Whether it鈥檚 through advanced analytics predicting potential churn or personalized engagement enhancing the customer journey, 夜色视频 empowers businesses to reduce churn effectively.

Ready to turn insights into action? Book a demo with 夜色视频 today and explore how we can tailor our solutions to meet your unique business needs and ensure your valuable clients remain just that 鈥� yours.

The post Decoding Customer Churn: Strategies to Retain Your Valuable Clients appeared first on 夜色视频 Customer and Employee Experience Blog.

When it comes to creating a personalized digital experience for your prospects and customers, you might not immediately think that AI, automation, and other innovative tools are the key to adding a personal touch. In fact, the perception is often that these technologies prioritize efficiency over genuine connection.

But what if you could have both?

By being strategic and leveraging the right technology, you can equip your business with the tools to deliver personalized digital experiences and relationship-driven engagement at scale.

With the wealth of customer data and analytics now available, there are endless opportunities to customize every interaction for a chance to connect meaningfully with your audience 鈥� if you know where to start.

What Is a Personalized Digital Experience?

A personalized digital experience tailors online interactions to the unique preferences, behaviors, and needs of each user. By leveraging data and analytics, businesses can deliver experiences, content, recommendations, and services that resonate with specific customers. An online store, for example, might show visitors relevant products based on their browsing history.

Importance of Personalization

Businesses that prioritize personalization are demonstrating that they value customers, their time, and their preferences. By adding value on a more personal level, companies can foster meaningful engagement and create more satisfying experiences. In turn, these personalized digital experiences increase the chances of repeat visits, conversions, and overall customer loyalty.听

Plus, taking into account the modern customer journey 鈥� one in which consumers interact with brands across several digital channels 鈥� a personal touch helps businesses stand out in a saturated market and create sustainable, long-term success by forging stronger connections between brands and buyers.听

Key Components of Personalization

If you want to tailor a personalized digital experience to a particular user or customer segment, you need to understand what it is they want or need 鈥� and meet these wants and needs. This can be done by gathering and analyzing user data by leveraging AI for predictive insights, creating dynamic content, and ensuring that all digital platforms are integrated and optimized. These building blocks create the foundation of customer loyalty and engagement.

Let鈥檚 continue building on our foundation and outline the key components of a robust, scalable personalized digital experience strategy.

Customer Personas

Defining your customer personas involves developing detailed profiles that capture the essence of your target audience and requires getting to know them on a deeper level. After understanding the needs, preferences, and pain points of a particular persona, you might create the 鈥淭ech Savvy Terry鈥� profile, for example, which represents a segment that values the latest tech advancements and innovation.听

A strategic, insights-driven approach to crafting personas will fuel the creation of targeted content and customized communication to ensure each interaction will strike a chord that resonates.

Customer Segmentation

Building on customer personas, customer segmentation then categorizes your audiences into groups based on their observed behaviors and interactions. These groups might include 鈥渇requent buyers,鈥� 鈥渘ew visitors,鈥� 鈥渋nactive,鈥� and other segments based on measurable data, such as purchase history and online engagement.听

Customer segmentation, as part of a personalized digital experience strategy, allows you to move from broad personas to actionable segments that can be targeted with precise, relevant marketing. Tools for collecting and analyzing signals, customer feedback, and digital experience insights can be used to uncover key customer segments.听

Content and Experience Creation

Tailoring experiences and content creation is a powerful strategy for delivering personalized engagement, especially after you鈥檝e identified your buyer personas and segmented your customer base. This component involves crafting relevant, engaging content聽 and experiences tailored to each segment to ensure that materials and interactions resonate across various channels. For instance, customer experience orchestration technology can be used to pinpoint real-time customer intent and use these insights to deliver personalized digital experiences 鈥� the next best content, experiences, and actions for customers, ensuring every interaction, whether on your website, via email, or through customer support, is carefully adapted to feel personal and relevant.

AI and Automation

Leveraging AI-powered predictive analytics can help you automate the personalization process so that you can seamlessly adapt content to match the unique preferences of each customer segment. For example, AI can dynamically insert customized product recommendations into emails and tailor social media ads to promote products a customer has already placed into their online cart.

Data Collection

Underpinning both content and the effective use of AI and automation is sophisticated data collection. Gathering insights into users and how they interact across all your brand鈥檚 touchpoints allows you to remain responsive and make refinements to your buyer personas, customer segments, and personalized content as things shift and adapt. Tools like digital experience analytics, customer data platforms, customer experience management platforms, and customer relationship management software (CRMs) are key components of data collection that help inform and optimize your personalization strategies.听

Implementing Personalization Strategies

Like with any strategy, implementing personalized digital experiences is an ongoing, iterative process. 贬别谤别鈥檚 a step-by-step guide that aligns user behavior, preferences, and innovative technology to ensure your efforts delight your customers and drive measurable results.听

1. Define Objectives

A personalized digital experience strategy needs to have 鈥� you guessed it 鈥� its own personalized goals. Setting clear, measurable objectives paves the way for a successful personalization strategy, so whether you want to boost engagement, increase sales, or improve customer satisfaction with higher Net Promoter Survey庐 (NPS) scores, it鈥檚 critical to define what you want to achieve and identify the metrics that will guide your journey.

2. Understand Your Audience

Understanding your audience on a deeper level is about harnessing real-time data to adjust your strategies based on their evolving needs. By using digital insights to understand users and their behavior with more nuance, you can predict and respond to their actions in a personalized way.听

3. Collect and Analyze Data

Fine-tune your approach while creating personalized digital experiences by leveraging advanced digital behavioral intelligence tools to collect and analyze data from each interaction. Gathering and employing this data is an ongoing process 鈥� not one-off. To ensure your strategies stay agile and customer-centric, make sure you鈥檙e tailoring your approach in real time.

4. Use Automations

Speaking of real-time personalization, AI and automation technologies are the key to remaining adaptive. In addition to automating content delivery, integration ensures a consistently positive experience across digital touchpoints. For example, brands can use digital behavior signals to pinpoint signs of frustration and automatically surface a live chat for support. Similarly, intelligent callback tools can be used to enable customers to automatically schedule a callback or live chat session when it fits their schedule, rather than having to wait in a queue. And smart response technology solutions can be used to provide contact center agents with instant AI-generated personalized responses to customer inquiries.听

5. Use UI & UX Design

User interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design are integral parts of the personalized digital experience. Along with being aesthetically pleasing, coherent, and aligned with your brand image, thoughtful design creates interfaces that adapt to a user鈥檚 individual needs. If your digital platforms offer personalized navigation paths and other settings that reflect the unique preferences and behaviors identified through your data analysis, then you can enhance the overall user experience and make it more satisfying for every visitor.听

6. Test and Optimize

Finally, to be truly data-driven, don鈥檛 skip A/B testing when it comes to your personalization strategy. By gauging the effectiveness (and ineffectiveness) of different approaches and monitoring performance closely, you can isolate exactly what works best with which customers.听

This iterative process to strategy, informed by real-time data and customer feedback, allows for continuous improvement and ensures your strategies never get stale or obsolete.听聽

Best Practices for Personalized Digital Experience

In addition to leveraging the right technology, a successful personalized digital experience strategy takes consistency, measurement, and an eye for optimization. Here are some best practices to follow to get the most out of your strategies.

Keep Cross-Channel Consistency

To truly engage with consumers meaningfully, your business needs a digital presence that is consistent, connected, and coherent across all platforms. Whether a customer is interacting with your website, app, or social media, they expect consistent quality and messaging 鈥� make sure you鈥檙e delivering a cohesive narrative that strengthens brand recognition and builds trust.

Use KPIs for Personalization

Effective personalization is measurable. Define clear key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflect the goals of your personalization strategy, like increased user engagement and adoption, higher conversion rates, or improved NPS庐 scores. By allowing metrics to guide you, you鈥檒l ensure that your strategy is not only creative but also results oriented and data driven. Plus, using KPIs is efficient, as you more quickly identify what鈥檚 working and where there鈥檚 room for improvement based on KPIs.

Tailor Customer Journeys

Leverage personalization insights to craft content and tailor digital experiences for each stage of the customer journey. From educational, bottom-of-the-funnel content for new visitors to customized offers for long-standing customers, different customers require a different touch at each step of their relationship with your brand. Serving up the wrong communication at the wrong time can significantly impact the momentum you鈥檙e looking to create.

Gather Customer Feedback

Listen to your customers by actively refining your personalization strategy based on feedback. Using AI and automation can make collecting and analyzing feedback 鈥� from surveys to reviews to customer service calls 鈥� an efficient, scalable process in real time. This ongoing optimization ensures your efforts remain aligned with the realities your customers are experiencing. Plus, being attentive and responsive is the best way to build deeper relationships.

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By strategically employing AI, automation, digital experience platforms, and other innovative tools alongside expert strategies and best practices, you can create a personalized digital experience tailored to each customer, without sacrificing scale or efficiency.

If you鈥檙e ready to know exactly what your customers want, when they want it, and how best to give it to them, book a demo with a customer experience expert at 夜色视频 to revolutionize your digital presence through tailored interactions.

The post How to Create a Personalized Digital Experience appeared first on 夜色视频 Customer and Employee Experience Blog.

Discover the top CX and AI use cases, benefits, and best practices, according to the latest research and top CX practitioners from leading brands

At Experience 鈥�24, we brought together the world鈥檚 leading experience professionals to discuss the latest trends and advances in our field, the rising prominence of generative artificial intelligence (gen AI), the impact of automation, and the increasing importance of personalization. It鈥檚 clear that gen AI and other artificial intelligence (AI) are critical, omnipresent forces that are shaping interactions across channels and touchpoints. We heard from real-world customer experience (CX) leaders from UBS, Volvo, and Walgreens about how the acceleration of AI within our industry is unfolding and what organizations need to consider when adopting AI technologies to power their CX strategies.听

A clear takeaway is that for long-term success, having the right people, practices, and (responsible, trusted) systems in place will be vital to (survive and) thrive in this new landscape. Let鈥檚 dive into some of our most important learnings from the week related to using AI in customer experience.

2024 Trends in CX and AI

Top 4 CX and AI Key Use Cases in 2024

惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 time-tested foundational AI capabilities, which have been around for 15 years, and latest AI breakthrough technologies have been thoughtfully developed to help CX practitioners accomplish four impactful uses cases, translating data into meaningful, actionable insights; enabling more efficient customer interactions; empowering employee productivity through tailored training; and guiding nest best actions for customers and the business.听

1. Using AI to improve the quality of data analysis.

Ask Athena, one of 惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 new AI innovations, is designed to help brands get more value and insights out of their customer experience data. This AI assistant uses large language models to answer any question related to your customer data on the spot, providing instant data analysis in the form of a summary, graph, chart, or other module, without employees having to spend hours digging into reports and dashboards for answers.听

2. Using AI to accelerate the speed of data analysis.

惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 Themes feature will use generative AI to surface more granular emerging trends in an instant, helping employees save time on root-cause analysis to pinpoint important trends, elevate them to a topic if needed, and empower teams to quickly track and trend them to investigate how and why KPIs are changing.听

3. Using AI for content generation for customer communications.

By using AI solutions like 惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 new Smart Response, teams can scale the power and productivity of their people across contact center, customer experience, and employee experience teams. Smart Response automatically generates personalized, empathetic, and accurate responses to a customer feedback record that employees can review and modify before sending as a reply, helping increase personalization while also saving time on writing responses.听

4. Using gen AI to create concise, relevant summaries of conversational data.

惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 Intelligent Summaries saves employees thousands of hours of time with AI composed summaries that instantly recap any customer interaction providing details, such as reason for contact, issue resolution information, and the content of the conversation, increasing consistency across millions of records so users can spend less time scrolling through interactions to find the right insights.听

CX and AI Benefits for Organizations

At Experience 鈥�24 惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 Senior Vice President and Executive Advisor, , moderated an exciting panel about the future of CX with , Head of Client Services, US Wealth Management, at UBS; , Global Head of Customer Experience Insights and Analytics at Volvo Cars; and , EVP and Chief Customer Officer at Walgreens. They discussed how they鈥檙e using AI now and how they are thinking about its application going forward. Here are some of the top use cases they discussed:

1. Making things easier for employees

At Volvo, customers value human interactions, and Kowalczyk explained that she sees the value of AI not in replacing these human interactions with knowledgeable retailers with bot-driven experiences but instead in using AI to increase efficiencies and standard knowledge among staff who interact with customers.

That鈥檚 the potential Couvillon at UBS said she sees as well. She said she thinks of AI as 鈥渢he great assist鈥� or 鈥渢he great accelerator鈥� for financial advisors, enabling them to be more effective and efficient in their roles. One area they鈥檙e using AI is in synthesizing the company鈥檚 proprietary research around market data, risk data, and personal risk appetite for financial advisors so they can 鈥渦ltimately make better decisions for the client and deliver that insight to clients.鈥� She said she sees a huge opportunity in taking all of the company鈥檚 training and process documents and FAQs and using AI to make this content more 鈥渟nackable鈥� for employees for learning purposes.

2. Improving the customer experience

For Walgreens, Brown and her team are thinking of ways to use AI that add value for customers 鈥� specifically to address points of friction in the customer journey. The company has identified four areas where friction can occur 鈥� when customers come to visit, navigate, check out, and receive products or services 鈥� and, according to Walgreens research, what their customers want to happen during these interactions is to be able to save time and money; receive insights, products, and services to feel smarter and feel better; and be recognized and treated as an individual by the brand. In addition, Walgreens research indicates that customers want clean stores, fast and friendly service, stocked shelves, and the ability to get their prescriptions quickly and accurately. As such, the brand is using AI and technology across these areas to create a better experience. They鈥檝e started by partnering with 夜色视频 and building these drivers of excellence into their reporting within 夜色视频, so they can instantly analyze how each one of their 9,000 stores is performing across these factors.听

3. Delivering personalization

Walgreens has over 100 million customers in their database, and Brown said the retailer is using AI to predict what these individuals need to serve up the right experiences at the right time for the right individuals.听

4. Increasing operational efficiency and driving cost savings

Brown explained that there are plenty of opportunities to use AI to add value across the retail ecosystem, from merchandising and operations to product development, marketing, and supply chain management.听

One of the ways Walgreens is using AI to drive operational efficiencies and cost savings is by combining external data sources, such as weather and event data localized to each of the company鈥檚 retail stores, along with customer data, including in-store visit data and health and wellness data, for demand forecasting to help the company prevent out-of-stock issues and to manage inventory levels so that only what鈥檚 needed is kept on hand. 鈥淭hese kinds of things have allowed us to reduce out of stocks for the customer by 15% and reduce inventory by 5%,鈥� said Brown.听

CX and AI Best Practices: Using Artificial Intelligence the Right Way

Brands that use artificial intelligence the right way adopt a people-first, platform-second approach, explained Couvillon. They鈥檙e not investing in AI for technology鈥檚 sake, but to solve real customer and employee challenges using AI responsibly and ethically.听

Establish internal guidelines for using AI

Volvo has established an AI committee responsible for determining the AI principles for the brand and this is a must-have for using AI the right way, according to Kowalczyk.

These types of guidelines should set parameters for using AI responsibly, from a privacy, compliance, sharing, and transparency perspective, added Brown.听

Prioritize data quality

Organizations need to bring together all of their data from across sources 鈥� from in person interactions to digital touchpoints 鈥� and structure it in a way that can be used by AI, said Kowalczyk.

As 惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 CEO explained in his keynote, the insights you unlock from AI 鈥渨ill only be as good as the data that it can access.鈥�

Choose technology partners that focus on data security and trust

惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 Director of Service Operations and Security, Scott Gorman, a member of 惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 AI Moderation Council, recently wrote about how AI security needs to be a priority for experience programs, and how 鈥渟ecurity considerations are 鈥� and will always be 鈥� foundational to how we design and implement AI models.鈥澛�

In his article, he explained that brands can mitigate against any potential risks associated with AI by choosing partners that are actively building their platforms with the latest legal, data security, and compliance standards, regulations, and concerns in mind. You can read more about 惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 approach to building a robust, secure foundation for AI into our experience platform in Gorman鈥檚 blog here.听

In her Experience 鈥�24 keynote, explored how 夜色视频 is building 鈥渢rust into every experience.鈥� We focus on trust so our customers can rest assured that 鈥渁s we incorporate new AI technologies, we are protecting your data, security and privacy,鈥� she added.

That鈥檚 why we created an AI Moderation Council, consisting of members from our legal, privacy and security, compliance, product and engineering, and customer organizations, to provide oversight, guidance, and policy as it relates to AI. The goal of this group, Turek explained is 鈥渢o ensure that, for example, we think about data controls so that we respect security and data access policies, and that we eliminate hallucinations, and filter for bias, and toxicity in our AI models.鈥�

As part of her presentation, she also announced the launch of an AI Advisory Board at 夜色视频 that will consist of customer and partner members focused on the responsible and ethical use of AI.

Leverage the best of human intelligence and artificial intelligence

There was one consistent theme among Experience 鈥�24 discussions of using AI for CX: AI shouldn鈥檛 be used to replace high-value human interactions.听

After all, as , Senior Product Marketing Manager at 夜色视频, described in her keynote, 鈥淎rtificial intelligence can鈥檛 replace the human touch, but working alongside AI, humans can do what they do best 鈥� connect.鈥�

Final Thoughts

At 夜色视频, we鈥檙e focused on bringing responsible AI solutions that enable companies to unleash new levels of personalization and productivity for employees that drive efficiency, cost savings, and sustainable growth for organizations. As brands decide when and how to use AI for understanding and enhancing experiences, it鈥檚 essential they do so with great thought.

As Turek said in her keynote, 鈥渆nduring success will be enjoyed by those who adopt responsible AI proactively, rather than reactively.鈥�

To learn more about how 夜色视频 is approaching CX and AI and our latest AI breakthroughs, check out our .

The post New Trends in CX and AI: What We Learned from Experience 鈥�24 appeared first on 夜色视频 Customer and Employee Experience Blog.

When it comes to the customer experience, our current era is defined by one thing above all else: Endless choice. Consumers are inundated with options, and businesses must contend with the challenge of standing out in a saturated market. AI personalization is a solution that cuts through the noise to deliver personalized customer experiences at scale.

By blending creativity with data-driven decision-making, businesses that achieve sustainable growth are using personalization AI to understand their customers deeply, tailor experiences precisely, and unlock new levels of engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty.

What Is AI Personalization?

As the saying goes, people might forget what you did or said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. AI personalization uses advanced technology to create and tailor unforgettable customer experiences that feel unique and personal to each individual.

Through analyzing large quantities of data related to customer behavior, preferences, and interactions, personalized AI can craft experiences that meet 鈥� and anticipate 鈥� the needs and desires of each consumer. By forgoing cookie cutter, one-size-fits all relationships with your customers, you鈥檙e ensuring that every interaction leaves a lasting, positive impression that feels special.

AI Personalization in Customer Experience

AI personalization tools dig into customer data to craft content that resonates on a more personal level and is aligned with an individual鈥檚 specific customer journey with your brand. Personalization AI not only enriches and differentiates the customer experience; it also fosters a stronger, more resilient connection between consumers and brands to supercharge customer satisfaction and loyalty.听

贬别谤别鈥檚 a few examples of types of content that can be efficiently powered by AI personalization tools:

• Customized product recommendations based on browsing and purchase history
• Email campaigns or customer service responses personalized to address preferences, pain points, and previous interactions
• Tailored newsfeeds and content streams that match up with engagement and interest patterns
• Dynamic digital experiences that change according to each visitor's interests, behaviors, and demographics
• Individual loyalty offers, rewards, coupons, and more to encourage repeat business

The Role of AI in Customer Experience

AI鈥檚 pivotal role in transforming customer experiences is becoming harder to ignore or downplay. Not only does AI open up exciting possibilities for next-level consumer personalization, it makes personalization efficient and scalable.听

By leveraging advanced algorithms and data analytics, AI personalization tailors every interaction, piece of content, and service offering to match individual customer behaviors and preferences. Plus, it does so at a level that would be unattainable through manual effort alone.

The result? Your business can set the standard for customer experiences and service 鈥� and deliver consistently across every touchpoint. Let鈥檚 break down the components of personalized AI even further.

Collecting Data

The foundation of AI personalization is the collection and analysis of customer data. From purchase patterns and online behaviors to customer service interactions, personalization AI aggregates and examines vast amounts of information to make it palatable for businesses looking to understand their customers on a deeper level.听

Predictive Analytics

AI-powered predictive analytics can anticipate customer interests and behaviors based on the data you鈥檝e collected. It鈥檚 an important capability for businesses, and they can then proactively offer personalized suggestions, offers, experiences, and content to make a positive impact on the customer鈥檚 journey.

Categorizing Customers

Through customer segmentation, AI personalization ensures that consumers with similar qualities and interests receive customized recommendations and experiences. Segmentation is one way that, facilitated by AI, businesses optimize the personalization process and make it more efficient to administer.

Recommending Products

How can you cater to customers without them telling you explicitly what they want to see? AI personalization capabilities include recommendation engines that can enhance the browsing and purchasing journey. By analyzing past customer behaviors to suggest products or services that are likely to be of interest, businesses can create an intuitive and seamless experience.

Customizing Content and Experiences

Personalized AI鈥檚 ability to tailor content and experiences dynamically can dramatically transform how brands and customers connect with each other 鈥� while boosting satisfaction along the way. By adjusting website interfaces, email content, and more based on real-time user data, AI crafts a custom experience to delight every individual based on their preferences.听

Leveraging AI for Personalization

AI can have a lot of important functions for your business, but when it comes to personalization, it transforms how you understand and cater to individual customer needs. AI personalization tools like chatbots, recommendation engines, and intelligent automation go beyond meeting customer expectations 鈥� they anticipate needs, personalize interactions, and refine customer expectations in real-time.听

Chatbots, Virtual Assistants, and Smart Response Technology

When it comes to customer support, there鈥檚 no such thing as 鈥渙ff hours.鈥� Your customers might need assistance at any time. AI-powered chatbots use organic, human-centered language to offer your customers personalized assistance and recommendations 鈥� right when they need it. Natural language processing simulates a conversational experience that will boost customer satisfaction with each interaction.

With 惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 AI-powered Smart Response technology, companies can leverage the best of artificial intelligence and human intelligence. 惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 generative AI produces personalized, empathetic, and accurate responses to customers in real time, empowering employees to connect with customers and resolve their issues faster than ever. Employees can reduce time spent on crafting replies and spend more time closing the loop and making sure no customers fall through the cracks. Employees are in the driver鈥檚 seat with AI as a copilot. Agents have the final control over what gets sent to customers and have the ability to quickly tailor AI-generated responses as needed.听

Recommendation Engines

Recommendation engines are powerful AI personalization tools that use advanced algorithms to sift through extensive user data. Then, they identify patterns to predict and recommend products, services, or content that match up with individual preferences. Providing relevant recommendations can significantly enhance the user experience by presenting options that people are most likely to find appealing and useful.听

Intelligent Automation

Intelligent automation, powered by personalization AI and machine learning, streamlines personalized customer interactions without the need for manual toil or interference. Automation technology dynamically adapts to individual customer behaviors and preferences to enable businesses to deliver personalized experiences at scale 鈥� without sacrificing operational efficiency.听

Content Creation

AI-driven content creation generates personalized content in real time, so that every communication is strategically tailored to the person it鈥檚 intended to engage and delight. From email marketing campaigns to customized website experiences, personalization AI enables content that resonates, boosting engagement, loyalty, and conversion rates by providing compelling content across all touchpoints.

Personalization Case Study

Brands that leverage AI personalization to enhance the customer experience have the potential to drive significant business results. That鈥檚 been the case for BSH Group, a global leader in the home appliance industry that uses 惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 AI and experience orchestration capabilities to:

• Listen to and fully understand who their consumers are across 40 multichannel touchpoints (websites, campaign channels, email, in-store, CRM, and more)
• Identify where and why consumers abandon their journeys, detect drop-off points, and single out the root cause of abandonment
• Uncover activities that drive conversion
• Calculate real-time customer engagement scores for each individual customer
• Personalize experiences based on customer engagement and guide customers to successful conversion

By partnering with 夜色视频, BSH has been able to deliver meaningful, friction-free experiences that have led to:

• A 106% increase in the company鈥檚 conversion rate
• A 22% increase in the company鈥檚 add-to-cart conversion rate

Read the full case study here.听

Personalizing Customer Experiences with 夜色视频

Standing out in an oversaturated market requires more than just meeting expectations 鈥� you need to create memorable, personalized experiences that resonate deeply with consumers. AI personalization is essential for cutting through the sea of endless choice at your customer鈥檚 disposal.听

夜色视频 harnesses the power of personalization AI to offer businesses the tools to compete and excel by delivering uniquely tailored experiences. Transform how you connect with your customers and see the results for yourself: Get a demo with 夜色视频 today.

The post How AI Personalization Is Changing the Customer Experience appeared first on 夜色视频 Customer and Employee Experience Blog.

What consumers think, how they behave online, and how they make shopping decisions are constantly evolving. That鈥檚 especially true in the digital customer experience landscape, as new preferences, channels, and ways for customers and brands to interact emerge.听

To bring us up to speed on what鈥檚 unfolding right now and offer predictions for what鈥檚 to come throughout the year ahead, 惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 , the Head of Market Research Insights and Adobe鈥檚 , Industry Strategy and Marketing Lead, Retail & Consumer Goods, teamed up to present their findings on this topic in a joint webinar: Digital Customer Experience Trends to Watch in 2024.听

A recording of this engaging conversation is now available to watch on demand, and ahead we鈥檒l share the top takeaways and latest research from their presentation, including the role of artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics in shaping digital customer experiences, how consumers navigate digital channels and physical experiences across their journeys, key differences across age groups, and how the economy is impacting the overall customer experience (CX).听

The Top 15 Digital Customer Experience Trends & Insights in 2024

1. The current macroeconomic environment is shaping the omnichannel customer journey and purchase decision-making

Custage explains that consumers are doing more research now to make 鈥渢he best decision of what to buy and where to buy it.鈥� More than half (55-56%) say they鈥檙e spending more time looking up things than they previously did, such as where they can get the best deal for buying a product they want and how much the price difference is between what鈥檚 available online versus in person. Similarly, about 50% say they鈥檙e willing to trade down to cheaper products, 41% say they鈥檙e shopping for second-hand or used items, and 45% are price comparing before ordering, seeing the difference between what restaurants and stores and third-party services like DoorDash and Uber Eats charge.听

2. In the face of economic challenges, CX matters more than ever

鈥淏rands can't always control what consumers are going to do,鈥� says Richards. Whether customers opt to search for better prices remains beyond the control of the businesses. What they can influence is the experiences they offer that can 鈥渉opefully override that price sensitivity over time,鈥� he adds.

Providing the best possible experience is important because experience is another factor that shapes the purchasing decision. In fact, as many as .听

Adobe has a saying: Consumers don't buy products, they buy great experiences. 鈥淪o we'd like to think that after all of this price volatility dies down, the winners in this space are going to be the ones who focused on delivering great customer experiences,鈥� says Richards.

Brands won鈥檛 be able to guarantee that every price sensitive consumer will stick around, he adds, but the majority will because of the value of premium experiences.听

3. Digital purchasing platforms are becoming an important part of the digital customer journey

夜色视频 Market Research has seen a huge uptick in the use of digital purchasing buy-now, pay-later platforms like Klarna and Afterpay.听

鈥淲e've seen even year over year, they've continued to grow, building on what's been ninefold or even more growth over the past four years,鈥� says Custage.听

4. Retailers need to ensure buy-now, pay-later payment options are seamlessly integrated into their digital customer experience

According to Adobe reporting, buy-now, pay-later options accounted for $16.6 billion in sales throughout the 2023 holiday shopping period and $75 billion across total spending in 2023.听

鈥淭hat's a 14% growth year over year鈥nd it's becoming a very big part of a lot of consumers' behavior鈥specially in the context of price sensitivity,鈥� says Richards. 鈥淚t's a way for them to have immediate gratification, get what they want, but maybe spread those payments a little bit more over time.鈥�

With affordability on the line, retailers need to make sure buy-now, pay-later features are seamlessly integrated into their checkout experience 鈥� they shouldn鈥檛 feel like a separate, standalone offering that takes customers out of the overall experience, he adds.听

5. The rise in popularity of buy-now, pay-later options also offer new opportunities for personalization and engagement

These platforms offer a wealth of customer signals that can shed light on consumer behavior and preferences. Retailers that pull this customer data in as part of their broader customer profiles can gain a better understanding of how individuals are interacting with their brand.听

These insights can allow companies to 鈥渃urate experiences for consumers based on their spending habits,鈥� says Richards.

Not only that, these platforms become vehicles for interacting with customers and can be leveraged as a communications channel for delivering personalized messaging, as well as a product discovery engine through which consumers can learn about new items and offers.

6. The new digital customer experience is inclusive of customers鈥� experiences using third-party platforms

For food and grocery brands, consumer spending on third-party ordering platforms remains here to stay.听

鈥淭here is this permanent, sizable percentage of business that is going to happen outside of a brand's four walls, and they don't always have full control over that experience,鈥� explains Custage.听

In this context, it鈥檚 more important than ever for retailers to work closely with these ordering platform partners to make sure that they鈥檙e meeting customer expectations and enhancing customer satisfaction. It鈥檚 up to leaders to 鈥渉old them accountable down the value chain鈥� for consistent experiences across the board, regardless of whether customers are interacting directly with a company or via a third party, adds Richards.听

7. Consumers feel like their experiences are getting worse 鈥� and the average customer is likely to churn after less than three bad experiences

According to a recent 夜色视频 Market Research study, half of consumers say companies are taking shortcuts that are having a negative impact on the customer experience. Meanwhile Adobe research indicates that now consumers are walking away from brands after an average of just 2.4 bad experiences. Not only that, it takes about 6.5 good experiences to get customers to become loyal again after churning.听

鈥淚t's much easier to keep them and do what you need to do to keep them from an experiential perspective than it is to get them back after they walk away,鈥� explains Richards.

8. Personalization is a powerful driver of brand choice

For most consumers, personalized experiences influence brand choice when shopping, at least half of the time, and more than half say companies should use personalization in most of or all of their interactions.听

Yet at the same time, businesses aren鈥檛 doing enough to meet their personalization expectations, with only about one in four consumers rating their last brand interaction as a truly personalized experience.听

9. Some of the most important elements of personalization include knowing who consumers are across touchpoints, and rewarding and recognizing loyal customers

Although personalization can mean a variety of different things, depending on who you ask, 夜色视频 Market Research has found that brands get personalized experiences right when they:

• Ensure continuity of knowledge: They have the ability to keep track of consumers across interactions, without requiring them to re-identify themselves, their needs, and their history when they move from one channel to the next.
• Offer rewards and recognition and flexibility of service (forgiveness for late payments, returns, etc.) in line with customer expectations.听
• Proactively reach out to customers when errors or issues are detected.听

10. Leading brands are investing in unified data and predictive analytics capabilities, tailored content, and journey orchestration solutions to deliver personalization at scale

Businesses need to have a 360-degree customer view, use AI-powered predictive analytics to 鈥減resent the right visual and verbal messages鈥� to each customer, and orchestrate real-time, behavior-triggered omnichannel customer journeys across physical and digital touchpoints that offer the next-best experience for customers.听

鈥淭here's a big difference between what we'll call 鈥榩ersonalization鈥� and 鈥榩ersonalization at scale,鈥欌�� says Richards. 鈥淭he word 鈥榮cale鈥� is critical here because there are a lot of brands out there that are very confident in their ability to personalize, but they're only doing it maybe in one channel鈥ut if you're only doing it in one channel, you're leaving a lot on the table. Because as we've talked about, the reality is consumers are engaging with you in many different ways. So if you're not figuring out how to talk to every customer on every channel in real time, which is the 鈥榓t scale鈥� piece, you're missing a huge opportunity to personalize their entire experience.鈥�

11. Advanced organizations are establishing personalization centers of excellence (COE) and adopting agile marketing squads to accelerate personalized experiences

Companies at the head of the personalization maturity curve are creating COEs with a dedicated team that includes a mix of business and IT professionals with C-level sponsorship that are responsible for defining the organization鈥檚 personalization strategy and business use cases, redesigning business processes to support personalization, and driving implementation across the entire company.听

Not only are they leveraging COEs, the most effective brands are also building out agile marketing pods that are focused on specific generational audience cohorts or a specific stage within the customer lifecycle. Their goal is to determine new tactics and ideas to address personalization for these specific segments, specifically in a test-and-learn environment.听

鈥淓ach pod lives within this bigger group of a functional community where they all interact with one another, and they share best practices and figure out what's working and what's not working,鈥� explains Richards.听

12. Companies are using AI to save time creating new concepts, optimize audience and journey insights, and measure campaign performance

Companies are using AI for personalization in a variety of ways, and three of the biggest time-saving use cases Adobe researchers have identified include developing new concepts, optimizing audiences, and measuring performance.

13. The new customer journey is neither entirely digital or entirely physical

When asked to describe their shopper journey for events like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, what stands out is that 鈥渕any, many consumers 鈥� very large proportions in some cases 鈥� don't follow a path that is entirely digital or entirely physical,鈥� says Custage.听

鈥淲e see a more omnichannel or mixed approach of browsing and research activities occurring in one channel, purchasing occurring in another, and then receipt of the product delivery, pickup, whatever it might be, back in a first channel, or a completely separate one from the first two,鈥� he adds.

As a result, brands need to adapt to managing experiences across channels, not in silos.听

Otherwise, they risk losing customers. In fact, Adobe researchers have found that one of the top three reasons that consumers churn from a brand is because of a lack of a seamless physical and digital experience.

14. Mobile phones are the key connector between physical and digital experiences

Mobile apps are quickly becoming one of the primary ways 鈥斅爄f not the primary way 鈥� consumers interact with brands digitally, says Custage.听

However, 37% of consumers say their most recent app interaction involved connecting with the brand via an additional channel as well, such as in person, over the phone, or on the company鈥檚 website.听

That鈥檚 why brands are leaning into investing in their app functionality and enhancing the in-store mode features of their apps, adds Custage.听

Companies can improve the in-store app mode experience in a variety of ways. Consumers want more real-time accurate information, fewer glitches, faster loading times, more in-store promotions, and better privacy and security features within the app, according to 夜色视频 Market Research insights.

15. Social is a critical driver of product discovery

Four in 10 consumers say they鈥檙e more likely to find out about products and brands from social media now compared to a year ago, and 35% say they鈥檝e learned about new items on TikTok and 42% say they鈥檝e done so via Facebook.听

If brands want to become more effective at reaching consumers where they鈥檙e engaging, it鈥檚 important to pay attention to where they鈥檙e spending time online. Younger generations are more likely to consume user-generated content, compared with traditional media for older generations.听

Embrace the Future of Digital Customer Experience with 夜色视频 and Adobe

Together, 夜色视频 and Adobe provide brands with a cross-channel view of all of the interactions they have with their customers across digital channels and across their customer journeys to ensure that CX and digital teams are enabled to enhance the digital customer experience and increase acquisition, accelerate conversions, and drive repeat customer engagement.

Learn more about the 夜色视频 and Adobe integration and watch the complete Digital Customer Experience Trends to Watch in 2024 recording for even more digital CX trends and insights.

The post Digital Customer Experience Trends to Watch in 2024 appeared first on 夜色视频 Customer and Employee Experience Blog.

Perfecting the customer experience requires a deep knowledge of the path your customers take, from their first interaction with and awareness of your brand to the moment they make a purchase (and beyond!). Understanding the nuances of this journey will pave the way for a more personalized, impactful approach that drives customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. In fact, customer experience journey mapping can be the blueprint that defines what sustainable growth and success look like for your business.

What Is a Customer Experience Journey?

A customer experience journey is the path a person travels with your brand. This journey includes every customer touchpoint along the way, from the moment a customer first discovers your business to their initial purchase to the point when they become loyal advocates.听聽聽

Components of the Customer Experience Journey

The typical customer journey progresses across various stages of deepening awareness of, interest in, and engagement with a given company. Usually this unfolds across聽 a variety of distinct touchpoints, including social media interactions, support calls, and more.听

Understanding each stage allows businesses to tailor their omnichannel customer experience strategy to enhance and optimize every interaction for success. Let鈥檚 define each component of the customer experience journey.

Awareness

What is a customer experience journey without brand awareness? After all, before embarking on any kind of journey with your business, consumers need to become familiar with what you have to offer. At this stage, a customer might discover you through social media ads or a recommendation from a friend. This is when your business will make its first impression.

Consideration

During this step, customers are deciding whether to do business with your company. To do that, they might read online reviews, explore your website for more information, engage with chat support to ask questions to evaluate different solutions, and compare your offerings to those of your competitors.

Conversion

When a customer reaches the conversion stage, they are ready to take action. Conversion could mean purchasing a product or subscribing to a service, but it also includes other forms of engagement, like consuming your content or becoming an active member of your brand鈥檚 community.听

Retention

Retention focuses on maintaining and deepening the relationship with the customers that take action at the conversion stage. 鈥嬧�婻etention strategies can include offering personalized follow-up emails, loyalty incentives, and incredible customer service and support 鈥� all with the aim of keeping customers engaged with and realizing the ongoing value of your business.

Advocacy

Success at the advocacy stage is like another mini conversion moment: Here you鈥檙e turning satisfied customers into vocal supporters. Brand advocates share their positive experiences with your business through various channels and extend your reach, visibility, and credibility 鈥� leading more people into the awareness stage to begin their own journey!聽

How to Map the Customer Experience Journey

What is customer experience journey mapping and how can it help you optimize your customer experience journey?

Customer experience journey mapping provides a comprehensive view of all the interactions customers have with your brand across the awareness, consideration, conversion, retention, and advocacy stages. It鈥檚 essential for identifying areas of improvement and opportunities to engage customers more meaningfully.听

贬别谤别鈥檚 how to create a customer experience journey map to foster customer satisfaction and meet their needs at each stage of their relationship with your business.听

1. Identify Touchpoints

If you want to understand the crucial moments that shape your customer鈥檚 perception and relationship with your brand, you need to identify touchpoints throughout their journey. A precise understanding of where interactions occur allows your business to tailor experiences, anticipate needs, address pain points, and iron out any wrinkles in the process. Here are a few examples of touchpoints to consider:

• Digital experience touchpoints: Your company website鈥檚 homepage, product pages, blog posts, and contact forms as well as your brand鈥檚 app

• Contact center interactions: Calls, emails, live chat sessions

• Social media and online reviews: Posts, comments, ads, direct messages, reviews
  • Communications: Emails, SMS, push notifications, in-app and in-browser messaging聽

• In-store experiences: Checkout process, in-store displays, customer service

2. Gather Customer Data and Insights (Signals) from All Customer Touchpoints to Understand the Complete Customer Journey

Capturing customer signals from every interaction 鈥� like contact center calls, chat logs, social media mentions, online reviews, and more 鈥� offers a deep and holistic understanding of the entire customer experience journey. Equipped with the data from these signals, brands gain actionable insights into customer behavior and preferences to drive better experiences.

3. Use AI to Analyze and Understand Your Customers

Gathering customer signals builds a strong foundation for your customer experience journey map. The next step is using AI-driven customer experience signal tools like 惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 Text Analytics and Speech Analytics to facilitate the process of drawing insights from across interactions by analyzing vast amounts of data, identifying trends, suggesting areas of improvement, and more. The strategic, scalable collection and analysis of customer signal data is foundational to creating an excellent customer journey that is optimized for engagement and satisfaction.

Fostering a data-driven, dynamic, responsive approach to the customer experience will unlock significant ROI by deepening loyalty and driving growth.

4. Define Customer Segments

After analyzing customer data with 惭别诲补濒濒颈补鈥檚 AI analytics, you鈥檒l be able to create distinct customer segments for more effective, targeted personalization. Different customer behaviors and preferences require their own strategic approach, like tailoring special offers to the 鈥渇requent shopper鈥� segment or creating educational content for 鈥渘ewcomers鈥� to guide them through the awareness and consideration phases of the customer experience journey.

5. Create a Journey Map

The customer journey is complex. Take your nuanced understanding of your customer touchpoints, signal data, and segments and make it more digestible with visual customer experience journey maps.听

By using visual tools to represent your customer journey analysis, you鈥檙e creating a framework that transcends abstract concepts and makes the customer journey more manageable. Plus, it鈥檚 a great way to ensure that no details are overlooked when it comes to enhancing the customer experience.

6. Orchestrate Your Customer Journeys

Customer experience journey mapping, paired with orchestration tools, is crucial for delivering personalized experiences that cater to every phase of the customer journey. Based on a customer鈥檚 behaviors, preferences, and history, experience orchestration tools automatically select the next best step or action to guide the customer forward. By understanding real-time intent and dynamically adjusting interactions accordingly, your business can customize every touchpoint for maximum impact.听

Plus, this approach not only enhances the customer experience but also streamlines operations by managing and automating complex workflows, ensuring consistency and scalability across the customer experience journey.

Why Optimizing the CX Journey Is Necessary

Optimizing the customer experience journey is necessary if you want to increase the lifetime value of each customer by cultivating deeper, longer-lasting relationships. Strategically focusing on the customer experience is a worthwhile investment that directly correlates with better business outcomes. Consider that companies that lead with and prioritize the customer experience are 26 times more likely to see revenue growth of 20% or more than those that neglect this area.

Here are other tangible benefits of zeroing in on your customer experience efforts.

Positive Brand Reputation

When customers feel cared for and valued, they become advocates and spread the news. Enhancing the customer experience journey boosts your brand鈥檚 reputation by establishing trust and credibility.

Higher Customer Lifetime Value

When a customer consistently enjoys personalized, engaging experiences, they are more inclined to make repeat purchases, upgrade to higher service levels, and remain loyal to your business for the long term.听

Seamless Omnichannel Experience

Taking the steps to ensure that you can provide a consistent and cohesive experience across all platforms 鈥� from social media to mobile apps to customer support calls 鈥� is critical for meeting today鈥檚 consumer expectations.听

Strategies for Customer Journey Optimization

What is a customer experience journey with a strong strategy behind it? It鈥檚 a roadmap that not only anticipates the steps your customers take, but ensures that each one is optimized for maximum engagement and satisfaction. If you want to truly elevate your approach to creating a customer experience journey map, you need these key strategies to enhance the process at each stage.听

Gather Customer Feedback

Establishing an active feedback loop is an essential way to refine the customer experience journey while remaining adaptive to real-time experiences. Effective feedback management ensures that insights are captured across a variety of channels, from surveys to customer support communications and social media interactions. Once the data is captured, it can be used to identify trends, inform strategic decisions, and take every customer interaction as an opportunity to make a strategic improvement.

Additionally, Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs, including surveys, can deepen your level of insight while informing product development and service improvements. To use VoC surveys as a powerful tool for direct feedback, keep questions clear, concise, targeted, and focused on areas that directly impact customer satisfaction. Strategies to boost survey response rates include:

• Personalizing surveys to the customer's experience
• Offering incentives for completion
• Ensuring surveys are accessible across devices

Capture Customer Signals

Capturing customer signals involves collecting data from every interaction, including chat logs, social media, transaction history, and more. By listening to signals, including both direct feedback (surveys, for example) and observed behavior, your brand unlocks real-time insights into customer needs and expectations.听

Customer signals play a major role in understanding the full scope of the customer experience, allow businesses to react to trends in real time, address issues quickly, and make use of every opportunity to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Understand Customer Behavior

Capturing data from your customers is one thing. Understanding their behaviors and how they can guide your decision-making? Easier said than done. Using AI-powered Text and Speech Analytics to decode behaviors and preferences will arm you with insights that might otherwise get buried in high volumes of conversations and feedback.

Address Customer Pain Points

Customer experience journey mapping is so effective at addressing customer pain points because it allows you to put yourself in your customer鈥檚 shoes. By analyzing each touchpoint and gaining a holistic understanding of their experiences, your business can take the right steps to resolve issues 鈥� even before they manifest. Using strategies that are informed by direct feedback and innovative analytics also ensures that your solutions are not only relevant, but impactful as well.听

Personalize the Customer Experience

Personalization is the key to differentiating your brand and delighting your customers with relevant, engaging interactions tailored specifically to them. Insight and analytics enable businesses to serve up customized content, offers, and solutions at just the right time, to exceptional results. Most consumers (61%) are willing to spend more for personalized experiences, with even more (82%) saying that personalized experiences influence the brand they choose at least half the time.听

Deliver Connected Experiences

Personalized experiences cannot fully succeed if they are not connected seamlessly across multiple channels 鈥� whether it鈥檚 online, via social media, or in person. To achieve this, brands must align their tech stack, teams, and processes to make every touchpoint feel like a part of a unified whole. By focusing on intent-driven journeys, your business can anticipate needs and deliver value at every step of the customer experience journey, from awareness to advocacy.听

Leverage Mapping Tools to Analyze the Entire Customer Journey

Leveraging customer journey mapping tools or software allows businesses to create dynamic, interactive visuals that detail every stage of the customer experience journey. This approach is vital for grasping the full scope of interactions customers have with your brand.

Effective customer experience journey mapping, facilitated by the right tools and technology, sheds light on the paths customers take while spotlighting areas of improvement so companies can make strategic improvements that foster sustainable growth for their business.听

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