Exploring Customer Experience Trends for 2023

Perhaps the greatest yet most challenging part of the E-Commerce industry is that it is constantly evolving and changing. Every day, new platforms, resources, and technologies emerge that help us better serve our customers. With all the noise and industry disruption, piecing together which CX methods you should prioritize and invest in can feel like trying to start a jigsaw puzzle that’s missing the photo on the box.

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Luckily, you’ve got us – the CX wizards of TalentPop, if we say so ourselves – to guide you down the yellow brick road of customer experience trends we expect to continue or pop up in 2023. Today, we’re diving into the thick of it to give you the heads-up you’ll need to maximize your traffic and generate revenue through a solid customer service experience.
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What Your E-Commerce Business Needs To Know Right Now

Listen – we’re just as tired as you are of hearing “it’s been a wild few years,” but seriously…. it’s been a wild few years! We watched businesses rise to the occasion during the pandemic to create a fully digital shopping experience for customers. Since then, we’ve all had to learn new tactics for managing customer experience and making our customers feel important and valued through supply chain issues, shipping delays, and other obstacles that stepped into our paths. Consider the bar officially raised.

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Expectations are higher than ever, and rightfully so. In 2022, more than 60% of customers said they now have higher customer service standards, and 86% will even pay more for a better customer experience. To stay competitive in the E-Commerce marketplace, create a great customer experience, and maximize the CLTV of your existing customers (hey look, it’s a blog we wrote!), your brand should plan to focus on the following trends in 2023:

• Maximizing efficiency and supporting your team with strategic automation
• Empowering customers with self-service solutions
• Establishing a strong omnichannel presence to better serve customers
• Creating a simple, streamlined CX to drive revenue via customer service
• Utilizing your marketing team to establish brand voice consistency across your customer service channels
• Balancing personalized experiences with data privacy

Maximizing Efficiency And Supporting Your Team With Strategic Automation

Imagine a solution that tackles both employee burnout and customer experience. If you’re thinking “automation,” you’re already wearing the right thinking cap. When done correctly and strategically, automation supports your team by allowing them to focus on more complex tickets and issues while still providing an excellent customer service experience.

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From chatbots to AI tools that can efficiently handle FAQs and fulfill online orders, automation is likely going to become the answer for more businesses that need to cut down on their customer service queues to make up for staffing shortages without sacrificing quality (and 31% of organizations have already invested in AI technology to outpace their competition – food for thought, eh?).

Empowering Customers With Self-Service Solutions

After getting a taste of it over the past few years, 2023 is going to see even more customers who will be seeking easy self-serve solutions for completing tasks such as returns and exchanges. Not only does empowering customers with a self-service process give them the independence to solve their inquiries without customer service intervention, but it also cuts customer service costs by allowing your team to focus on more complicated tasks in their queue that surpass the abilities of an automated self-service solution.

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Knowing that 92% of consumers will buy something again if returns are easy and 47% want an easy-to-print return label, there’s no question that your CX will be improved by an easy process that allows customers to complete their returns from start to finish in less than an hour.

Establishing A Strong Omnichannel Presence To Better Serve Customers

Back in 2018, well before the start of the pandemic, 9 in 10 consumers said they wanted absolute omnichannel service and expected a seamless experience when moving from one communication method to another. In 2023, you can expect that customers will be even more adamant about a cohesive communication experience with customer service.

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Consumers across the country are done settling for confusing lines of communication that force them to repeat their issues to multiple representatives, and we say “more power to them” for demanding higher standards. To stay competitive and keep up with the expectations of a more technologically-savvy demographic of consumers, your brand will want to add more support channels to its customer service departments such as live chat and SMS (learn even more about the power of SMS in our recent blog post).

Creating A Simple, Streamlined CX To Drive Revenue Via Customer Service

Boy, we could say this one until we’re blue in the face: customer service is truly the key to success for your online business. It’s exactly why we at TalentPop look at great CX as a way of life rather than a trend (although, thankfully, it is absolutely a trend that will continue well beyond 2023) because, for us, helping businesses to create a streamlined customer experience is how we ensure our clients aren’t outpaced or outperformed by their competitors.

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Here’s how our clients stay on top of CX, set up their customer service department to be a revenue generator rather than a cost center, and what YOU should be doing in the new year to keep up with the trend of high-quality customer service:

• Build and regularly update SOPs that set clear expectations for how tickets should be handled by your customer service representatives.
• Incorporate helpful E-Commerce software, tools, and platforms that keep processes running smoothly and take pressure off of your team.
• Anticipate common customer inquiries with a thorough FAQ page (check out a few of our favorite examples in our blog post) and automatic replies within your live chat tools.
• Keep morale strong among your customer service team members so they feel valued, heard, and dedicated to your brand.
• Outsource customer service to a trusted BPO like TalentPop that can also perform back-office support services without overspending or sacrificing quality.

Utilizing Your Marketing Team To Establish Brand Voice Consistency Across Your Customer Service Channels

Consistent brand messaging and transparency are going to be even more vital for CX in 2023 than they were in 2022, which means that more marketers will likely have a greater role in ensuring that customer service communication is in alignment with the brand’s tone of voice on each and every CS channel.

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Think about it: the brands that have an impact (Duolingo, Native, and Wandering Bear Coffee come to mind for us) not only have engaging social media presences, but they also craft compelling outreach and follow-up email sequences for situations like abandoned carts, implement brand messaging within their chatbots and customer service scripts to create a consistent experience, and build communities where fellow customers can connect and share with others. Who better to help weave together a great customer experience through these means and ensure consistency within the brand messaging than your marketing team?

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When customer service becomes a team effort between agents and marketing strategists, CX improves, and brands not only thrive but establish themselves as industry leaders amongst competitors.  

Balancing Personalized Experiences With Data Privacy

In 2017, a survey showed that 83% of consumers were willing to share their data to enable a personalized experience – however, in 2022, more GDPR violations and data breaches have resulted in mistrust in online businesses from consumers. Plus, with new GDPR regulations cracking down on brands that violate the privacy of online users, it’s more important than ever to show your customers that their private data is just that: private.

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The path forward is one that delicately balances a personalized experience (such as using a customer’s name in emails and sending out birthday discounts) with an emphasis on data privacy to protect users who make online purchases and increase trust and confidence in your brand.

Follow TalentPop’s Customer Experience Trends In 2023 To Set Your E-Commerce Business Up For Success

Are you ready to tackle the trends expected to emerge in 2023? If you’re feeling that your E-Commerce brand may need support to stay competitive and generate more revenue with a top-notch customer service experience, schedule a call with TalentPop today. From scaling your support up or down depending on your needs to onboarding highly-trained agents who will be dedicated to helping your brand succeed, we’ll tell you all about how we can make 2023 your best year yet.