With 65% of organizations aiming to increase their technology spending in 2023 by an average of 24%, CX is the top priority for businesses.
Only "price" and "product quality" were placed higher highly by consumers (73%), who also put a high value on customer experience while making purchases.
According to a PWC survey, the most crucial CX components are friendliness, quickness, convenience, and ease of use.
These figures suggest that when it comes to creating great customer experience and meaningful and lasting connections, brands should and do increasingly understand the significance and importance of customer experience (CX). Technology-driven initiatives to improve customer experience should concentrate on these areas.
In light of this, we've listed below our predictions for the top 9 customer experience trends for 2023. Let's have a look!
1. Personalization
Who doesn't love to feel special? Everyone enjoys having something personal to them. Technology that makes it possible for companies to scale up mass personalization is what's new today. By 2023, you should expect more businesses to rely on technology to produce unique physical products and services for their existing customers.
Companies that successfully implement personalization can increase their revenue by 40%. After all, 78% of customers expect companies to tailor their experiences when it comes to making repeat purchases.
So, personalizing products, goods, and services will be a common strategy and one of the most effective customer experience trends for delivering a fantastic customer experience in 2023. Nike and Adidas, for instance, have introduced "personalizable" sneakers that can be altered into whatever customers like. Moreover, the skincare company Clinique offers face creams and moisturizers that can be specially formulated for each customer's skin type.
In addition, 43% of executives cite a high priority for investing in personalizing hybrid experiences as personalization. Hybrid experiences are a new strategy that brands adopt in the aftermath of the digital revolution.
Marketers will use a hybrid approach throughout the customer journey that combines digital and physical interactions. For example, by building physical shops where customers can pick up automobiles they order online, the online retailer Carvana has embraced the hybrid experience model.
2. Metaverse and Immersive Experiences
By the end of 2030, Metaverse's global market revenue is expected to surpass $678.80 billion. Businesses are implementing fundamental ideas for customer engagement in fresh, immersive ways. So, as customers enter a new world in 2023, immersive AR and VR experiences will become the standard.
Brands like Gucci, Clarks, and Spotify have already set out locations in the most well-liked metaverse platforms, including virtual worlds in video games like Roblox or Fortnite.
Meanwhile, companies like JP Morgan, Wendy's, and Fender are increasingly using purpose-built metaverse platforms like The Sandbox, Decentraland, or Meta Horizons.
It's easy to see the appeal: customers want their relationships with brands to be memorable and experiential in 2023. Brands must design imaginative, extraordinary consumer behavior and journeys to remain relevant and elevate customer engagement and interactions.
Platforms for the Metaverse are emerging as one of the most significant ways to accomplish this. But that also holds for offline trade. In retail, take Florence's Gucci Garden as an illustration, where customers may peruse a museum dedicated to the brand's history and have a meal prepared by a Michelin-starred chef. A virtual tour is also offered for those unable to visit in person.
So, anticipate the trend of retailers that offer customers in-store experiences that will want to post on social media and discuss with their friends to continue.
3. Sustainable Products and Services
Nearly 80% of retailers think their efforts to create customer loyalty also enhance sales. After all, 80% of customers give sustainability at least some thought when making purchases and look to retailers and other companies to set an example.
Furthermore, compared to just over 34% two years ago, nearly 90% of Gen X customers stated they would be willing to spend an additional 10% or more for sustainable items.
More customers prefer to be influenced by ecological and environmental factors when customers make buying decisions. As a result, sustainable consumption & production have increased in popularity across all sectors. This is echoed in customer experience, where companies will allow customers to make moral choices as part of the purchasing process.
For example, Bio-bean, a company that recycles waste coffee grounds, created a new technique for converting coffee grounds into biofuel. However, their firms would only function with the businesses that produce the waste products. More than 3,000 tons of used coffee grounds are being turned into biofuel annually thanks to a partnership with Costa Coffee, the biggest coffee company in the United Kingdom.
Furthermore, suppliers and manufacturers will gradually make it straightforward for their existing and potential customers to find out how things were manufactured and what resources were utilized.
For instance, the retailer Asket publishes information on the country of origin of each garment it sells, as well as a breakdown of the expenses for the raw materials, manufacturing, packing, and transport, as well as the CO2 emissions related to the production of each item.
4. Authenticity
Contrary to the 51% of customers who claim that fewer than half of the brands produce real content, 92% of marketers think that most or all of their marketing activities resonate as genuine.
2023 will be the year of authenticity, with marketers relying on "customer influencers," user-generated content (UGC), and harnessing TikTok's influence for product discovery, predicts Emplifi.
Today, authenticity is essential but can be challenging to achieve. Businesses and brands in 2023 are aware that building customers' trust will enable them to produce better, more valuable CX.
To achieve authenticity, a brand's customer experience must let its human aspects emerge. This can be as easy as ensuring that customer support is upfront about errors and prompt to fix anything wrong while the procedure is being carried out.
Speaking freely and frankly about how that technology is used will help a firm ensure an authentic customer experience even when its processes are increasingly being driven by technology.
Consider Netflix as an example. It's no secret that algorithms and artificial intelligence fuel the suggestions that guide our viewing experience. By exposing information on the technical processes behind the scenes on its blogs and social media platforms and by supporting competitions on platforms to break new ground in the field of data science, the company has made steps to ensure that this is visibly part of its DNA.
5. Automation and Self-Service to Help With Employee Shortage
Five or more automated divisions are present in more than one-third of businesses. Furthermore, 57% of companies seek to use automation to improve worker performance and productivity. Customers prefer digital self-service channels (website, mobile app, voice response system, and online chat) by more than 60%.
Concerns about staffing are still an issue for all businesses. However, marketers will develop innovative methods to get around problems rather than offering excuses. Without compromising customer experience, automation can replace human workers in warehouses and contact centers.
Customers will be able to solve issues and get answers on their own time in 2023, thanks to the explosion of self-service alternatives, including voice memos and short videos.
6. CX Analytics Leveraging For an Excellent CX Delivery
In a Clootrack Study where 102 CX experts participated, 1 out of 8 experts said that Not tapping into the rich customer insights is the biggest challenge.
36% of respondents said they had customer data analytic solutions, while 48% said their firms had analytics systems already. Data-driven businesses have a 23 times higher likelihood of acquiring customers, a 6 times higher possibility of keeping those loyal customers, and a 19 times higher chance of becoming successful as a result.
Businesses are beginning to understand that they are missing the most important source of consumer insights—their daily encounters with meaningful and lasting connections. They disregard customer interactions as they think that the NPS numbers and survey results represent the customer's voice.
However, some brands need to be made aware that their walls already contain the actual voice of the customer and that technology is available to collect this information. A value tenfold bigger than the survey data they have relied on for decades is recognized by those who have leveraged their customer data.
Artificial Intelligence will be crucial in helping sales, support, and service teams identify and infer risks and opportunities from discussions, enabling much quicker responses from those teams.
7. Doing More with Less CX Budget
According to brand-new Forrester data, 82% of CX leaders believe their budgets will increase in the upcoming year. According to Forrester, customer experience leaders have unrealistic expectations for their budget possibilities.
But such budgets are in jeopardy due to the weak economy. As long as the economy remains unstable, we predict that most CX initiatives will have to reduce spending in at least some areas.
Therefore, CX teams will need to work harder with fewer resources while concentrating on initiatives with the best return on investment. No matter how customer-focused their organizations are or how the economy is, CX leaders need to keep a lean operation.
Also, it is imperative to save money by cutting spending in areas prone to waste in the operating environment that CX executives currently face. CX leaders may increase spending for customer journey orchestration (CJO) tools to help them work more effectively.
In addition to bridging the gap between data scientists and design researchers, CJO platforms. may assist in integrating quantitative and qualitative customer insights in terms of customer journeys. As a result, CX functions that want to make their businesses stand out for customers who wish to have adaptive, individualized experiences must have CJO platforms.
The difference between excellent and average CX teams will become more apparent in 2023, and the teams that succeed will be those that can consistently demonstrate their worth.
8. Community Flywheel
By utilizing agile test-and-learn, today's fastest-growing organizations engage with and win the loyalty of online communities with great returns and minimal risk.
Marketing strategies for the 2020s revolve around the community: engaging customers in the communities they are a part of and assisting them in expressing their community membership through brand participation.
To promote the growth of a community flywheel, brands that thrive at building online communities utilize five reinforcing techniques: know your communities, make your brand story talkable, zoom in on hero items, feed the conversation across platforms, and complete transactions straightforwardly.
When Instagram launched twelve years ago, businesses like Gymshark and Drunk Elephant invented the community flywheel. It is now successfully employed in various industries, from DIY to fashion.
With 350,000 user-generated postings on social media, grill pioneer Traeger created the "Traegerhood," a virtual community of more than one million individuals. Ganni, a high-end fashion label, has developed a passionate and influential community of #GanniGirls who connect and share principles like gender equality and women's empowerment.
This methodology allows for rapid growth, offers a high return on investment at low risk, and supports motivated, high-performing teams. This is because it is well suited to the quick feedback cycle of cross-functional agile teams and doesn't require extensive marketing technology investment ahead of demand.
9. Enhance Employee Experience
In a study by Forbes and Salesforce, organizations offering great employee experience along with CX are attaining nearly 2X growth. The study showed 70% of respondents in the survey agreed that good employee experience positively impacts CX.
Customer experience demonstrates how any workforce approaches work. Happy employees put efforts into facilitating great customer satisfaction and experiences. For instance, excellent customer service by customer service teams results in better CX.
Utilizing tools and methods to improve employee experiences is proving to be an effective CX trend going forward in 2023.
What's In Store For CX in 2023?
Any technology interacting with consumers can be categorized as CX; developing CX improvements involves streamlining platforms, tools, and interfaces and lowering the barriers to giving customers what they want. This will still contain tools like websites, social media, and chatbots in 2023, but it will also progressively incorporate new channels like augmented reality and Metaverse (AR).
We can predict the trend of retailers providing cutting-edge tech-based experiences to their customers, even though personalizing items, goods, and services will be an overall strategy for delivering a superb customer experience. Furthermore, customer experience has mirrored sustainable production & consumption.
To attain authenticity, brands will let their human sides shine through, but automation will increase. Expertise in modern technology will be essential for sales, support, and service teams. However, given the state of the economy, CX teams will have to work harder with fewer resources.
Brands will face new difficulties and opportunities in 2023. Brands can get ready to adapt and provide outstanding experiences in the new year and beyond by understanding customer wants and emerging customer experience trends.
Read More: Top 15 Customer Experience Challenges according to 102 CX experts and what actions they took!
