Trending for 2020: Are you enhancing the customer experience?

This time of year, we see a myriad of articles talking about what’s trending (our own included). That’s because every year there are new marketing technologies available that promise to be a panacea for driving a deeper level of customer engagement. For those of us who have been in marketing for a while, we have grown accustomed to the fact that there will always be new technology improving the customer lifecycle.

If we take a look back, one of the most popular trends in 2018 was the advancement of chatbots. Chatbots are sometimes used to improve customer experience at scale. In 2019, one of the most popular trends was the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI). AI is used in a variety of areas to imitate human thought and interaction to anticipate and solve problems while learning to adapt and improve.

These technologies talk about improving the customer experience and driving higher levels of customer satisfaction. So why do many people feel like customer satisfaction is becoming more fleeting with each passing year? Interestingly enough, some long term studies tell us that overall customer satisfaction has actually dropped every decade since the eighties. Surely technology has made things far more convenient – so what’s happening? In addition to rising customer expectations, many consumers are beginning to experience a feeling of digital fatigue. It seems that every product, brand or service we come in contact with is vying for our mindshare.

A great number of people spend every morning deleting unwanted emails and text messages from companies they may or may not have done business with. If you use travel apps, you know you will be bombarded with information and constant updates throughout your trip. This is also true with many subscription-based services. Another source of digital fatigue is the number of surveys we are now confronted with. It’s almost impossible to buy something without a Net Promoter Score (NPS) attached to the purchase experience.

There are a whole host of technologies that create a general avalanche of digital communications. One example of this is in the social media applications we see today. We have so many different social media platforms and profiles that we now have programs that will syndicate updates to our social media profiles across multiple platforms all at once. We also have programs that allow us to draft responses and posts in advance so we can respond across multiple platforms in unison. We can even set up the distribution in advance. Clearly some people are suffering from digital fatigue if we now have apps to manage our apps.

In this ever-changing world filled with an overabundance of digital communications, there are some fundamental trends that have not changed over the last four decades. As you prepare for the year ahead, keep these trends in mind:

1. Remain good stewards of a customer’s time and attention.
2. Be relevant and personal with your communications.
3. Remember to thank your customers from time to time. Often overlooked, this is one of the most simple yet important communications you can deliver to recognize your customers.