According to a recent Genesys report, Customer Experience and the Future of Work, customer experience (CX) will require more skills around data and analytics, customer journey and process improvement, as well as deeper product knowledge and emotional intelligence. Sixty-nine percent of respondents expect CX work to become more specialised in the next one to two years. And, by 2024, 89% expect to use on-demand “gig employees” for CX.

Companies that leverage data for listening, understanding and predicting the next-best action have developed the highest levels for customer service.

How companies use data to better serve customers isn’t the only trend for 2023. Focusing on your employee experience will be critical for retaining contact centre agents and battling staff attrition.

In the same report, employers stated they’re more concerned with the challenge of finding new employees than retaining those they already have. And while 96% of respondents consider it challenging to recruit new CX staff, less than one-third find high contact centre turnover to be a problem. This is driving a new culture in the workforce that’s focused on career development.

As you reflect on the importance of your customers and employees at the end of the year, take some time to review some of the biggest trends and best practices in customer and employee experience. Here are some useful resources for you.

Customer Experience and the Future of Work

We surveyed 800 CX executives to find out their views on future trends in workforce strategies — and how technology plays a role. The study uncovers why retention matters and how leading businesses are transforming their culture to keep employees engaged, highly skilled and motivated.

As CX organisations shift into the post-pandemic era, several key trends are here to stay. Workers are demanding flexibility, control over their schedules, and learning and career development opportunities.

Passport to Customer Loyalty: Seven Best Practices

At its core, customer loyalty is about trust. Nurturing that trust begins with understanding who your customers are and what they want when they engage with your business. This webinar shares insights for creating and scaling personalised experiences, empowering customers with satisfying self-service, and managing customer journeys for better outcomes.

The Key to an Effective Omnichannel Strategy

Omnichannel CX is top of mind for many contact centres — for good reason. Leveraging your digital channels creates a significant competitive advantage. But simply being present on the channels your customers prefer isn’t enough. The key is taking a customer-centric approach and then building your strategy around your customers’ viewpoint.

In this Tech Talks in 20 podcast episode, Josh Goldlust, VP of Product for Digital and AI at Genesys, explains how to ensure your customer interactions are relevant, proactive and connected across channels.

Practical Guide to Mastering Email in a Modern Contact Centre

While email has evolved over the years, it remains a trusted, field-tested and ROI-proven tool in the contact center. And when you strategically integrate it into your contact centre plans, it becomes even more powerful as part of your broader omnichannel approach.

This guide walks you through the basics of creating a thoughtful email strategy to deliver the exceptional experiences your customers expect.

Customer Journey Orchestration Planning Kit

Customers expect fluid, effortless journeys. And they want to seamlessly transition to another channel, when necessary.  By adopting a thoughtful omnichannel strategy, you can deliver on your customers’ expectations now — and into the future. This customer journey orchestration planning kit gives you a deep dive into how omnichannel management gives you a broader view into the Voice of the Customer to gain new insights into behaviors and intent.

And we’ll outline how the right experience orchestration platform gives you the capabilities needed to adapt to changes to meet customer demands — and undergo a successful customer experience transformation..

Frost and Sullivan White Paper: Workforce Engagement Management

By taking advantage of workforce engagement management (WEM) tools and empowering employees to better engage with customers, companies are 96% more likely to achieve overall profitability, according to the recent Frost & Sullivan research report. And those companies are 82% more likely to provide a better quality of customer experience.

This white paper explores what workforce engagement management means in terms of business impact and priorities, technology demands and planned purchasing trends. And it looks at current adoption and use of contact centre management solutions, including WEM.

Empathy in Action

Most leaders believe they provide great customer and employee experiences, yet multiple surveys reveal a sad truth: Many customers and employees don’t agree. In the book, “Empathy in Action™,” Genesys CEO Tony Bates and Dr. Natalie Petouhoff explore the reasons customer and employee experiences often are lacking in business today. And they unveil a new approach for creating a customer- and employee-centric business model that yields better long-term results.

Using case studies, impactful stories and a fascinating new framework for creating customer- and employee-centric experiences, the authors demonstrate how leaders are disrupting industries by orchestrating the components of the exponential “Empathy in Action™ Business Flywheel.”

We hope this reading list inspires you to delight your customers and employees in new ways in 2023 —just as you inspire our efforts to power the world’s best customer and employee experiences.