Top customer experience trends in 2024 and beyond

1. Brands use data at every touchpoint to deepen loyalty

Service is often about efficiency, which consumers appreciate, and deflection, which they find frustrating. But that’s changing. Organisations are moving toward using nearly all interactions to build engagement and loyalty. This includes proactively using data and AI to provide more context and personalisation based on what a customer is trying to achieve, as well as their underlying or unexpressed needs.

Nerys Corfield, Director of Injection Consulting LTD, explains that the contact centre has always been the epicenter of customer data and sentiment, but that insight often stayed within customer service operations. Today, executives — from CMOs to CFOs — are using that data to understand how to better personalise experiences and boost lifetime value.

Nerys Corfield
Director, Injection Consulting LTD

2. AI creates a world of unprecedented understanding and insight

Organisations are becoming smarter about using AI to better understand who the customer is and what they want. They’re increasing their use of event data, behavioral analytics and sentiment analysis to deeply understand the full customer journey. In doing so, they’re becoming less reliant on asking customers for information they already have. Instead, they’ll use that data to be proactive — making customers feel known and valued.

Customers expect this, says Christina “CK” Kerley, and so do employees. Kerley recommends that organisations also use AI to create better employee experiences. With AI, businesses can enable CX employees and supervisors to accelerate the speed in which they access information and accomplish tasks.

Christina “CK” Kerley
Innovation Speaker, Trainer & Futurist, allthingsCK

3. CX transformation requires agile orchestration of AI technologies

Organisations are shifting from using AI in silos to embedding the technology as a business driver throughout the customer and employee experience. The goal is to orchestrate more personalised, seamless experiences at scale, while also gaining insight into issues and opportunities. To do this, organisations are using the type of AI that’s best suited to specific moments in the journey. They’re not just implementing AI for AI’s sake.

Today organisations are thinking about conversational, generative and predictive AI in customer service more holistically than in the past, says Brent Leary, Managing Partner of CRM Essentials. This is critical, he says, because this addresses the way customers have always interacted with brands, which will lead to greater engagement.

Brent Leary
Managing Partner, CRM Essentials

4. The contact centre becomes a strategic hub of customer insight

The contact centre is the custodian of a rich set of customer data — not just from interactions that happen there, but also from interactions in other connected channels and functions. Technology like a single CX platform and connected data provide access to real-time insights derived from millions of interactions across touchpoints that organisations can interpret and act on to improve the customer experience.

Michael Maoz, Senior Vice President of Innovation Strategy at Salesforce, recommends that organisations approach customer experience as a “team sport,” collaborating across departments to share and act on key insights, while positioning the contact centre as a centre of excellence that advocates for the customer through that data.

Michael Maoz
Senior Vice President of Innovation Strategy, Salesforce

5. Employee experiences are increasingly personalised

Successful organisations are increasingly focusing on employees as individuals who can make an invaluable impact on the customer experience. These businesses are creating personalised environments and career paths that leverage employees’ strengths and set them up for success. The goal is to better enable agents, often with AI, to become knowledge workers who can resolve even the most complex customer issues.

There’s an increased focus on employee engagement and retention, aiming to improve the employee experience (EX), as well as the customer experience, says Merijn te Booij, GM, Workforce Engagement Management at Genesys. Organisations that invest in EX are known to be more innovative and better able to drive transformation.

Merijn te Booij
GM, Workforce Engagement Management, Genesys