
CEO & Co-Founder
The customer experience space is changing rapidly. As new technologies emerge, customer behaviours shift – but sometimes not in the way businesses expect. Here are the top CX trends identified by Gartner research, and how brands can leverage these changes.
Outbound customer engagement is on the rise, and rightly so. In a world that competes for audience attention, proactive service helps keep brands top of mind. Gartner predicts that proactive customer engagement interactions will surpass reactive customer engagement interactions by as early as 2025.
Interestingly, customers continued to engage with a brand after proactive interactions. The nature of the additional interactions are also interesting to note – instead of opting to use self-service channels, customers gravitated towards assisted digital or voice channels after the initial outreach.
In general, proactive service improved customer satisfaction (CSAT) ratings. Brands can ride on this trend and build greater customer loyalty by designing smart proactive service.
Humans are creatures of habit; customers tend to rely on previously used channels to resolve issues or raise concerns. Even when new, more efficient channels are presented, customers go back to the old methods. This is because customers underestimate the time it takes to resolve their case. Many times, this results in abandoned self-service operations.
32% of customers actively engage in a customer service phone call for more than 10 minutes
75% of customers who use the phone report the interaction taking longer than expected.
To avoid abandoned calls or self-service tasks, brands can use AI to guide customers through self-service. This starts from the first point of interaction, which can be the company landing page. AI-powered interactions can then move customers down the funnel based on the steps taken, be it answers to FAQs or guided scripts for common transactions. Brands can make the most of previously collected interaction data to design scripts that address the most common queries. Over time, as more data is collected, businesses can refine scripts and update customer journeys.
Understand how customers use your product or service, and help them get more out of it. This could be another area where proactive service comes into play. Quick prompts on how things have been so far can lead to a series of how-to articles or videos that guide users into a richer product or service experience. Value enhancing service can also bring about opportunities to upsell, once the desire for greater value has been established.