The good news is that companies recognise the need for exceptional service, with 65% of brands saying they plan to increase their investment in customer experience solutions during 2023.  

The bad news is that many companies still don’t know where to get started with their strategies to boost client satisfaction. As the landscape we know continues to change at a phenomenal rate and customer expectations evolve, it’s challenging to determine where organisations should be focusing the majority of their efforts. Fortunately, if we look at the current patterns in the customer service landscape and the statistics surrounding CX, we can see some emerging trends. 

Here are 5 of the key customer service trends businesses will need to prepare for in 2023:

1. Customer Service Channels Continue to Evolve 

First, companies need to be prepared for the channels they use to interact with customers to change more aggressively in the years ahead. Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen a range of new platforms for customer communications emerging around the world.  

Consumers have started connecting with brands on social media, interacting via video, and even using instant messaging tools like What’s App. Going forward, experts predict the lines between the digital and physical world will become increasingly blurred, thanks to the emergence of the “metaverse” and XR technology. “Phygital” experiences, which blur the line between physical and digital with AR-enhanced apps, and QR codes, are likely to increase in the years ahead.  

We’ll also see a larger number of companies investing in extended reality to meet their customers in the digital world. Brands like Nike, Wendy’s and Gucci have already started expanding into these areas.  

2. Hyper-Personalisation Becomes Crucial 

Consumers are becoming increasingly less enamoured by their favourite brands. Customer satisfaction levels have dropped to their lowest point in 17 years, and clients are becoming increasingly frustrated by one-size-fits-all experiences. Analysts like Gartner believe the companies who will succeed in the years ahead are those who focus more aggressively on “hyper-personalisation”. 

Companies will need to think more carefully about how they can transform customer service experiences to suit the individual needs of each user. This will mean not only giving customers more say over how they interact with a brand (in person or on digital channels) but also providing each customer with unique offers, guidance, and support during their purchasing journey.  

Going into 2023, we can expect to see more companies exploring ways to help customers have more of a say in the services, support, and offers they get.  

3. Companies will Leverage AI for Proactive Service 

Demand for artificial intelligence in the customer service landscape has been increasing rapidly in the last few years. Brands have begun to learn that leveraging AI allows them to provide more personalised and unique experiences to their users across virtually every channel. Already, we’re seeing companies utilise intelligent tools to automate customer service requests, route conversations to the right agents, and analyse sentiment during conversations.  

As customer expectations continue to evolve, one key area where business leaders are likely to increase their investment in AI is to develop proactive services. Artificial Intelligence can use historical information to pinpoint trends and patterns and provide business leaders with insights into how they can solve customer issues before they even begin.  

Moving forward, we’re likely to see more companies looking for ways to get one step ahead of their customer needs with proactive support, assistance, and sales.  

4. Automation Will Continue To Increase 

As staffing concerns and shortages continue to wage war on company productivity levels, countless businesses have begun turning to automation to reduce the pressure on their teams. Intelligent chatbots and conversational AI tools have emerged as valuable resources for businesses looking to reduce the number of support and service requests actually requiring human interaction.  

At the same time, businesses are also leveraging automated systems to help reduce the number of repetitive tasks their team needs to complete daily. The right systems can automatically store information, record conversations, and even follow up with customers without the need for human input. This gives team members more time to focus on the conversations that really matter.  

In 2023, these intelligent automation tools will likely become indispensable tools for companies that need help making the most of their human resources. Unfortunately, they won’t be able to address the staffing shortage alone, which leads us to our final trend prediction. 

5. Service Teams Will Invest Substantially in Outsourcing 

While automation and AI will go some way towards empowering companies to accomplish more with fewer employees, they won’t eliminate the need for informed, educated, and empathetic human interactions entirely. As consumers continue to demand more hyper-personalised and engaging interactions across every channel, companies will still need to ensure they have access to the right human resources. 

Since cost constraints and severe skill/people shortages will make it difficult for business leaders to hire full-time employees to fill the gaps, many will begin looking into outsourcing strategies to augment and supplement the workforce.  

For those who are looking to engage with outsourcing for the first time, those returning to the solution, or those looking for a hybrid approach, DDC OS can support you from a range of global locations to suit your requirements.  

Get in touch to learn more.  

In the UK, 81% of consumers have said they’re planning to shop more during the Black Friday period to help manage the cost-of-living crisis while still ensuring they can stock up on gifts. All over the world, these trends can present excellent opportunities for retailers to increase revenue and loyalty. However, it’s crucial to have the right plan in place to handle this demand.  

As tempting as it might be to double down on your marketing and try to cultivate additional sales during the holiday, the promise of short-term revenue wins shouldn’t come at the expense of long-term loyalty. After all, while 58% of consumers say they’re willing to accept long waiting times and delays during the holidays, only 8% will accommodate bad customer service.  

Perfecting Customer Service at Peak Times 

Peak periods, ranging from Christmas to Black Friday to other seasonal events, can be a double-edged sword for brands. On the one hand, they’re a chance to connect with engaged customers and accelerate sales. On the other hand, they can often lead to issues with inconsistent customer service and overwhelmed operational facilities.  

Implementing an enhanced sales strategy for the holiday season means not only creating the right marketing campaign but also ensuring you have the right resources on-hand to support an increase in demand. More sales mean more questions, service requests, and demands from consumers.  

If you can’t handle this extra pressure, pushing your business beyond its limits could cause more damage than good. In 2020, a report found that around 50% of Brits began actively avoiding companies with bad service at Christmas, leading to a loss of around £1.9 billion for those brands.  

Before you dive head-first into a peak retail season, you’ll need to ensure you’re not over-promising and under-delivering. Ask yourself: 

• What do customers expect from you? Start by assessing the kind of expectations you’ve already built in terms of customer experience for your customers. Does your company offer ultra-fast delivery, convenient returns, and rapid customer support? If so, can you continue to deliver on the same promises as demand increases?  

• Do you have a stable supply chain? Do you have what it takes to continue delivering products to a higher number of customers? If your current suppliers are unable to deliver on-demand, do you have backup options in place? How will you deal with popular goods going out of stock during the holiday period? How are you going to manage fulfilment and ensure items arrive at customer destinations on time? Even if the answer is no to some of the above, you can alleviate some inbound traffic by proactively updating your customers and them offering options.

• Can your existing team members handle extra work? Any increase in sales will automatically lead to an increase in work for your team members. If your staff are already overwhelmed, how will you provide additional support? In-house recruitment, outsourcing partners? Short-term solutions can pose a range of problems.  

Plan for Peaks Beyond the Holiday Season 

While the holiday season may be the most common time for many businesses and retailers to experience a peak in demand, it’s important to remember that there are other peaks to think about too. Different brands have different peaks and troughs depending on their industry and target audience. A sports company might see an increase in sales around annual competitions, while a florist may have additional demand during Mother’s Day and Valentine’s day.  

There are even instances in which retailers can manufacture peaks and demands with sales, events, and clever marketing. Ensuring you’re effectively prepared for the unpredictable nature of retail is crucial to ensure you retain loyal customers. Because of this, simply hiring seasonal staff for a couple of months each year may not be the most cost-effective and resourceful strategy. Could it be tied into other activities? Where else could you benefit from support? Can you create long-term solutions to short-term demand?  

Rather than having to find, hire, and train temporary team members on a consistent basis, many brands will benefit from creating more consistent agreements with third-party customer support agents, which allow them to structure a steadier flow of orders and maintain customer satisfaction throughout the year. Companies could even assign their outsourced specialists to different tasks each month to ensure they’re leveraging their available resources effectively.  

A consistent and holistic strategy will allow brands to manage not just holiday peaks but unexpected changes in customer demand whenever they might happen. Make sure you can always take full advantage of peak sales times without compromising on customer service.  

To learn more about the work DDC OS do in retail, please get in touch. 

There has never been as much choice as there is today; the world of e-commerce has ballooned, which means that there are seemingly endless options at the click of a button. The pandemic has only accelerated this trend, and, as a result, some of the best-known brands globally have seen a considerable peak in sales. For example, in September 2021, Boohoo reported a record £976 million in sales over the previous six months.  

Competition is tough, so retailers must make sure that they meet consumers’ current needs and even the future needs they don’t yet know they want. Additionally, modern customers are increasingly concerned with the environment and sustainability. Developing an offering covering all these bases is taxing on retailers’ resources, particularly for less established brands. Consequently, retailers are turning to partnerships more than ever before in order to resolve these challenges. 

Collaboration is the Key  

There are multiple benefits to partnerships that can help us manage the biggest challenges set to hit retail in the coming years:  

• Recruitment, Floor Space, and Infrastructure. 

One challenge that every organisation is up against is finding enough skilled people to facilitate the number of roles available. For example, it has been commonplace for some companies to partner with department stores or other retailers by utilising some of their store space to sell products. This means that existing staff are upskilled to be able to support a level of customer queries for partners.  

Another way to tackle recruitment challenges is to partner with an outsourcing organisation, such as DDC OS. Slight sales puns aside, outsourcing has been a huge supplier of customer services for many years, giving brands strategic insight and access to a skilled workforce, all without the pains of resources and intricacies of contact centre management.  

Back to physical retail space, despite high street struggles, we still see mega supermarkets appear on what sometimes feels like a weekly basis. Interestingly though, we are witnessing the collaboration of brands sharing floorspace (or what is known as brick-and-mortar benefits) and, in turn, footfall, infrastructure and setup costs. Take Asda and Greggs, for example, which became the first supermarket to open the bakery goods counters within its own stores. There’s no doubt we’ll see more and more of this in the coming years.  

• Technology 

The challenges of keeping up with the fluid world of technology are plain to see. The sheer cost of reimagining your tech offering every few years is enough to scare even the most established organisations – the cost of not investing is even scarier. So, to help share this burden, we see a rise in collaborations:   

Take Virgin Media and O2 – a broadband giant and a mobile giant, working together to offer customers the ultimate bundle. Rather than competing and investing huge sums to do so, together, their offering has sent ripples through the telecoms market.   

Taking a more physical view of how technology partnerships can work, we shift our gaze to the US, where Walmart and Verizon have joined forces. The 5G rollout is well underway, and what would be a costly release for Walmart in its superstores is instead handled by their mobile partner, who in turn benefits from more users and exposure thanks to Walmart’s customer base; a win-win.   

• Brand building for specific demographics. 

We have all become increasingly more aware of the impact our actions are having on the planet. For some brands, attaining a green image is a vast and costly task, yet there is hope in the shape of collaboration.  

Roll back the years, Body Shop was making waves in the cosmetics industry. By highlighting how ethical they were, they, in turn, were displaying how lacking some cosmetic firms were with their own practices (at least in the eye of the customers). Impressed by their work, L’Oréal bought Body Shop in a huge deal, in turn showing a massive investment in ethical cosmetics and gaining an existing customer base and chain of stores. Natura have of course since purchased the Body Shop brand from L’Oréal.  

Ok, maybe a buyout isn’t the best example of collaboration. But, as ‘environment’ and ‘sustainability’ continue to gain airtime in boardrooms up and down the land, we see new articles every day highlighting the latest projects and partnerships.  

Take Tony’s Chocolate – their passion for improving the supply chain in the cocoa industry is inspiring. Aldi, possibly the UK’s biggest disrupter in the supermarket game, has partnered with them by first joining Tony’s Open Chain, which facilitates their supply chain’s goal. This was then followed by launching a chocolate bar partnership with them, the first in the UK.  

So, if you’re looking to increase your green credentials and appeal to conscious customers, ask yourself, who can I partner with?  

In a post-Covid world (still an uncertainty even today), things will continue to change quickly and remain challenging, and handling this as a retailer, regardless of size, will be testing. Therefore, partnerships are more appealing than ever.  

Collaboration felt like the ideal place to conclude this short blog series. We hope you have enjoyed the topics covered; we’d love to hear your take on any of the areas important to you. Moreover, we’d love to hear about your services that will help take retail forward.  

As we continue to develop in the wonderful world of retail, we will share more thought pieces with you. Why not get involved?  

With thanks, 

Team DDC.  

 ~

Get in touch 

DDC OS in Retail 

AI is here and here to stay…  

With higher volumes of online shopping comes more data, which means the emergence of Artificial Intelligence. The next generation of insights is here, and their ability to create tailored customer experiences are exciting. As per DataRobot, at least 70% of retailers are expected to adopt AI in the next two years. Here’s why:  

Utilise your existing data – many retailers have data-rich processes but are yet to unlock its potential, with 2/3 retailers claiming their greatest challenge is utilising their data. The uses can be endless; from planning your upcoming promotions and when to run them to choosing your next store location, data enables you to work smarter, not harder.  

Operational excellence – what operational team hasn’t questioned what can be done better? How many hours have been spent pouring over data looking for quick wins, big wins and that extra 5%? AI is helping retailers discover three times the gains in their efficiencies, saving time, resources, and even cash. 

Increase your revenue – each element of a retailer’s processes is under scrutiny to be more cost-effective, including any investments. Thankfully, AI is proving to increase revenues up to 31%.  

The Power of Personalised Marketing  

Setting yourself apart from the crowd could be as simple as understanding your customers better. In fact, according to recent data, a massive 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands that offer a personalised experience. Fortunately, you can use data-driven insights to determine what it is that your customers expect and need from you.  

Inevitably, more customised content increases your marketing spend, but the added value for customers could be the difference between them spending with you or a competitor. Insider Trends offered the following insight into how retailers are creating this more customised experience:  

• Create personalised recommendations based on customers’ search histories.  
• Customise your website based on the customer profile so they can access relevant items quicker.  
• Show products suited to their sizes and tastes. (Maybe you’ve already noticed a little note on your recent shopping experiences online: ‘you usually purchase this size’).  
• Advertise on their social media feeds based on their viewing of your website.
   

The possibilities that come from social media alone are endless. Facebook IQ’s report on the next era of hybrid shopping encapsulates the power of social media platforms perfectly: ‘With social feeds increasingly curated to personal tastes, these platforms act as tailored catalogues for shoppers to find products or brands that they may never have known existed before. It works too: 84% of shoppers purchased in-store after finding or discovering the item on social media.’ 

If that list isn’t exhaustive enough, we are seeing the entire marketing mix (the 4 P’s) utilised –let’s look at the product element. Customisable products and solutions are more popular than ever. Even major global brands notorious for their consistency are offering levels of personalisation. Take McDonald’s; whilst no longer in play; they launched the “create your taste” option across restaurants worldwide, letting customers build their perfect McDonald’s burger for the first time, a great example of mass personalisation.  

We don’t have to look in great detail to find many more current options for personalisation, from designing your own football boots with Nike, editing your Moet Champagne label, and getting your name on a jar of Nutella or a Dairy Milk bar.  

On that note, we’re heading to the snack cupboard as we look towards the next instalment which focuses on the role of collaboration in the future of retail.  

 ~

Get in touch 

DDC OS in Retail 

Flexibility in Delivery and Returns  

Perhaps one of the most significant changes in e-commerce is the customer’s decision-making process. For example, when a customer buys a piece of clothing online, they are unlikely to be sure of the fit and size; even the style can be hard to judge through a screen. In a physical store, much of this is negated. We have seen an increase in people purchasing more items online with the intention of returning much of the order – 1 in 3 fashion purchases are now returned. This change in purchasing behaviour has led to the need to modify and simplify returns processes. Ensuring that customers can return items quickly and efficiently isn’t an easy task, nor is it cheap, with an estimated £7bn cost associated with returns.  

As online orders increase dramatically, so have delivery and return demands, ‘with parcel deliveries rising 50 per cent to 4.2bn in the financial year ending last March, according to industry regulator Ofcom’. As a result, services such as, parcel lockers – like those provided by InPost – have become all the more necessary and popular. So much so that ‘the number of potential customers within 5 minutes of a locker has risen from 2 million to almost 7 million in the last year‘. Such infrastructures have been vital in easing the strain on even the biggest delivery giants whilst still living up to consumer expectations of a stress-free process. 

For those of us with an eye on innovation much further in the distance, enhanced touch screens are being discussed as an option to help customers feel objects. That would surely help reduce some of the return’s volumes. Watch this space, with some early versions of this expected in the next five years!  

Options for Payment  

The way that customers pay for online purchases is constantly changing. Before now, most retailers offered a single payment option. A consumer would input their card details and the money would leave their account accordingly. However, there has been a movement here to provide customers with more options. Using credit-based systems, such as Klarna, means that customers can buy products now and settle the balance at a time that suits them. Alternatively, a customer might choose to pay with PayPal, Apple Pay, Google, etc.  

Giving customers options is key – the easier their journey, the more likely they are to make a purchase. A word of caution, though; as the saying goes, more money (or, in this case, payment options), more problems. Therefore, your customer service team must be armed with the knowledge of the different options available to customers so they can effectively support incoming queries on payments. An informed customer service team is an effective one.  

Customised E-Commerce Experiences  

The major difference between in-store shopping experiences and the world of e-commerce is the presence of human interaction. So much of the online experience is automated; customers simply click a button and the products they’ve ordered get delivered to their door. This means retailers have limited opportunity to upsell products or encourage a purchase, as is possible in-store. Digital tools have come a long way in terms of the support they can offer customers online, but what can we do to make that situation more interactive and brand immersive?  

We are seeing more ‘customised’ shopping experiences appearing in the market. Take the fashion world with Stitch Fix and Thread – where the experience replicates having a personal shopper. These services show that creating more interactive offerings doesn’t necessarily mean increasing your headcount and therefore costs. We can certainly expect to see more of this as time goes on.  

Keeping up with Demand  

But, what of situations where a higher headcount might be required? Creating more interactive and immersive digital experiences will depend on your resources. As you add more strings to your bow, you aren’t replacing the old ones. Your customers will still want to call to see why that parcel is a day late, or to ask why they haven’t received a refund yet, or to complain that their order has not met expectations. This realistically leaves two options: 

Firstly, you can grow your own team – utilising that loyal, experienced instore team that has sadly seen its store close, giving them the chance to reallocate those skills. This has already been successfully implemented throughout lockdown; for organisations such as jewellers. Clearly, it is still possible to deliver high-quality customer service in such ways. 

Alternatively, you could choose to work with an outsourcing partner. They can deliver your standard customer service expectations and, importantly, go way beyond this by providing the kind of personalised services aforementioned. Outsourcers are flexible enough to grow with you, taking on the pains of recruitment during peak times. They can also offer you multiple locations for cost-saving purposes and, in most cases, provide access to multilingual, skilled staff – at least that’s the case here at DDC OS. More importantly, an outsourcing partner should be strategic, supporting your aims as an innovative, ever-evolving retailer.  

Indeed, lots to think about; in fact, next time, we will dive even deeper into the topic of delivery and returns.  

 ~

Get in touch 

DDC OS in Retail