Business conversations continue to center on the value of customer experience (CX), as it has become the cornerstone of growth and ongoing success. Dave Mingle, VP of Customer Experience at Reputation, examines the key trends that will shape 2022.
Investment in CX technology is growing. In fact, not too long ago, IDC expected that, by the end of 2022, global investments in CX technology would reach $641 billion. Now, with 2022 in sight, businesses are beginning to refresh their CX strategies for the new year. In an effort to help, we’ve compiled some predictions for 2022 that reflect a continued focus on CX to build deeper, more meaningful connections with customers, creating positive sentiment and loyalty.
Read on to learn about four CX trends that will help brands shape their CX strategy in 2022.
1. Businesses will continue to mature along the listen-learn-act paradigm, accelerating the need for feedback consolidation. Aggregating CX data, making sense of it to uncover actionable insights and funneling those insights to all customer-facing employees so that CX improvements can be made quickly are becoming fundamental to CX mastery. As businesses mature along this continuum, they will move away from internal silos, metrics and tools that fragment CX data. Instead, they will look to aggregate CX data across the organization into one repository, which will provide a more complete picture of their customer. In addition, businesses will consolidate traditional CX data from surveys and feedback together with CX data from more modern listening posts like social. Consolidation in these two areas will be critical to the success of the listen-learn-act paradigm.
2. Businesses will tie CX insights to business outcomes through analysis of metrics, which requires that CX data be in one, central repository. If a good customer experience can’t be linked directly to ROI that matters, those higher up on the food chain will likely ask some hard questions about continued investment in a CX program. One way leaders can show value is by gathering metrics linking CX programs to operational ROI that matters. But an ROI-type analysis can’t be performed efficiently and effectively when data is scattered among different silos in an organization, or when it’s left unused on social listening posts. Therefore, businesses will take steps to aggregate CX data in one location.
3. Customer search experience will be made a No. 1 priority, as it’s a business’s digital front door. “Zero-click” searches are on the rise. As Google Business Profile pages become increasingly content-rich, they will become the primary entry point into a brand’s experience and customers will be less likely to visit a brand’s own properties. Brands, therefore, will need to make customer search a priority and populate their Google Business Profile page with inventory and options available so the customer can have a cleaner, more streamlined experience in just a few clicks.
4. There will be additional consolidation in the CX market, in general. Differentiation between “average” companies and the “best” companies increasingly comes down to CX, not products or features. So, with the CX part of the equation growing in importance, we’ll see increased investment in, or acquisitions of, CX companies, following in the footsteps of Qualtrics’ recent acquisition of Clarabridge and Zendesk’s acquisition of SurveyMonkey.
As brands across industries compete primarily on CX these days, it is increasingly important for them to nurture customer experiences throughout the customer journey, and have in place the tools and processes to support it. These four trends represent opportunities for brands to not only win in 2022 but set the foundation for growth and future success beyond the new year.
About the Author
Dave Mingle is the Vice President of Customer Experience at Reputation, a global leader in reputation experience management (RXM).
