A recent Customer Engagement review from Braze highlighted an interesting outcome – 98% of companies that ranked their customer engagement efforts as excellent or good exceeded their revenue goals. Of those that didn’t, only 65% met revenue goals. While some of this increase can likely be tied to a recovering economy, that doesn’t negate the impact that a deeper focus on customer engagement can bring. COVID-19 drove big shifts in consumer behaviour, so brands who have worked to embrace true customer centricity are well-positioned to see the bulk of those revenue gains going forward.
With this in mind, how do brands bring together valid insights such as customer habits and history to create a truly personalised experience for each customer? How can brands create a robust cross-channel strategy to deliver the right message at the right time to get full benefit of customer engagement?

With statistics showing over 50% of consumers will shift to another brand if companies don't routinely anticipate their needs, there is a need for you to predict customer needs and arrest potential problems before they become major complaints. The major goal of proactive customer experience is to foresee the kind of help customers may require before they even ask. This enables teams to solve potential issues at source in a timely and efficient manner that guarantees an excellent customer experience. Besides, a brand needs to minimize inconveniences in every possible way and keep customers abreast of the kind of actions being taken to address their issues. In a nutshell, there is a need to create awareness by ensuring there is a free flow of information from the company to the consumer to help change potential negative experiences into positives.

•How can you identify and determine repeat occurrences that impacts and hampers the customer's journey?
•How can you evaluate potential techniques to improve existing procedures and predict and pre-empt potential problem areas?

Customer experience is now a well-regarded and rewarding career, especially when companies integrate systems that allow for collaboration between humans and machines. Recent studies reveal that 79% of contact center leaders plan to invest in greater AI capabilities within two years. With the recent massive customer service disruption due to COVID-19, live chats, emails, and phone calls are now indispensable tools that will improve customer experience. Furthermore, automation is now the new normal regardless of your industry. If you don't embrace automated approaches, you will likely be left out sooner rather than later. Recent data reveals that 90% of companies report that they are planning to deploy AI by 2022. This means that nearly 40% of all customer interactions will be automated through AI and machine learning. As technology delivers more convenience to our daily lives, virtual assistants such as Alexa and Siri will continue to optimize interactions your brand has with customers.

•How can you implement an automation solution that enables you to train, monitor, and manage your virtual assistant?
•What are the future of customer service trends, including AI and virtual agents for customer service?

Personalizing customer experience may not be possible with loss of privacy. Transparency and security are integral parts of the individualized experiences that you wish to provide to your clients. With rising hacking cases, customers are ever security conscious and are much savvier than ever when regarding potential threats to their security. It is crucial that you become transparent regarding how you collect and store customers' personal information. Safe handling of personal data must be prioritized, and security certifications maintained to guarantee enhanced consumer trust. Sanitize all personal information for security to ensure you deliver personalization without compromising personal privacy.

•How can you evaluate security protocols and certifications regularly to protect your company and customers?
•What’s the best way to integrate back-office systems such as OMS or CRM to personalize customer experience without risks of security breaches?

Customer obsession isn't a new philosophy. Well established as the secret to Amazon's massive success, both B2B and B2C companies have started to make customer-centricity a key ingredient in their strategies and objectives — and this makes sense. Customer-centric companies have proved to be more successful.
But in the new era CX has changed. Customers now want greater ease of purchase, wider exposure to digital means, service and delivery at the comfort of home. How can businesses respond to this and how can you stay ahead of the curve with the pace of change ever increasing?