CX Trends for 2021
Many of our clients are beating the same drum as we are when it comes to investing in their people; those who will help drive customer experience forwards, upwards and onwards – the importance of which can’t be underestimated in 2021 and beyond. But what CX trends do we have to look forward to this year?
CX Trends: Social proof is the key
Verifying products and information has become a pivotal part of the customer journey and decision-making process. Per Hubspot, 82% of people look at online reviews when researching a product or service and 70% of those trust the online customer opinions they do read.
Social proof provides customers with a story, and it has a few means to being extremely influential as to whether they purchase or not – from customer success (hearing stories from people who’ve used/implemented your product or service successfully and how so), to peer approval (reviews from people they consider to be of their own ilk, and trustworthy, which reinforces their own thoughts and feelings about your business), and that all-important expert endorsement (figureheads who customers consider to be an expert giving you the thumbs up). This year, companies will place even more of a focus on generating social proof as a key part of their CX strategy, to convert those inquiries or “might-bes” to the next stage of the journey.
CX Trends: Voice is making a come-back
Whilst the instantaneous nature of online chat still has a huge part to play, the pandemic seemingly taught us a few things – one being that many people are now more likely to seek out a friendly voice on the end of a phone than they are to jump into conversation with a bot on your website or send an email. The reason behind this is two-fold: with the advent of Covid-19, the problems customers are looking for a solution to are often more complex than before and, aside from that, a sympathetic ear never goes amiss.
Companies will begin analysing their communication channels in order to understand which provide the best results – which could come down to number of sales closed, percentage of queries resolved in one call, and so on and so forth.
Particularly with consumer-driven businesses, voice will continue and grow to be a key channel for customer service in terms of taking CX to the next level; as it’s also a job which can largely be done from home as well, we expect to see businesses recruiting and investing heavily in the training for these teams.
CX Trends: Emotion analytics to the forefront
Emotion has always played a huge part in the customer decision-making process, whatever it is your business does – but actually utilising tools to understanding what’s going on in customers’ minds will be at the forefront in 2021.
As brands seek to understand more about their customers’ needs and the psychology behind their buying process, the emotions involved will become ever more important – particularly as we navigate into this new world of empathy and community. Using emotion analytics as a tool to upgrading customer experience (that is, measuring the impact you have, from advertising to the product or service itself) could provide interesting and useful data as to where we should be focusing efforts and aiming to improve.
CX is a team affair – having the right people in key places is crucial to making a strong strategy work. Get in touch to learn more about how we can help you find those individuals and get things rolling.
