CX resolutions for 2024

As a business, you're expected to find and implement ways to improve CX throughout the year. Nevertheless, it's important to make CX resolutions when a new year is born.

Why?

The beginning of a year is a good time to take an objective look at your CX-related practices and priorities so that you know where you currently stand and can also chart your course for the year ahead.

There might be considerations that apply specifically to your organization or industry, but here are a few generic resolutions that you can make today to point yourself in the right direction for your CX journey.

Provide more self-service capabilities

Until a few years ago, self-service was a good-to-have feature in the help center; most customers preferred to talk to a designated customer support agent to find solutions. However, with changing demographics and more Gen Y and Gen Z folks becoming more active customers today, the need for self-service capabilities has increased rather significantly. As a recent Gartner report reveals, "40% of Gen Z customers will abandon a service issue if they can't resolve it on their own." Considering that this number may only increase further in the coming years, it'd be prudent for businesses to start providing self-service capabilities as much as possible and stay ahead of competition.

Even if you don't consider the age of the customer as a factor, self-service is still an essential capability to offer. The biggest benefit it provides is the amount of time it saves for customers and the sense of self-reliance and empowerment it offers. Besides, self-service also helps free up time for your support agents, who can instead focus on solving more complex issues.

Strive to reduce customer effort

This resolution relates to the previous one with respect to saving time. There are several benefits that a business can achieve by reducing customer effort, and since the world is majorly technology-driven today, there's no excuse for businesses that subject customers to high-effort interactions without a valid reason. Whether it's a sales inquiry, a customer support conversation, or any other customer-facing interaction, the less effort the interaction requires, the happier and more loyal the customer will be. Therefore, proactively look for ways to minimize customer effort.

And when you're on this journey, don't forget to minimize effort for the next most important stakeholders of your business: your employees. Again, the one helping hand that can work wonders here is technology. There's a slew of no-code/low-code platforms available in the market today, which can help business users create custom solutions that streamline their work and enhance their efficiency. So empower your non-IT/business users with the right technology to minimize the effort needed to get through their day-to-day work.

Be judicious with AI and automation tools

This resolution might seem to contradict the first two, but it doesn't. When we advocate for wider adoption of technology, that includes AI and automation tools as well. Thanks to the tremendous leaps it has made lately and the promise it holds, AI technology is now a force to reckon with. Why must one be judicious with its usage, then? Simply because even though technology can help crunch data and present insights, decision-making is something that should stay in the realm of human thinking.

This also brings with it the question of which data you use—and how. GenAI and LLM tools like ChatGPT, DALL-E, Midjourney, etc. require humongous amounts of data to train their models. So when you provide them with large sets of data from your organization, make sure the data stays within your organization and is not shared for wider usage. Look diligently at the data privacy and security policies of the technology provider to safeguard your data. At the same time, be careful about the data source you use for training your models and make sure that you don't end up using critical or private data that belongs to others.

Keep an eye on employees' mental health

This is something we've emphasized since the inception of this blog: Take good care of your employees/team members because employee experience directly influences customer experience. The need to act on this could be even greater in 2024 because of the sense of uncertainty and unrest prevailing across the globe. Major economies are facing a slowdown, there are intense geopolitical conflicts in different regions, and a good number of organizations have laid off employees in recent times. All these factors—along with the threat of AI replacing low-level jobs—could be ringing alarm bells and creating anxiety in your employees. Therefore, assure your team members that you have their best interests in mind and show it through action.

Provide your team members with guidance and the resources to upskill themselves. That's an effective way to help them feel secure and confident in the face of the looming proliferation of AI. And if you're ever forced to let someone go, do it with empathy. Communicate clearly the reason for letting them go, be fair with the severance pay you offer, and most importantly, do your best to help them find their next job opportunity. This could be in terms of referring them to organizations that are hiring, helping them create impressive resumes, and writing letters of recommendation. While layoffs are sometimes inevitable, how you handle them reflects your organization's culture and image.

Focus more on experience-led growth

Gone is the era of product-led growth. We're now in the era of experience-led growth, because more organizations have come to realize that focusing just on the product is restrictive, whereas focusing on the overall experience is more expansive and all-encompassing. This approach takes into account each stage and aspect of the customer journey.

The benefits of adopting an experience-led growth strategy are manifold:

• It's a straightforward way to achieve customer obsession, which is essential to immensely successful multi-billion dollar businesses.
• It reduces customer churn and increases customer loyalty and longevity, thereby increasing the lifetime value of each customer.
• It organically fosters customer advocacy in the form of word-of-mouth marketing, thereby bringing in new customers.
• By focusing on improving the experience of other stakeholders, it helps retain both employees and external business partners as well.
• It helps forge and solidify the identity of your business, thereby boosting your brand's image.

I hope these pointers have helped you set a meaningful direction for your business this year. Please follow this space for more deep dives into all these pointers and other areas related to CX improvement.