CX trends for 2022: Comfort, creativity, convergence, change

We expect to see a stronger emphasis on inspiring consumer confidence, a growing need for brand differentiation, converging CX-related functions, and a new focus on creative work that leverages data insights. Here’s what CX teams can prepare for now and deliver on in 2022.

Create experiences that inspire confidence

Forrester predicts that consumers will choose brands that deliver happiness and comfort next year. We know that for consumers, experiences are as important as the products or services a brand offers. We also know that many people have been experiencing chronic stress and uncertainty since the start of the pandemic. Brands have an opportunity now to evaluate how they can reduce their customers’ stress by creating experiences that inspire confidence and, in doing so, offer comfort and ultimately happiness.

This can go beyond messaging to utilizing technologies like augmented reality to empower consumers. Especially in the furniture space, brands are using augmented reality to show customers what a piece of furniture will look like in their home, or what a customized piece will look like up-close. Some clothing brands are using new technology platforms that leverage data shared by customers to show them what jeans or pants will look like on them.

This means customers don’t have to order multiple sizes of the same item and then deal with the hassle of returning the ones that don’t fit. Using technology to de-risk a purchasing decision can reduce a customer’s uncertainty or stress over their purchase decisions and help them to feel more comfortable about placing their order. It has the added business benefit of also reducing return costs for the organization.

Deliver emotional experiences while differentiating

Offering an empowering customer experience can help a brand stand out in the customer’s mind in ways that run-of-the-mill digital experiences can’t. A May 2021 Gartner report found that 46% of consumers can’t tell one brand’s digital experience from another. That means a brand’s investments in digital experience creation may not enhance customer loyalty and increase customer lifetime value — unless those experiences also give customers an emotional feeling of empowerment or delight. This is because people are naturally drawn to seek pleasure and avoid pain.

Brands need to pay careful attention to the quality of their customer service and other services in 2022 as everyone knows how painful bad customer service can be. That’s in part because supply chain challenges are causing more customers to contact brands’ customer service teams, so there are more touchpoints to navigate and more problems to resolve. It’s also because hiring and retaining customer service talent may continue to be challenging during the year ahead.

On the other hand, there are several areas where brands can focus in 2022 as they seek to create positive experiences that help them differentiate. One is acting on brand values. For example, values related to sustainability that address customers’ concerns can drive their brand preferences. Probably the best-known example of this is the outdoor retailer that pledged to donate proceeds from its sales on Black Friday to sustainability groups. It had five times the sales it had previously estimated for that day and was able to donate $10 million. Demonstrating its values helped the company bring in customers who share those values.

Another area is utilizing immersive technology, which will continue to support more engaging customer experiences in 2022. One interesting trend to watch will be how brands, customers, and the media react as they learn more about how the metaverse will evolve. Every brand needs to start building a metaverse strategy, no matter how big or small. But they need to prioritize experience over everything else. The metaverse will become the place where brands truly interact with consumers, and that engagement will require an authentic approach to succeed.

How CX teams will evolve and adapt

Based on the existing trend of customer data unification across organizations, we expect to see CX teams continue to work more with teams in other departments to achieve a single view of the customer. As that happens, more divisions of the organization will be measured against the same metrics. That’s something that is already happening with sales and service organizations and with sales and marketing. In fact, Gartner forecasts that by 2023, a quarter of organizations will bring CX, marketing, sales, and customer service teams into one function.

To support these changes, brands will need to focus on organizational change management. As CX data and functions converge, legacy services, silos, and operational constraints will need to give way to something new to provide the best possible customer experience. That requires a commitment from the top of the organization and change-management goals that focus on CX outcomes.

CX teams will also have to remain or become super-nimble in 2022 to keep up with the pace of change. This means implementing systematic voice of the customer programs to infuse insights into ongoing decision making. Organizations with effective voice of the customer programs will be in the best position to adjust and pivot when new expectations arise. From a technology standpoint, we are seeing more organizations move to composable architectures to give them the flexibility needed in terms of incorporating best-of-breed technology for a superior customer experience.

The quality of data insights will be critical for CX in 2022

With so much focus on unifying customer data, it may be surprising to learn that 60% of CMOs don’t think data helps build brand equity or effective campaign plans. However, it’s not the data alone that does the job; the data is just the raw material for creating meaningful insights about customer behavior. That requires applying creativity as well as analytics to data, blending qualitative and quantitative perspectives to create a more complete and useful view of the customer.

We’ve already seen that nearly half of customers can’t differentiate among brands’ digital experiences. So, using data just to make campaigns more targeted may not be enough to move customers in the year ahead. To have the biggest impact on customers, brands will need to reveal insights from that data to allow them to be more provocative, unique, and engaging in their content and other marketing activities or programs.

Brands that focus on delivering positive and unique customer experiences and that can rapidly adjust and manage change will be in the best position to benefit from 2022’s emerging CX trends. One key thing to keep in mind is that keeping pace with these trends means moving quickly and decisively, moving from “politics to prototyping” so the voice of the customer plays a stronger role than the voice of key stakeholders with individual agendas. That allows brands to get customer feedback — more data — faster, so they can improve and deliver what their customers want.

Carina Rolley is director, Digital Customer Experience, at Capgemini Americas