The team at f(v) advisory have been monitoring the trends across the globe and validated with several customers in Australia and New Zealand. No surprise that AI has been raised consistently over the last 8 months, but what is a surprise is attaching AI to opportunities. In the following expression of the key trends, we have taken a few on AI can be applied.

A deep dive into the 5 big trends:

Customer-first: Customers are seeking responsiveness, transparency and frictionless experiences. But are reporting that their experiences are much lower than their expectation. Companies who invest in a true omni-channel experience can start to put the customer first and see positive lifts in loyalty and growth. AI can play a major part here. As customers can use up to 6 different channels to ability to analyse the interactions and activity across channels combined with market and environmental data can create a frictionless, positive connection.

Personalisation: Creating an audience of 1 is one of the key drivers of growth with companies driving 40% more revenue from personalisation that slower moving companies. Investing in personalisation drives lifetime value leading to better revenue, retention and loyalty. AI can enhance data collection and insights, enabling companies to build personalised, one-to-one relationships across multiple channels. Customers are happier to share their data if they know it will enhance their experience. Customers want to be treated harmoniously across all channels and quality businesses use customer data as the ‘lifeblood’ of a best-in-class personalised experience across online, app, social and store.

Loyalty Re-imagined: Loyalty programs can increase customer lifetime value but have been seen by customers to be ‘generic’ with no differentiation. A loyalty program done well can increase customer advocacy by 70% and 60% of customers on a well-run loyalty program are likely to spend more. The opportunity for companies is to expand beyond just offering discounts and spending rewards.   Include rewards for relationship building activities such as user-generated-content (UGC), community activity, FAQ content or rating and reviews. AI can enhance how the data, behaviour and activity is presented and delivered in real-time to your loyal customers.

Product Availability: Product and service availability is a significant pain point for customers. Customers are looking for real-time information on inventory status including stock quantities, out-of-stock information, flexible fulfillment options and delivery status. Customers claim, ‘fast delivery’ and ‘low shipping costs’ as the 2 most important aspects of a positive delivery experience. But the most important factor is that customers have visibility in being able to know when to expect a delivery. 85% of consumers will not shop with a retailer again after having a poor delivery experience. Using AI to gather real-time information on all aspects of inventory management can deliver a quality experience for customer’s number one CX expectation.

Trust: Companies need to ensure that their gathering and delivery of customer data is aligned to dynamic government data protection legislation. It is critical that customers have full visibility to their data and collection methods and can influence on how their data is collected. Use of AI is becoming increasing important for companies to present how it is being used and presenting to customers the complete dta sources and their compliance to legislation. Companies can use the ways the handle customer data and privacy as a source of competitive advantage. Customers will spend more with companies who protect their privacy and provide co=more control of their data. Quality companies provide customers with the ability to edit, delete and withdraw their consent, by individual channel, content and timing.

A Big 5 Trend Checklist

1. To be customer-first, ensure you have a quality embedded real-time listening and response process for customer input, across multiple channels
2. Use AI to create a Personalised experience that creates the concept of a ‘audience of 1’
3. Reward all elements of the customer relationship to provide a ‘stickier’ loyalty program.
4. Create a point-of-difference by providing a AI enabled real-time view of all aspects of inventory management, in particular order status and delivery timing.
5. Use an easy to find and use customer preference centre (CPC) that allows customers to have data freedom. Providing control, protection and privacy, by channel, content and timing.

Customer experience is everything an organisation does for, and to their customers, and how it makes them feel…: