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New Year, New Expectations: 3 Takeaways to Stay Ahead
In a recent Five9 webinar, 4 CX Trends for 2022, I had the honor to moderate our first end-of-year fireside chat with Huw Jones, Director of Solutions Consulting at Verint; Levente Nagy, Product Marketing Manager at Micrsoft; Brian Atkinson, VP and General Manager of Five9 EMEA; and Thomas John, VP of Partners at Five9 EMEA. They discussed the challenges customer experience leaders faced in 2021, how to overcome these challenges and what CX leaders should expect in the new year.
Consumers and employee expectations are rapidly changing. If your business wants to continue to add value to the customer journey, solve customer problems, and drive future business outcomes – your company will have to reimagine their customer experience and consider top trends that will define 2022.
Here are 3 key takeaways on how to help stay ahead of new expectations in the new year:
1. The digital experience is now the norm: A large percentage of customer experiences will continue to be digital in 2022. According to the retail edition of our global Five9 Customer Service Index, nearly half (43%) of surveyed consumers are now doing the majority of their shopping online year-round (up from 22% pre-pandemic). Narrowing down in the European market, the UK and German consumers were less likely to go to a mall or store while shopping during the 2021 holiday season.
2. It’s not work from home; it’s work from anywhere: Contact centers need to ensure that agents are provided the flexibility they need to be happy and productive. For example, agents should be empowered with the choice to work either from home, the office or in a hybrid model. According to Microsoft, 46% of working professionals are planning to move because they now can work remotely.
3. Digital Workforce is the future of CX: Over 50% of webinar respondents stated that a lack of vision and fear prevented their adoption of AI in their CX. However, AI is no longer a far-off concept. Businesses have already begun to adopt intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) to augment self-service channels and automate mundane tasks so that agents can focus on high-value customer interactions. Since our 2020 acquisition of Inference Solutions, one in five new customers are now evaluating IVAs to streamline business operations and reimagine their CX.
For more insights into these key takeaways and trends, watch our on-demand executive webinar 4 CX Trends for 2022, to hear more from our experts.
Watch Now: 4 CX Trends for 2022.