Hi Team!

Welcome to 2024! This newsletter is back bigger & better this year.

My single goal for the newsletter in 2024 is to consistently publish it every week. No excuses!

To kick things off, I’m going to wind it back one year & reflect on my 2023 CEXy predictions … let’s see whether I passed, or failed.

Next week, I’ll lay out my 2024 CEXy predictions …

Pass Or Fail 📝?

Reflecting On My 2023 CEXy Predictions 🔮

Overall, I’m giving myself an overall B- mark. Out of 10 predictions, the majority have come (or are coming) to fruition in some way, shape or form. None of them materialised in the exact way that I thought they would, though!

If you’re interested, you can read the full 2023 prediction article here. Tune in next week for my 2024 predictions.

Prediction #1 - Conversational Customer Service Will Become Mandatory 📱

• Prediction Summary: More organisations are going to solve customer service issues in conversational channels e.g. SMS, WhatsApp, ChatBots etc. 72% of consumers say they’re more likely to shop from a company that communicates with them about their products in real-time, with a real employee, via messaging (SMS, WhatsApp).

• Grade: B-

• Reasoning: My prediction doesn’t specifically relate to Gen-AI (probably because I wasn’t aware of it at the time) however this prediction will definitely come true in the coming years. I can see a world where Cam, The Concierge becomes commonplace across many customer service teams.

Prediction #2 - Companies Will Differentiate Themselves By Providing "Individualisation At Scale" 🧜‍♀️

• Prediction Summary: Journey orchestration will become commonplace, ensuring no two customers are treated in the exact same way, across any channel. McKinsey predicts that "individualisation at scale" will drive 5-15% additional revenue growth for brands in the retail, travel, entertainment, telecom & financial services industries.

• Grade: B+

• Reasoning: Whilst I’m still not seeing widespread adoption of omnichannel journey orchestration, there are green sprouts starting to appear. This is further supported by Adobe’s 2023 State of Digital CX Report which found that 49% of businesses plan to implement distinct approaches to different customer segments. This shift in focus appears to come from the fact that a large majority of organisations (78%) have a CDP in place, with 46% of organisations also owning some form of personalisation engine technology.

Prediction #3 - The Silent Majority Will Finally Be Heard 📣

• Prediction Summary: Organisations will begin to rely less on surveys and more on observed and behavioural datasets such as digital experience analytics & conversational analytics (e.g. analysis of speech & chat transcripts).

• Grade: B-

• Reasoning: The emergence of different AI tools has made it much easier for organisations to analyse unstructured data sources using text & sentiment analysis tools. This has subsequently opened up an array of different ways to analyse customer behaviours beyond solicited feedback. To prove this point, a recent Global Consumer Trends report found that there is 6x more unstructured data (e.g. social comments, call & chat transcripts) compared to structured data. Additionally, unstructured data sources are growing in volume at 55% per year (versus 22% for structured data).

Check out this article if you want to learn more about the CX data sources you may not have considered yet …

Prediction #4 - Customer Trust In Consumer Tech Companies Will Begin To Shrink 🚩

• Prediction Summary: Due to increasing data breaches & lack of effective ethical data management practices, Forrester predicts that consumers’ trust in tech companies will shrink by 15% (from 50% to 35%) by the end of 2023.

• Grade: D

• Reasoning: This prediction didn’t really materialise in any large manner. In saying that, consumer consciousness relating to data privacy is definitely rising, particularly as they start to understand how tools like OpenAI can use their data to train models & bots.

Prediction #5 - The Recession Will Shift Focus From Automation To Operational Efficiency 🦾

• Prediction Summary: In a period of economic uncertainty, the focus will become slightly more risk-averse, whereby companies shift their automation budgets to focus on ensuring systems, processes & procedures are being fully utilised.

• Grade: B-

• Reasoning: This is a difficult one to mark as it is hard to measure. Layoffs were prevalent amongst many large SaaS organisations which is a strong indicator that organisations were not spending as much on large-scale transformation projects. Anecdotally, I also noticed a lot of organisations focusing on how they can reduce cost to serve. There was an extremely strong focus on digital containment, considering that it is 81x cheaper to service a customer online, compared to servicing them within the contact centre.

Prediction #6 - CX Teams Who Fail To Demonstrate ROI Will Become Extinct 👋

• Prediction Summary: If C-Suite leaders cannot see ROI in the investment of a dedicated CX team, it is highly likely that they will trim back or completely eliminate CX functions in an economic downturn. Whilst this may be short-sighted, it reinforces the need for CX teams to become better at demonstrating ROI on CX.

• Grade: A-

• Reasoning: It’s a bit unfortunate that I was correct with this prediction however the number of layoffs (particularly in the CX space) demonstrate the lack of perceived value that the C-Suite still has for a dedicated customer experience team. In order to change this moving forward, I firmly believe that CX teams must become experts in design thinking + test & learn methodologies. As Jeff Bezos once stated - “If you double the number of experiments you do per year you're going to double your inventiveness.”

Prediction #7 - Frontline Employees Will Demand Better Training & Development 😤

• Prediction Summary: 80% of US workers say an employer’s professional development offerings are an important consideration when accepting a new job. With frontline churn rates higher than 50% at the start of 2023, it’s evident that employees are voting with their feet.

• Grade: B+

• Reasoning: AI is revolutionising the way that frontline employees are being trained (e.g. personalised micro-learning) and it is also improving productivity in regards to the way that frontline teams engage with customers. For example, Genesys has found that their Agent Assist AI function has substantially improved frontline revenue, customer ratings & agent efficiency. These technological developments ultimately improves agent satisfaction by personalising their employment experience & freeing up more time to focus on value-add tasks.

Prediction #8 - "Next Best Action" Technology Will Make Agents More Productive ⏰

• Prediction Summary: I anticipated that journey orchestration technology will become more widespread in 2023, surfacing agents with recommended next steps according to previous cross-channel interactions that a customer has had.

• Grade: C-

• Reasoning: Whilst real-time conversation guidance is increasing in popularity, there is still a long way to go. In 2023, I observed a stronger desire for organisations to begin connecting their data (e.g. connecting customer feedback to session replays) however there is still a substantial amount of effort involved in connecting the dots across omnichannel interactions e.g. a customer who calls the contact centre after browsing online. Whilst I have no doubt that there will be a time in the near future where every customer service rep will know what the customer was doing on any other channel prior to the interaction, we’re not there just yet!

Prediction #9 - Employee Surveillance Techniques Will Erode Trust ❌

• Prediction Summary: In 2023, Forrester expected more lawmaker attention on workplace surveillance as well as increased employee backlash in response to surveillance. Employee surveillance techniques are a by-product of working from home and can include things like keystroke recording, desktop snapshots & even surveillance via webcam …

• Grade: N/A

• Reasoning: To be honest, I haven’t kept close enough to this trend to know whether it’s worsened over the last year however I did just stumble upon a pretty damning article from the Guardian in May 2023. The article starts with a story from Mae - “every 10 minutes, Mae’s computer snaps a shot of her screen, thanks to monitoring software her employer made her install on her laptop. A figure looms large over her workday: her activity score, a percentage calculated by the arbitrary measure of how much she types and moves her mouse.” The article then goes on to claim that 60% of employees had experienced tracking in the last year. If that’s true, it’s pretty crazy!

Prediction #10 - Intelligent Automation Will Improve The Level Of Customer Service 📞

• Prediction Summary: I predicted that “intelligent automation” such as things like automated callback and intelligent IVR routing would reduce the burden on frontline teams. I justified this with a stat that 88% of customer service associates believe that AI will improve their work, rather than replace associates themselves.

• Grade: A+

• Reasoning: This prediction was published in December 2022 (the same month that ChatGPT launched). At this point, I had no idea was generative AI was and whilst my prediction was spot on, the way I was thinking about things was very limited, and rules-based. Luckily for me, AI has exploded over the past 12 months and makes me look like a genius with this prediction. Just think about it - 12 months ago, frontline agents had to write their own emails. Now, all they have to do is tell GPT to do it for them!

Image Of The Week 📊

This one made me laugh. If you know, you know …

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