The 2021 Customer Experience
2021 is just getting started and with the changing restrictions in place across Ireland over the next few weeks, organisations need to quickly adapt to changes to continue providing a great customer experience.
The coronavirus pandemic has had a considerable impact on the Customer Experience over the past number of months, regardless of the industry. With no abrupt end to the pandemic in sight, we’re likely to continue seeing an impact on CX throughout 2021. Even after the pandemic has ended its impact will still be seen around the world.
Discussed in this blog are some the ways Customer Experience will continue to change over the next year as the world continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Altered Behaviour
Behaviours have been drastically changed since the introduction of restrictions in March in all aspects of life. This carries through to shopping behaviour.
The retail industry has been hit hard by restrictions, forcing many to adapt digitally to the changing environment. Your e-commerce experience needs to be easy to use and fast in a time where old-fashioned in store browsing isn’t an option.
With future restrictions, many retailers may only be allowed to remain open for click and collect purposes. While click and collect has been around a lot longer than the Covid restrictions, sales through this method have increased drastically.
We’re likely to see click and collect (and other non-contact shopping) improvements over the next year and continue even in a post-Covid world.
Mobile
The hospitality industry has been leading with use of mobile for the Customer Experience. Whether it’s using QR codes to get to a restaurant booking page or to look at the menu while sitting at your table, mobile has become more integrated with our lives over these past few months.
We’ll see this evolve over the next year as retailers continuously improve mobile e-commerce websites, use QR codes with microsites and develop more appropriate apps to help make the Customer Experience as pleasant as possible given the circumstances.
Chatbots
Airline and travel organisations were bombarded with customer service enquiries back in March and April. While most of the larger organisations already had a chatbot solution in place prior to the massive increase in customer service enquiries, many smaller firms in different industries mightn’t have chatbots ready to go.
Different levels of uncertainty will likely continue into the new year as restrictions come and go. This uncertainty leads to a higher amount of customer service enquiries, often becoming too much for staff to deal with.
Over the past number of years chatbots have become more sophisticated and helpful due technological improvements. Organisations can deploy chatbots as a complement to agents, allowing them to easily handle peak volumes and focus on the more urgent enquiries.
Trust
As discussed in our previous “post-Covid world” blog post, trust will continue to be a major element of providing great CX throughout the health crisis in 2021. According to recent research, 81% of customers indicated that they must be able to trust a brand to do what is right.
As we continue to live alongside the virus and Ireland moves up and down the 5-level restriction framework, there still leaves a lot of uncertainty for businesses. Those that quickly adapt to the changes while prioritising trustworthiness will come out of the pandemic on top, when things finally return to the way they were.
Are you preparing to alter your customer experience in 2021? If so, contact us today on +353 1 8041298, or click on the link below to be brought to our contact form.
