The 5 trends driving CX tech innovation – CXM

Managing the customer experience is challenging and complex. There are multiple channels to manoeuvre; data and functional silos to bridge; and CX tech to orchestrate. Customers and employees are as fickle as they are demanding. Innovation can stall when day-to-day pressures take precedence.

In response, organisations need simplification and integration of channels, technology and information. This is driving the major trends we’re observing and expect to continue into 2023.  

1. Shifting from channel management to journey orchestration

Many service interactions happen across channels. While the process seems smooth to the company, customers might feel they’re starting from scratch each time. 84% of consumers said that not needing to repeat themselves is one of the most important parts of customer service. 

A true omnichannel experience, where contextual data and connected technologies bridge silos, is still a distant dream for most organisations. Only 4% of CX leaders at banks worldwide say their organisations provides an omnichannel experience, for example. The main barrier is CX strategies centred on products and channels rather than customer journeys or data. 

Journey management helps overcome this. Cross-functional teams collaborate to build customer-centric journeys that seamlessly connect channels, and then jointly measure success. 

In 2023 and beyond, organisations will increase their focus on the customer journey to connect their channel strategies. This will enable them to simplify customer interactions and personalise them, by leveraging a broader and more connected set of insights. As organisations are better able to listen and learn, they’ll become more empathetic, too. 

2. Personalising in real time 

When organisations try to personalise customer interactions meaningfully, they get a great response. 80% of consumers globally say they’re more likely to recommend and purchase more often from brands that consistently provide personalised interactions. 

CX leaders recognise the power of personalisation. Though, less than half say their business offers a highly individualisedexperience today. When a customer calls, their agents don’t know who’s contacting them. Just one-third say their agents have access to customer interaction activity or intent learned from bots, IVRs, or self-service tools.

Nearly half of CX leaders acknowledge that closing this gap is a top concern. They also state that using data and AI for customer understanding and personalisation is their most important CX opportunity right now.   

In 2023, organisations will shift focus beyond basic personalisation like auto-filling a customer’s name in an interaction. They’ll start personalising interactions in real time across channels using tools. Such as identity management, journey management, and VoC insights. As a result, experiences will feel more relevant, engaging, and efficient to the customer. 

3. Streamlining the CX tech stack

Organisations are pushing to innovate faster to keep pace with ever-changing customer preferences, new channels and technologies, and market shifts. At the same time, they don’t want to add complexity to their tech stack.

Moving forward, CX leaders are focused on what provides simplicity. They want to streamline technologies they use for CX and employee engagement to better connect them. More than half of CX leaders polled say a single point of system administration is extremely valuable to orchestrating seamless, relevant CX.

There’s also a high demand for unified data to provide more personalised CX across channels. Unifying data to offer a single view of the customer is among CX leaders’ top strategic priorities.

Tech complexity inhibits the agility and innovation needed to keep pace with customer and employee expectations. Cloud-based platforms deliver simplicity: Nearly 60% of CX leaders say the cloud provides better access to data across channels. More than half of leaders say it can add new capabilities, channels, and features faster. 

Over the next few years, organisations will shift their tech stack toward a flexible, composable architecture centred around a cloud-based CX platform. These tech stacks will use microservices and open APIs to enable agility and innovation. The organisations that adopt this approach will find themselves better able to meet fast-changing market demands and stay one step ahead of the competition.

4. Improving the employee experience with AI

Most service interactions are still between customer and agents, whether via phone, chat, text, or email. An increasing number of organisations are using AI to help alleviate the pressure before, during, and after customer interactions. 

More than half of CX leaders recently surveyed by MIT Technology Review Insights are using chatbots and voicebots. Another one-third plan to implement these technologies in the next two years. Nearly 60% of CX leaders are using agent-assist technology and another 25% plan to do so in the next two years. 

In 2023 and beyond, organisations will implement or significantly expand their use of AI. This will engage, support, and train agents in three key areas:

5. Rethinking performance measurement

Organisations typically measure CX performance periodically, with daily or weekly dashboards and reports to track issues and successes. But this approach often misses opportunities for real-time improvement during interactions. 

More than 80% of business leaders say measuring CX along key points of the customer journey is important to their business strategy. 90% say being better able to measure CX would make it easier for their organisation to deliver growth. But less than 40% say they can measure CX across the end-to-end customer journey very well.

Over the next few years, organisations will focus on analysing performance in real time to optimise the customer experience. This will involve journey mapping to identify the moments that matter most; connecting operational data and satisfaction metrics for a more holistic view of customers and their interactions; and building advanced dashboards for real-time decision-making.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication

Managing the customer experience will always be complex. But the trends are straightforward. They’ll remove friction to deliver transparency and precision in internal operations, pave the way for genuine personalisation that delights customers, and create an environment where employees thrive everyday. While it won’t be simple getting there, the rewards will be worth the effort.