Have you ever had a favorite café, restaurant or bar? Maybe you go back frequently because the servers know you by name. They know how you like your drink. You trust their opinion when they recommend new menu items because you feel seen and taken care of when you’re there: It’s an exceptional customer experience (CX). To achieve this level of service, the servers pay close attention to the voice of their customers and deliver consistent, personalized experiences every time.
The act of developing exceptional digital customer experiences is much like the process outlined above. In fact, it can be far more powerful given the sheer volume of insights and data at your fingertips, which can create a complete picture of who your customers are at a one-to-one, one-to-few, and one-to-many level––and at scale.
While capturing and acting on changing consumer behavior can be perplexing for many companies, there are significant bottom-line benefits for organizations prioritizing service—and serious ramifications for those that don’t. For example, research from McKinsey found 72% of consumers expect to be recognized by businesses as an individual, and 76% consider whether a brand provides personalized communications before buying. As humans, we enjoy a personalized experience, and the companies that deliver will ultimately attract more customers.
So, which CX trends need to be on your radar this year to ensure you’re keeping up? How can you provide a positive customer experience? Let’s dive in.
AI is instrumental to understanding how your customers want their experience improved and also unlocks the key to how you can deliver them. Consumers provide numerous signals every time they search for products and services, engage with brands, make purchases, and follow up with support. Organizations that can own and derive value from vast amounts of data have unlocked the blueprint for delivering more personalized recommendations, offers, and product pairings that drive repeat purchases and reduce the friction points along the customer journey.
A whopping 93% of consumers expect their online experience to be better or equal to their in-person interactions with your brand. With AI assessing engagement and behavioral patterns across channels and devices, you’re able to uncover patterns that can be used for predictive analysis and, in turn, proactive support. Additionally, AI frees live agents to support customers with complex or relational problems that the AI would be poorly suited to handle, enabling even more advanced support for your customers.
Investing in AI technology with advanced analytics and response capabilities is one of the most visible digital customer experience trends. In fact, an IBM survey found that personalized CX is the main driver for companies adopting artificial intelligence. Not only does AI make personalization easier and more impactful, but it makes personalization at scale table stakes.
Manual A/B testing is just not equipped for the highly dynamic and complicated nature of CX. These tests require variables to be fixed and decided before testing begins, and there’s no way to change or adjust without restarting the experiment. To effectively develop your CX, your tools need to be able to pivot and, most importantly, experiment with many interconnected ideas and nuances at once. Not only will your testing yield better results, but this creates a feedback loop that tracks the success or failure of these predictions in order to improve the accuracy of the AI. To this end, leaders should develop and invest in at-scale personalization driven by AI decisioning capabilities.
AI-driven segmentation focuses on identifying and targeting high-conversion groups versus everyone. Breaking audiences down into sub-groups based on which device a customer is using, their geographic location, or if it’s their first time on your site can all be used to create an incredibly personalized experience based on the customer’s real-life circumstances.
Because of this, segmentation is how you’re able to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time. Segmentation can help you target customers at essential digital touchpoints along the customer journey. This is especially useful at later stages of your conversion funnel, as different groups might be triggered to purchase for different reasons. You could segment repeat buyers, for example, and remind them to sign up for a loyalty program or look forward to future sales.
An added benefit of AI is the ability to integrate with multiple analytics platforms, including Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and Contentsquare, via a unidirectional data feed from Evolv AI. The resulting integration helps teams better understand how and why visitors and customers are interacting with digital channels based on Evolv AI experiment data. More integrated sources mean more data for the AI to turn into actionable insights, and a more streamlined process for you and your team.
Rather than seeing CX personalization solely as a marketing or analytics problem, view it as an organization-wide opportunity. Use the undeniable power of AI to do the things it does best: automation and optimization. These strategies can save you time, money, and headaches. And not just you, your customers too. Instead of focusing solely on short-term wins, look for long-term drivers of growth and emphasize customer lifetime value.
You can’t know what trends will work for your business until you experiment with your own visitors and shoppers. Real customers vote with their behavior, and the right technology can help glean insights into what interactions and behaviors are needed by the customer. From there, you learn which journey is most preferred by your ideal buyer (or buyer segment) to lead to a conversion such as a purchase.
Evolv AI enables you to tap into detailed insights and data, optimizing every customer interaction for enhanced engagement and satisfaction. Don't just meet expectations—exceed them and drive loyalty with Evolv AI's advanced personalization capabilities.