Amber Hickman |
Analyst firm IDC predicts that businesses will invest in customer data platforms, artificial intelligence, Web3 and other technologies to transform the customer experience in 2023 and beyond.
According to the IDC FutureScape: Top 10 Predictions for the Future of Customer Experience report, customers are demanding greater value, more memorable and immersive experiences, and greater control over how they interact with enterprises in order to feel like equal stakeholders in the customer experience ecosystem. The report forecasts how businesses might use digital technologies to overcome macroeconomic challenges such as inflation and decreasing customer growth, whilst navigating hybrid work and technological evolution.
“In a world of accelerated uncertainty, the next era of customer experience innovation will be led by those brands that improve value for the customer through empathy and delivering outcomes for customer success,” said Sudhir Rajagopal, research director of Future of Customer Experience at IDC. “Thrivers will share and apply intelligence at the speed of customer engagement, create new customer engagement models and metrics for a digital business, and tap into the power of decentralisation to create equitable value parity in customer and business outcomes alike.”
IDC forecasts that:
1. By 2027, 25 per cent of global brands will abandon customer satisfaction scores as a measure of customer experience, and instead adopt a customer effort score as a key indicator of satisfaction.
2. By 2024, 50 per cent of the Forbes Global 2000 (G2000) will adopt customer data platforms as the data service for real-time customer interactions, which should increase customer experience metrics and revenue by five per cent.
3. Around 64 per cent of the G2000 will own online communities by 2027, and core IT application integrations will enable a new wave of collaboration and outcome-based insights which would help foster loyalty.
4. By 2026, 40 per cent of the G2000 will incorporate employee experience initiatives into their core customer experience strategies to compete in talent acquisition and retention.
5. By adopting Web3 technologies, 45 per cent of global brands will be able to create new immersive experiences, accessible content and engaged communities, which should help grow the customer experience economy into a $300 billion market by 2024.
6. By 2026, 45 per cent of the G2000 will use artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to elevate context and nudge customers into experiences that improve sentiment metrics and brand upselling potential.
7. At least 30 per cent of organisations will introduce new success metrics to track and measure the internal and external flows of customer value creation by 2024.
8. Half of G2000 enterprise customers will primarily select their customer experience platform provider based on the efficiency of the vendor's customer success services by 2025.
9. Just under one-third (30 per cent) of organisations will be forced to expand data management and privacy measures to mitigate risks of data breaches by 2024.
10. By 2026, 40 per cent of G2000 companies will build communities to foster interpersonal guardrails for future metaverse platforms – and collect first-party data.