Main challenges of user experience in 2017

During 2016, the customer experience rating has improved slightly. However, CX (Customer Xperience) companies and leaders are aware that it is critical to enhance the overall customer experience in their interactions with brands for businesses to grow. And in this sense, the latest report by Forrester under the title “Predictions 2017: The CX Quality Split” concludes that in 2017 the gap between leaders in user experience and the rest will widen.

The user experience progress will slow down in 2017

Among the best user experience indices, throughout 2016 there have been no substantial improvements, far from the perfect score. Therefore, the customer experience has not reached its peak and the brands are fully aware of this, especially after having corroborated and assumed that a better customer experience is directly related to higher revenue growth, greater power of pricing, lower service costs and, ultimately, more and better financial benefits.

Forrester points out that the foundations of a better customer experience have already been laid and, to a large extent, some homogeneity has been achieved below. But it is now when “the hardest work” begins, which will mean that CX’s progress will generally slow down, while some companies will be able to excel at the rest.

Main areas of CX service during this year

Now the challenges of the customer experience will focus on key issues such as combating security threats (increasingly complex), creating conditions that generate specific positive emotions and exploiting artificial intelligence. Even large companies should make big investments to take advantage of new capabilities and create better user experiences.

This division between the leading leaders in the area of customer experience and the rest will be especially evident in four areas:

• Data security. Companies will increase security measures to protect their customers’ data by developing comprehensive incident response programs based on a Zero Confidence Model. However, many others will be neglected, “increasing irritation and risk, rather than confidence.”

• Increase the influence on the customers’ emotions. Negative emotions erode loyalty. Aware of this, CX leaders will try, not so much to measure emotions as to exert their influence on them. To this end, they will try to anticipate the client to identify and prioritize the prevention of negative experiences.

• Improvements in conversational interfaces based on artificial intelligence. We talk about chat bots with which to anticipate the needs of customers, and their integration with assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana or Alexa.

• The search for new ways to measure the success of clients’ experiences on the road to loyalty.