Customer experience is one of the main characters of 2023. This year businesses will have to pay close attention to what their teams are doing and how they are going to improve the experience they are offering.
Customer experience (CX) is stronger than ever. To this date, it is considered an engine that has the power to make your business a success and supercharge customer-driven growth. Nonetheless, those who ignore its potential will find themselves behind their competition and lose a lot of money.
The 2023 inflexion point for CX is the result of the challenges that businesses had to face during 2022. A year in which companies lost their customer focus because they were aiming to raise customer expectations in a difficult economic situation.
The survivors and those who will face 2023, like experts, are those who count on CX programs that help their businesses to achieve their goals and thrive despite the world's bel-tightening conditions.
What does this mean for companies that are looking to improve their CX in 2023?
According to research made by Forrester, this is what can be expected:
The range between the best and worst CX may narrow as 25% of below-average brands improve and 50% of above-average brands decline or stagnate. Why is differentiation narrowing? Lower-performing companies are solving basic CX problems, while top companies are being challenged to embrace transformative CX improvements. To stand out from this group and overcome themselves, businesses must embrace customer's demands and obsessions and pursue CX innovations that differentiate their products and services.
Approximately 80% of companies don’t have CX as part of their brand identity (for now). By 2023, they are looking forward to spending on CX improvements, and they will dissolve and restructure CX teams that can’t show good numbers. Bad news for the 54% of CX experts that mentioned to Forrester that their teams are, till today, unrivalled to prove the ROI of their projects. Furthermore, some of these teams will be split up and absorbed into other business functions, while others will see their influence dwindle. On the other hand, 20% of the companies that have embraced and developed a great CX proposal as part of their identity will reward those teams that can show positive ROI. The leaders of these teams are expected to join one-fourth of their CX leader's peers who are already sitting in the C-suite.
2022 says goodbye, but its worldwide context is not. War, soaring energy prices, recession, and political upheaval in European countries, such as the UK and Italy, are going to be there when 2023 arrives.
Despite everything, according to a review made by Forbes, there is hope for high-performing CX teams. However, it is not going to be easy. 2023 expects to be a year of tight budgets, cost control, and an incrementation in proving the value that each team is bringing to the table by aligning CX and business metrics.
European CX teams struggle to close the gap between insight into customer pain points and action to solve those pain points. Forrester mentioned that CX teams might disappear, so European CX teams must prove their numbers to stay in the race, or they will be dissolved. Those who can drive growth and save money are meant to thrive.
CX tech platform players are expected to go on a shopping spree. Those solution providers that offer a single speciality product or service (like a chatbot, design tool, a journey mapping application) will be on the shopping list for major platform players. This market consolidation has already been seen with Adobe’s acquisition of Figma and Medallia’s acquisition of Mindful. The CX tech market is increasingly crowded, and expecting to keep on growing and being challenged in the years to come.
Our mission is to help your business start the new year like an expert and take your relationship with your customers to the next level.
ACF Technologies offers a series of services that aim to facilitate CX and learn from your customers to improve whatever part of their journey is necessary. At ACF, we offer services that will help you to connect with your customers online and off. Such as Online Appointment Management, In-store Event Booking, Queuing Solutions, Customer Feedback, and Analytics and Consulting.
Begin the new year with these solutions in the palm of your hand and provide your customers with a distinguishable experience.