Global cloud communications platform Infobip reveals its top five trends for customer experience (CX) and omnichannel communications for 2023. According to global market research firm Forrester, better customer experience leads to higher revenue growth. So, as the world enters a more challenging economic climate, Infobip advises businesses to focus on the following five trends to delight customers and maintain a competitive advantage this year.
- Composable tech platforms will drive speed and scale – In a cost-conscious environment, businesses and brands will look for composable technology platforms to reduce implementation time and deliver transformation more quickly. In the past two years, 50 percent of companies have transformed at great speed, according to an Accenture survey of 4,053 c-suite executives. To meet this speed of change, businesses will need to adopt plug-and-play composable tech platforms. Such interoperable solutions enable organizations to integrate new capabilities through easy integration, increasing time to impact while reducing infrastructure costs and implementation timelines. Data from Accenture show that companies with high interoperability unlocked up to five additional percentage points of revenue growth than companies with low or no interoperability. Composable tech platforms will drive innovation, augment CX and deliver faster and more extensive digital transformation.
- Hyper automation and intelligent bots will deliver efficiencies – Automation comes in many forms, but the breakthrough in CX will be in the adoption and scaling of automated bots. As ChatGPT shows, chatbots continue to advance. We expect to see scaling text bots alongside progress with voice and video bots. As a result, businesses and brands will create and deploy bots that bring a new level of automation, speed and availability. Such intelligent virtual assistants will help scale customer service, drive efficiencies and enable businesses to up and cross-sell. More advanced bots will enable brands to enhance marketing and sales automation. Such bots will answer product or pricing questions, schedule deliveries and take payments – all within a customer’s favorite channel.
- Hyper personalized end-to-end CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE JOURNEYS enabled by artificial intelligence and analytics – Businesses will look for more intelligent ways to operate to drive efficiencies. Hyper personalized end-to-end CXs enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics will become a critical part of the customer journey, providing better experiences for customers and agents. AI and analytics can already respond to basic queries. Next year, Infobip expects organizations to use AI and analytics to predict customer behavior and drive real-time responses.
- Immersive hybrid ‘phygital’ experiences will bridge the real and online worlds – In 2023, Infobip expects a world where the physical and digital meet to create immersive experiences that customers want, where and when they want them. Such experiences help enhance customer engagement while providing greater convenience around ordering, paying and delivery. Retailers will integrate technology into their stores, using data to personalize what customers hear, smell and see. Meanwhile, eCommerce platforms will use virtual and augmented reality to create a 21st-century digital store. Brands are enabling customers to ‘try on’ clothes through virtual dressing rooms. Amazon is harmonizing the physical and digital to deliver highly personalized customer experiences. It uses customer data from many sources – from online browsing activity to how customers navigate stores – to tailor store experiences to everyone.
- Conversational user experiences – Everything will become conversational. Customers have access to more channels and devices than ever. Whether for marketing, support or sales, they want conversations with a business or brand on their preferred chat channels. By creating a richer and more proactive experience, Infobip expects to see two-way conversations scale across the customer journey. This year, we will see greater app-like experiences in chat apps. There is speculation that others – like Microsoft – will enter the conversational market with a new ‘super app’. Moreover, Infobip expects to see such user experiences expand across sectors from ride-sharing to health care and even the public sector as it adapts to conversational everything.
