Providing a good customer experience is always the goal of any startup company. But with customer preferences constantly evolving, these businesses need to be on their toes. And with 2022 just around the corner, there are new trends that will be coming. Here are the most important ones that you should have a strong start for.
2022 Customer Experience Trend No. 1 The Continued Growth Of Customer Centricity
Customer centricity has been a significant push in the last few years. Companies have been reinventing themselves as ones that put their patrons first in everything that they do. But the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic provided a stronger push for the movement.
With the pandemic restricting the movement of people, companies had to be more proactive in reaching out to their customers. One of the biggest challenges for them was how to provide safe services to people.
To overcome this challenge, businesses explored novel ways of doing business. These included things like contactless payments, curbside pickups, and virtual consultations. Interestingly, these non-personal means of doing business showed that companies are dead set in providing for customers.
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As the world gradually transitions into a post-pandemic environment, these innovations are likely to remain. And customers are likely to seek more of this type of service that gives them greater freedom. As such, businesses need to strive more in delivering such services this coming 2022.
How To Get A Strong Start On The Trend
The key to providing a more customer-centric service is by understanding what people want and need. Constantly communicate with your customers to better understand those needs. Take advantage of the different channels to track customer comments and conversations.
You would also want to be more proactive in asking them what they exactly want and need. Once they see that you are ready to listen, people are more likely to open up to you. This allows you to give a solution that fits them.
Take this a step further by actively making the customers part of the solution. Here, you need to consider their point of view when it comes to the solutions you devise. This gives you a clearer picture of whether these solutions would work as you have thought.
2022 Customer Experience Trend No. 2: A New View On The Customer Journey
Connected to the above trend, there is also a shift in how companies view their customers’ journeys. Previously, companies saw people deciding where to buy their goods as the start of their purchase journey. However, there is now a move to take that starting point a bit further back.
Businesses are now looking at when customers decide they need a product as the beginning of their journeys. Experts say the pandemic-induced changes in customer buying habits influence this shift. With the limited time they have to go out for shopping trips, people think carefully about which items they will include in their shopping lists and which they will defer for later.
Being able to predict when that need arises can give businesses a strong start in delivering the right products and services. Luckily, it is now possible to learn that through the voluminous customer data that you can get from various sources. Careful study of your customers’ online search habits will give you a clear idea of when trends start to rise for particular products. Meanwhile, social media provides a more direct means of finding out when people want a certain product.
Getting A Strong Start In The Trend
Of course, just knowing when customers want a product is just part of the equation. You also need to deliver those products to them proactively. Omnichannel customer service means that they can purchase these products from anywhere they want whenever they want.
But to make this omnichannel purchase network possible, you need to have people to run them. Virtua Outsourcing’s agents can work for you outside of regular business hours. We can also help you deal with higher customer volumes and ensure that everyone gets served immediately.
2022 Customer Experience Trend no. 3: The Growth Of 1:1 Customer Experiences
Customer experience development aims to provide customers with more personalized service. But companies often still focus on developing these experiences for customer segments rather than individuals. One of the emergent trends for 2022 is getting closer to true 1:1 experience.
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What makes such experiences different is that they aren\’t just about sending personalized offers to customers. Rather, the goal is to provide them with relevant information based on their current needs. For instance, you can immediately send guides for a particular product category after the customer buys that product from you.
These 1:1 experiences draw customers’ attention more since they closely align with their changing needs. According to a survey by Accenture, 91% of customers are more likely to go with brands that recognize their need for, and provide them with, relevant information. Companies would not want to miss that opportunity in the coming year.
Getting A Strong Start
One challenge with creating 1:1 experiences is that you need to provide them throughout the customer journey. And with each customer’s purchase journey being unique, you will need to be more adaptable to those journeys. More advanced data-gathering technology can give you all that data to map out those journeys more accurately.
You also need to be able to respond to those moments more promptly. This is where automation comes to the rescue. You can utilize it to fill in the gaps that your agents can’t reach. It can also help you create a more seamless experience.
But you should also create a balance between automation and support from human agents. Your team should know when it is time to take over and assist customers accordingly. On the other hand, your automation design should mesh well with human support. For instance, it should be able to make the transfer to your human agents quickly.
Get A Strong Start This 2022 With Virtua Outsourcing Solutions’ Help
The emergence of these trends will likely result in big changes in the kind of customer experience that people expect. And to be sure that you are ready to adapt to those changes, you need to have the right team by your side. We at Virtua Outsourcing Solutions are always ready to help you ride these trends and boost your startup’s success.