Digital Customer Experience Trends for 2017

According to Forrester, 72% of businesses say that improving Digital Customer Experience is their top priority. So where do we see it headed and what does that mean for these ambitious (and rightly so) companies? For starters, the relationship between businesses and their customers is undergoing a massive transformation. Business are now taking on a dialogue with their customers; a development that will change how businesses will manage customer experience.

Here are the top four Digital Customer Experience trends for 2017 that Mopinion thinks will change the face of digital marketing:

1. Companies will dive deeper into customer feedback

Last year, Mopinion carried out its annual Digital Customer Experience Benchmark study. Some interesting figures arose from this study, giving us the notion that more and more companies are going to invest in feedback this year. Of the companies surveyed, nearly 87% expressed that they will invest more in measuring and managing digital customer experience this year.

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The main obstacle for companies is still overcoming organisational silos. Feedback data is mainly limited to the eyes of marketers, in which case follow-up tasks are often not allocated beyond their team. Hopefully we will see this evolve in the coming year. Download the Benchmark report for more information on the forecast for 2017.

2. Big data is going to get even bigger

“Big data” has been the talk of the town for quite a while now. But are the rumours true that it’s going to get even bigger? We think so! Not only are we seeing vast amounts of real-time data flowing in (not to mention a steady increase in feedback data) but we also have to factor in data integration. Data can now be gathered and accessed via multiple devices (including mobile, but we’ll get to that), making it increasingly tricky for companies to extract insights.

But don’t forget that this big data has already proven itself to be an effective way of optimising customer experience. We’re supplied with information about our customers that we didn’t have access to before and that’s a huge achievement. The challenge will be to make sense of all this data and to make sure you are analysing relevant data sets instead of making “big data” bigger and bigger.

3. Brands will get more mobile-savvy

Is “M-commerce” the new “E-commerce”? Mobile is becoming more and more dominant among digital channels, which leads us to believe there will be a shift in the number of companies investing in a mobile-first strategy this year. With nearly 71% of internet consumption now mobile, both B2B and B2C companies will be presented with a huge opportunity as well as a challenge. Seeking the “mobile-friendly” status will not be adequate for companies looking to satisfy customers and boost mobile customer experience.

In a recent blog post, we’ve outlined how companies can leverage customer feedback to refine the mobile experience.

4. Emotion crops up as a dominant trend

Emotions are making their way into the limelight of customer experience. Many companies use CX metrics to streamline processes and smooth out their ordering funnels but they still lack the ingredient of human emotion. These companies have not yet realised that combining ratings and numerical values with emotion gives them the power to contextualise feedback.

Let’s use an example. According the Loss Aversion theory, “people have the tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains”. When we apply this to customer experience and feedback, it often holds true. Our customers are more sensitive to negativity (in this case, customer pain points in online funnels). For obvious reasons, it would do us well to pick up on these sensitivities and rectify the issue in a timely manner. But how do we know the extent of their dissatisfaction?

In the world of customer feedback, customer emotions can be gauged using text analytics (e.g. word grouping, sentiment analysis, etc). With this type of qualitative analysis, you’re not only assessing small-scale issues here and there, but also the entire online customer journey as a whole. Read more about text analytics here.

Be proactive in 2017

Obviously we cannot predict the future, but one thing is for sure – former strategies will not always fit with what the future holds. CX is a rapidly evolving field, which means businesses must continue to improve upon their processes and make forward progress.