Customer Experience Trends to Dominate 2017 and Beyond

by Vivek Shah Founder & Managing Director

For a couple of years, the entire digital community including the marketers and developers has their consistent focus on customer experience. With the continued advancement in technology customers are getting well with the demands of smart and lean interactions and naturally, business entities are realizing the importance of offering better customer experience to ensure engagement and conversion. According to the latest report by Dimension Data 82% of businesses openly admit that customer experience is a big factor in determining the competitive standing of a company.

As per the same report, another 77.5% of respondents among the companies feel it as a crucial strategic element to measure the performance of a company or brand. So, knowing the most dominant trends that are going to rule customer experience is important, especially at the time of the beginning of the year.

Design and development companies particularly have to attest to the new norms of designing customer experience for better engagement in business conversion. Graphic design companies and their design staff have to ensure quick user engagement and business conversion with the look and feel of an interface.

1. Advertisements that customer do not mind to go with

Do you know, 69.8 million Americans prefer using an ad blocker just because they are sick of the irrelevant distractions they do to their user experience? Well, ad blocking became quickly a popular thing and 2017 will not be different in that respect.

Obviously, marketers need to rethink the ways to make their ads win customer engagement and preference. To make customers tolerate or even prefer ads, digital marketers have design ad campaigns that address typically what customers are intended to achieve or something that addresses their taste. Making ads customer-centric is the only way to bypass ad blocking.

Appropriate timing of the ads is also another important factor. Ads must be offered as per the intention of the user at the particular instant. Finally, more personalized an approach ads can incorporate further they can be successful in enjoying traction and remaining unblocked.

What application can designers do in this respect? Well, they can optimize the ads visually and contextually. It is the designer's ability to allow an advertisement merge with the look and feel of a mobile app. Not only it should prevent distraction, but it should look inviting as well. Moreover, the ads should be viewed as per the context of the use.

2. Big Data playing bigger role

The Big Data for few consecutive years has been the subject of big and widespread buzz? Most of us are aware of it, right? While it has already become a mainstream component of the digital strategy, in 2017 we can see it play the bigger role played by Big Data in improving customer experience.

The rapidly proliferating IOT and consequent customer interaction data across various planes will continue to produce more insights to address customer intentions, preferences and typical mobile moments. Unlike the earlier times when the data-driven forecasts and business insights were largely based on the analysis of historic customer data, in the recent times, we have seen the rise of real-time analytics based on the crucial data feed thanks to the connected devices and networks.

The new connected reality with its network of devices will produce more individual data for analytics to drive personalized approach in customer experience and marketing. If data drives personalization in customer experience, app developers and designers can also be benefited from the new insights about the user.

3. The Chatbot will be the key to allowing true round the clock service

With the digital universe getting global exposure across time zones and personalized services becoming more important in the scheme of things for any business, round the clock service and real-time communication became more important than ever before.

Providing round the clock service became an important criterion for any business. Naturally, to make their customer service available round the clock most businesses now prefer Chatbots. In 2017, we can see more businesses to introduce round the clock service and automated customer interaction through Chatbots. With artificial intelligence powering Chatbots, you can expect them to be better and richer in customer interaction when you compare with manpower.

4. Machine learning to improve customer experience further

Our digital interactions and inputs are continuously making machines understand our preferences, wants and intentions better. Well, this is not a wishful thinking we are talking about. Already machines learning from human interactions and serving them accordingly has several examples in our everyday digital interactions.

For instance, Google Search learns from your searched keywords and always provides you nearest options as per your last search. This machine learning has already made interfaces and apps smarter and to make the customer experience better in 2017. Would you believe, Amazon just launched their first register less store where customers after entering can take anything they want and leave the store? It is the machine learning that made this thing happens.

5. Intent data will help personalization

Most predictions about trends about digital marketing and contents feature invariably personalization. But to realize and introduce personalization to the fullest potential no longer only personalized recommendations and emails are enough.

Until now most of the efforts in personalization happened in segmentation, not for in-depth attributes related to customer intentions. In 2017, we can see new possibilities to open up in this respect. We can expect companies to address typical user contexts and intentions. Immediate and real-time customer intents will allow richer and better personalization in the coming months.

6. Self-service more important than ever before

Today's customers are more intent on finding tools and ways to self-service than asking for every little solution. Help and FAQ are two most time-tested self-service options being used by websites and apps for ages. In recent times web chat has come as a big way to allow self-service.

More than 90% of contact centers in the US rely heavily on non-voice interactions instead of telephony. Actually, customers find it too much boring and painstaking to call the customer service agent for solutions to simple problems. In this year and beyond we can expect more self-assisted services to become popular.

7. Mobile leading the way

Finally, we have come to the obvious bottom line. With such ubiquitous and widespread agreement should it be considered a trend at all? Maybe yes. Anyway, mobile search is continuing to lead the way and in 2017 it is expected to generate 27.8 billion queries over and above the number of queries searched on the desktop. But to make mobile shine through a few trends are important to consider.

According to Gartner the absence of contextual support to consumers will deteriorate customer satisfaction by 5% in 2018. So, besides mobility contextual and personalized support through will play a crucial role in advancing customer experience.