1. Customer care is the
work of looking after
customers and ensuring
their satisfaction with
your business and its
goods or services; It's just
one of those interactions
or a type of interaction.
Customer experience
(CX) is the sum of all
interactions a customer
with a company over the
course of the relationship
lifecycle and the
customer's feelings,
emotions, and perceptions
of the brand over the
course of those
interactions.
Customer experience in 2014

2. 1. Renovation of VoC programs
Many organizations spend a lot of money on collecting customer feedback. Yet, too
few of them gain the value they could—or should—from those investments.
This year it’s expected that companies will scrap their overly burdensome customer
surveys in favour of more targeted feedback – Voice of the Customer initiatives.
They'll rely less on
multiple-choice surveys
and more on topic-specific
surveys and text analytics
of unstructured content
(like comments on
surveys), calls into the
contact centre, social
media conversations, and
chat sessions with agents.

3. 2. Lots of customer journey mapping
One of the most effective tools for customer experience professionals is customer
journey mapping (CJM). These tools identify key areas of improvement and
opportunities for innovation.
The customer journey
map will plot touch
points, service
interactions and
gestures of users
having experienced a
service. The method
helps us understand
the intentional and
unintentional aspects
of the customer
journey.
The map is humanised with personal insights, anecdotes and photos, using the users
language, their successes and even failures as a very user-centred visualisation of the
customer journey.

4. 3. Integration of customer behavioural data
While feedback is a form of customer insight, it's by no means the only form—or even
the best form. All the data sources combined will provide the rich content required to
fuel predictive models.
This trend will
continue with more
companies blending
together customer
feedback data, CRM
data, and data from
customer transactions
and other value
systems. This will
enable companies to
accurately target
experiences to reduce
churn, improve
metrics (e.g.,
satisfaction, NPS), and
increase customer
lifetime value (CLV).

5. 4. More anticipatory service
As companies gain a deeper understanding of customers through research and
analytics, they'll develop more individualized customer experiences.
Companies that route
callers to the phone
agents are most likely to
help them based on the
anticipated reason for
the call. Companies will
also train frontline
employees with
different scripts based
on anticipating
customers'
needs/interests/emotio
nal style.

6. 5. Experience infused into product
development
Product teams will define
usability requirements, set
minimum experience thresholds
for product launch, and design
the entire service lifecycle.
Organisations will evaluate all
new product and experience
efforts using a CX scorecard that
determines the level of
customer experience risk
involved in a proposed project.
Its “Customer Lens” process delivers more customer-centric experiences by
incorporating standards and checkpoints into business cases and new product
development methodologies.
There will be more companies creating products with customer experience
embedded throughout the entire development process.

7. 6. Consolidation of CX process
methodologies
As CX efforts highlight the need to redesign more operational processes, companies will
combine CX efforts with other process improvement efforts, such as lean sigma and
design thinking. These combinations will merge process-centric tools with the power of
deep customer empathy.

8. 7. Contact centres morph into
relationship hubs
Contact centres are on the verge of a major change. Driven by shifts in technology,
capabilities, and consumer behaviour, organisations are refocusing the primary
purpose of contact centres from handling individual calls to building customer loyalty.
These changes will morph contact
centres into what some call
Relationship Hubs.
Relationship Hubs will establish
success metrics tied to long-term
customer loyalty (from average
handle time to a combination of
metrics such as first-call resolution
and likelihood of customers).

9. 8. Deeper appreciation of employee assets
Companies are beginning to see the deep connection between employee engagement and
customer experience. Engaged employees are more than twice as likely to stay late at work,
help someone at work even if they're not asked, and do something good for the company
even if it's not expected of them. In 2014 we'll see more employee surveys, executives
developing employee engagement goals, and managerial training focused on employee
engagement.

10. 9. Mobile, mobile, Mobile & Personal
health monitoring takes off
Devices will have more apps
and sensors that will enable
consumers to do more things
wherever they go.
We'll see a surge
of personal
health monitors.
This isn't about mobile phones:
It's about digital experiences
integrated into everyday life.

11. 10. Software as an experience continues
The initial rise of cloud-based software (a.k.a.
SaaS or software-as-a-service) focused on
renting access to software instead of selling
licenses. That makes sense, considering that
Net Promoter Scores for tech vendors are
more correlated to customer experience than
product performance. As cloud-based
software expands, we'll see these offerings
cater more explicitly to the needs of
customers. How? Simpler, more focused,
more specialized applications (like smart
phone apps), more emphasis on quick initial
usability, more sharing of best practices
(usage, not technical), and more
customization based on the behavioural
analysis of users.

12. 11. Resurgence of purpose
As companies push forward on their CX journeys, they'll find that there's nothing holding
their efforts together. The desire to improve customer experience will fall victim to other
priorities if the effort is not tied to the core values of the company.
But many organizations focus so
intently on their operations that they
lose sight of their raisons d'être.

13. 12. CX certification accelerates
CX education
The Customer Experience Professionals Association has launched its Certified
Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) certification in 2014.
This industry-wide certification helps
solidifying the role of CX professionals
and creates demand for more CX
training.

14. 13. The rise of “empathy”
As companies increasingly focus on CX in 2014, they'll recognize that
their organizations lack a deep understanding and appreciation for their
customers. It's not a flaw in the people, just a natural result of an
internal focus on day-to-day operations. From now on, we'll hear more
executives talk about the need to build empathy for customers, making
“empathy” the CX word for 2014.