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Five predictions for customer experience in 2014

January 2, 2014 by Mike Wittenstein — Customer Experience and Service Designer, Storyminers

Happy near year! Here are five things that I believe will impact customer experience in the coming months:

1. The bottom line focused companies will increase their budget for metrics. A percentage of those businesses will be puzzled about what to measure in 2015 and a percentage of them will come to the conclusion that metrics alone will not solve the problem.

2. B2B brands will increasingly realize that their customers are people not businesses. They’ll adopt some proven B2C practices such as focusing personalization technology as a way to anticipate their customers needs. Bonus–they will also benefit in the same ways that B2C companies do by lowering costs and improving service experiences at the same time.

3. Big brands that have pioneered the CX territory such as Starbucks and Apple, will begin reinventing themselves in the race to stay ahead of the gang. Expect to see innovation in multi-channel solutions for retail from this category of brands.

4. B2C brands that implement personalized technology with a little too much gusto will become creepy and nagging. It has already begun but the backlash hasn’t been felt to great degree yet. There can be too much of a good thing. The resolution to this problem is still a year or two out.

5. Design-led approach to customer experience will gain a foothold with companies that have previously employed a checklist mentality. They will see that their initial efforts were noble-minded but lack the performance capabilities of true customer experience design.

Customer experience design continues to grow in importance to businesses around the world as a way to set themselves apart from the crowd. The adoption of a human-centered and design-led approach to business strategy will hopefully one day be the norm rather than the exception. In that day expect to see delightful customer experiences that are unique to the brand that delivers them, as a part of everyday life.

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