The world of customer service has evolved – and organisations now find themselves challenged to meet post-pandemic priorities to support growth and ensure future-proofing. Customers are underwhelmed, investments aren’t keeping up with growth demands, and agents are feeling burnt out and undervalued. We take a look at the top 5 trends shaping the future of Customer Experience in 2022.
- The Rise of Conversational Service- Asynchronous Reigns Supreme
Zendesk recently predicted that conversational service will be dominant and productive by 2025 – stating that by 2030, every business will live (and provide conversational service) everywhere their customers are.
Currently, less than 40% of businesses in the UK report that they can deliver conversations that allow a customer to respond wherever and whenever is convenient, although 34% say they are already adding capabilities for conversational service. According to the latest CX Trends report, 90% of businesses acknowledge that they will have to make changes in order to support conversational customer service – specifically that they will need to implement new work processes and train agents on new ways to converse with customers.
The rise in conversational service is driven by changing customer attitudes to service – 55% of customers want to seamlessly continue conversations across channels and over 73% want the ability to start a conversation on one channel and pick it back up on another. Not having to re-explain issues when moving between channels is now in the top 3 issue for 52% of respondents in the ContactBabel Inner Circle Guide to Self-Service.
- The Increasing Importance of Personalisation
As conversational service becomes the norm, customer expectations surrounding the experiences within these asynchronous channels are also on the rise. 68% of consumers expect personalised service every time they reach out – whilst less than half of businesses can deliver that today.
Zendesk research has uncovered that a single bad interaction drives 61% of consumers to switch to a competitor, and that leaps to 76% after two bad interactions, so the quality of each customer experience is paramount.
Whilst 74% of customers expect agents to have access to all information relevant to their account and query, and 42% of consumers saying they “get annoyed” when content isn’t personalised, it is unsurprising that there is a 40% higher revenue in companies that excel at personalised experiences.
By 2025, customers will drive all service as customers dictate the exact support they want. Using tools in the contact centre like Interaction Analytics or AI-bots to surface suggestions based on customer history will become much more common as businesses focus on delivering the contextual interactions that customers crave.
- Restructured Digital Channels – Empathetic AI Initiatives
The power of empathetic customer experiences transcends any single interaction – advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP) has made it possible for AI to support cognitive and creative tasks like writing articles and delivering contextual suggestions/responses.
There has been a significant acceleration in digital adoption and specifically in investments in AI and automation capabilities. In response to Covid, 52% of companies accelerated their AI adoption plans (Pwc), whilst the latest Zendesk CX Trends Report revealed that nearly 60% of businesses plan to increase their AI budgets by at least 25% next year.
The number of tickets handled by automation and AI-powered chatbots grew 53% year on year from 2020 to 2021, and nearly two-thirds of businesses now expect the majority of customer service interactions to be automated in the future.
Forrester maintains that investing in effective strategies for data use and AI will enable organisational agility and resilience. 40% of companies that turned on automation and AI between Sept 2019 and Sept 2021 saw a 15% improvement in First Reply Time. This is particularly significant given FCR has consistently been the number one factor that impacts most upon customer service and satisfaction (ContactBabel).
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Zendesk predicts that by 2025, all service will be AI-first, and by 2030, AI will go so far as to automate the majority of frontline interactions.
- Proactive Service Commitment
Modern customer behaviour is being shaped by the proliferation of digital service channels and the demographic is slowly shifting towards the digital natives. Whilst 60% of consumers say the pandemic raised the bar for their service expectations, it’s anticipated that most consumers will retain the behavioural patterns (and expectations) they adopted in 2020/21 (Gartner).
For service centres, shifting from reactive interactions to proactive conversations is one of the biggest priorities in 2022. Proactive service usage increased by 115% from 2020 to 2021 and continues to play a vital role in the delivery of the personalised experiences expected by consumers. Whilst proactive service does prompt additional customer service engagement, it’s most direct benefit lies in building customer loyalty – businesses should be aware that adopting proactive service as a cost-reduction exercise will fail.
- Renewed Focus on Agent Wellbeing
The role of internal teams has become more critical and visible. High levels of attrition are making it difficult to handle increased volume and placing the customer experience in jeopardy.
It’s never been harder to be a contact centre agent – call volumes have increased, and whilst bots are taking some of the heat, the toughest calls are still for your agents to handle. As ContactBabel highlights, call durations continue to rise in a continuation of a long-term upward trend driven in large part by the customer uptake of self-service. This means that the average call handled by an agent is more complex than ever before, leading to longer call durations and more strenuous demands on agents.
Contact centres are seeing turnover rates of 58% – and it’s becoming increasingly apparent that organisations that don’t focus on significantly improving the agent experience will suffer far more than those that do. With agents continually stressed by long call queues and frustrated customers, investment in management training processes and digital tools to reconnect agents will become bigger priorities for businesses.
In order to mitigate the impact of The Great Resignation, businesses will need to address attrition, accelerate hiring and flexibility and ensure agents aren’t overwhelmed. Currently, 38% of agents say the customer service function is not treated as well as others in the organisation, whilst 50% of agents report that they are overworked.
Download your copy of the Zendesk CX Trends Report 2022 now.
