So what will the customer experience of 2020 look like? And more importantly, will your company be positioned to deliver an optimal experience?
Based on current predictions, the answer is “no.” According to a survey of 73 business leaders conducted by TeleTech, 75 percent anticipate their companies will be “fair” to “poor” in meeting customer needs, preferences, and expectations in 2020. Part of the rationale for this negative self assessment is that nearly one-third of organizations (31 percent) expect they’ll have to make improvements in their technological capabilities to respond to changing customer behaviors and expectations within six years.
“The customer of the future will be highly empowered and knowledgeable and will price shop in microseconds to see who offers the lowest price,” says Taylor Allis, vice president of marketing and product management at TeleTech. He adds that customer loyalty will be dictated by how quickly a company can respond to each customer and personalize the experience across each channel.
Not surprisingly, there is no one standout element of the customer experience that will impact all companies. Increased customer expectations for exceptional experiences (26 percent), followed by advanced personalization (22 percent) lead the pack of areas of greatest potential impact, according to the survey.
In the near future organizational leaders must act on the detailed profiles of customers based on a holistic look at transactional, behavioral, sentiment, social, and other data that’s available about them, says Allis. Decision makers will also need to approach customer strategies creatively to help distinguish their companies in the eyes of customers. They must formulate and deliver experiences that customers aren’t yet receiving in a given industry.
To get there, businesses can tinker with advanced technologies such as virtual touchscreens and predictive search tools, then test these out with trial projects. “These can be piloted in an innovation lab and tested with a small subset of customers to examine the impact on the customer experience and on the business,” says Allis. “Give each project team the freedom to explore. If it’s a failure, it’s no risk to your business. If it’s a success, map it to the business and roll it out to one store or one geography at a time.”