Customer experience is always evolving, and in the last two years, it’s changed faster than ever. How a customer perceives a business, what they want and expect from their interactions has undergone a drastic transformation.

According to a report from Forrester, customers want brands to continue the services they started offering during the pandemic. This will influence their decision to stick with a brand in the future. It is important for businesses to look out for and adapt to these changes.

Let’s discuss 5 CX trends you need to watch out for in 2022.

1. The increasing importance of Employee Experience

Employee experience (EX) is the result of all the interactions an employee has with a company during their tenure. This includes the onboarding processes, organizational culture, work environment, leadership, HR and the software tools used by the company.

Employee experience has a direct effect on the customer experience. When your employees are happy, satisfied, and have a positive work experience, they are more productive and efficient, which enhances the customer experience they provide.

A positive EX improves the employee’s performance, resulting in a better customer experience.

As the world moves towards a hybrid-work model, maintaining a strong EX away from physical offices will be a key factor in determining whether employees value your company and choose to stay with your business long term, which directly contributes to your CX.

2. The move towards hyper-personalization

Customers expect highly personalized experiences every time they engage with a business. Leveraging real-time customer data such as website behavior, search results, purchase history and past interactions with your business can help you develop a deeper understanding of their needs and hyper-personalize their experience. This can be anything from customizing your website to intelligently recommending products or reaching out to customers with individualized offers and rewards at the right time.

3. Data security and privacy

As customers share more personal data in exchange for personalized experiences, the emphasis on data security and privacy will only increase. As more data privacy regulations are introduced, businesses that adhere to these laws and make the right use of customer data will earn customer trust and grow quickly.

Here are suggestions you can follow to gain customer trust.

• Clearly list your data practices in your privacy policy upfront. Make sure you include your purpose and processes for collecting customer data.
• Obtain customer consent to use their data for marketing such as sending promotional emails or newsletters. This helps reassure them that you value their privacy.
• Use customer data judiciously. Never compromise on customer data for business growth.
• Use business tools that adhere to industry-accepted security standards such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2.
• In the event of a data breach, inform customers promptly and be as transparent as you can about what went wrong, the actions you’ve taken to retrieve the data, and how you intend to avoid this happening in the future.

4. A cohesive omnichannel experience

According to Gartner, “by 2022, 50% of large organizations will have failed to unify engagement channels, resulting in a disjointed and siloed customer experience that lacks context.”

A customer’s experience with a business spans multiple channels such as social media, email, live chat and surveys, and the number of channels is only going to grow, thereby raising stakes for a seamless and connected omnichannel experience.

Being available on different channels is not enough. Teams need to be able to switch between channels swiftly and pick up conversations where a different channel left off with complete context in order to deliver a cohesive experience.

In 2022, omnichannel will be about your brand voice, tone, consistent messaging and how you serve customers across these platforms will become more important and contribute to building stronger customer relationships.

5. Unification of customer-facing functions

The future of customer experience will be depend on collaborative, inter-departmental and cross-functional teamwork. Sales, marketing, service, product and other operational teams will need to work in harmony to deliver unified experiences to customers.

Your tech stack will play a vital role in this harmony. Tech stacks that centralize customer data, facilitate collaboration, are customizable, scalable and offer a robust range of integration and security features will eventually replace traditional systems and help businesses thrive in the customer experience-driven digital world.

6. Metaverse in CX

According to Gartner, 25% of people will spend at least one hour per day in the metaverse by 2026. With the growing popularity of metaverse amongst gen Z, brands are exploring the metaverse as an opportunity to provide engaging, deeper and more immersive connections with their customers.

Using virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) brands can interact with customers in real-time, creating life-like virtual environments and more personal connections than are possible through traditional channels.

These six CX trends represent very real opportunities and risks for businesses. Many brands have incredible personalities ready to deliver more interactive experiences, from founders to surprisingly profitable brand mascots. Personality clearly matters and we strongly believe 2022 will be the year when we see brands show more of it – and in a fun, interactive way, no less.