While it’s impossible to predict exactly what the new year will bring, some clear trends are emerging as we think about what customer and employee experience will look like in 2023.

As we’ve seen over the past couple of years, customers will expect interactions to be frictionless, personalized, 24/7, and faster than ever. What’s different about 2023 is that brands will face the unprecedented challenge of meeting these growing demands amid an ongoing war for talent and mounting cost pressures.

In 2023 it’s time for a more thoughtful and proactive approach to customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX).

Make messaging your go-to channel

Messaging delivers speed, efficiency and results other channels just can’t match when it comes to handling customer inquiries. It enables quicker and better customer experiences, allows associates to service multiple customers concurrently, reduces wait times, and drives more conversions – all while reducing costs.

Most consumers (72%) 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, according to Avochado. Companies that don’t have a strong messaging strategy will lose out to those that do.

Help customers help themselves

Customers want to find the information they’re looking for – on their own terms, in their own time, and via their preferred channel. Along with traditional self-service solutions, augmented reality will become a bigger component of self-service options as consumers seek more immersive ways to interact with brands.

More than two-thirds of customers (69%) want to resolve as many issues as possible on their own, through self-service methods, according to Zendesk, so brands that invest in these types of tools should see great ROI.

Know what it takes to retain top talent

As the war for talent wages on, contact centers will need go to new lengths to attract a high-quality workforce. Flexible schedules, including remotely and hybrid options, will play an important role in landing top talent. So will competitive pay, benefits, and perks.

It’s much more cost effective to retain an existing employee than to recruit and train a new one. With a 58% turnover rate in contact centers, brands will need to create a work environment in 2023 that employees don’t want to leave.

Make associates + automation a powerful partnership

As more customer interactions being powered by a mix of people and machines, humans and automation must blend to deliver one cohesive experience. Artificial intelligence presents great opportunities for companies to improve customer experience and optimize employee training.

Most customer service associates (88%) believe AI will improve their work, according to Customer Contact Week, meaning your employees are likely craving more human-automation integration.

These are just a few of the trends we’re predicting. For more on what to expect in 2023, the insights driving these trends, and ways your brand can be ready, check out our strategy guide, “CX Trends 2023: 10 predictions shaping the evolution of customer and employee experience.”

After years of immense growth, there are signs of economic headwinds across industries, with higher interest rates, stock market declines, pandemic challenges, labor shortages, global political instability, and more. Firms are becoming more risk-averse and deliberate in their spending plans through the end of the year. Any investments need to have guaranteed results.
 
So how can companies continue to grow when times are tight? The secret is obvious: double-down on customer experience.
 
Positively managing current customers in uncertain economic times can represent easy growth opportunities that cost less than acquiring new customers. Locking in valuable customer relationships is a strategic capability that allows firms to stay extremely close to customers to gain valuable insight on where to make incremental investments that will generate ROI quickly and improve the experience. And when ROI is scarce, nimble firms with their finger directly on the pulse of customer demand win. A customer focus also builds trust between companies and their customers, which is a key enabler of long-term, profitable relationships, no matter the economic climate.
 
In challenging times, retaining existing customers and increasing individual share of customer should take priority over acquiring new customers. Here are a few tips on how to navigate economic headwinds without overcorrecting and damaging valuable relationships.
 
Do: Give customers a reason to stay (and grow) with you

• Do remove friction from interactions across the customer journey
• Do provide channels customers prefer
• Do listen and act on voice of customer

Don’t: Drive current customers away

• Don’t undermine service quality by broadly cutting costs
• Don’t throw new products and services at customers without a clear need
• Don’t stop investing in valuable CX services that deliver results
• Don’t take employees for granted 

Before the economy shifts too much, now is the time to act carefully and build stronger ties with your customers, who are the most important assets in your balance sheets. Specifically, don’t be afraid to work with a CX partner. The right partner can provide tools, expertise, and labor to deliver better experiences faster and with less costs over the long term than if a brand goes on its own.
 
Think you know outsourcing? Think again
While CX outsourcing has been around for decades, new strategies and capabilities offer many more options to reduce costs and streamline operations than in previous economic downturns and shifts. The best partners will guarantee you cost savings by improving efficiencies that don’t sacrifice CX. Some initiatives improve CX quality in the process.
 
For example, brands are finding success by outsourcing functions beyond basic customer-facing support—including inside sales, back-office, and fraud. As the labor market begins to loosen and hybrid and work-from-home models growing in popularity, CX experts have a stronger, more engaged talent pool of highly skilled associates to support more strategic functions than in the past. And more robust nearshore and offshore outsourcing operations cast an even wider operations net at lower costs than in-house or onshore delivery.
 
Outsourcing is also much more than answering phones. Companies are leaning into automation and digital, non-voice channels like messaging, chat, and social media to decrease handle time, reduce cost to serve, and more effectively resolve issues for improved customer and employee experiences. Brands with in-house contact centers also benefit by working with a partner to optimize in-house staff with workforce management and other managed services.
 
Regardless of the economic climate, the right balance of CX technology, expertise, and human empathy is critical to delivering great customer experiences. And an expert CX partner can help you improve business performance with minimal risk to be prepared for whatever’s next.

The customer experience landscape is always changing, but one constant remains: the need for an energized and engaged workforce. Amazing brand experiences are powered by people, and great employee experiences lead to seamless customer experiences.

For Shelly Swanback, who joined TTEC Engage as CEO in May, creating a culture of empowerment isn’t just part of her job – it’s a passion. She brings to her role more than 30 years of experience establishing and scaling innovative businesses. Most notably, she launched and built Accenture Digital into a global digital transformation powerhouse with more than $20 billion in annual revenue in just seven years.

Her personal motto, and the philosophy she leads TTEC with, is “Be REAL.” It stands for  Relevant, Empowered, Accountable and Learning. Here she describes how being REAL can help brands both internally as they build a strong corporate culture and externally as they strive to improve customer experience (CX).

Customer Strategist Journal: What excites you most about your role at TTEC?

Shelly Swanback: I’m really excited about the whole CX marketplace. I feel like customer experience is such an exciting area. It’s relevant for every company in every industry.

One of the things I like most about it is when you’re creating amazing customer experiences, you’re just never done. What’s amazing today is not good enough tomorrow. There’s a lot of really exciting work to be done, lots of innovation that can be done with data, personalization, and technology.

I love the combination of capabilities that we have to work with here at TTEC, whether it’s CX strategy, CX design, the technology capabilities that we have, and of course the great talent that we have helping our clients serve their customers every day.

I think the combination of these things is very powerful – the ability for us to help companies across all industries really design, build, and operate their customer experiences in this ever-changing world is a super-exciting space.
 
CSJ: Your leadership style is based on your personal motto, “Be REAL.” Where did that philosophy come from and how can it positively impact company culture?

SS: The essence, for me, of Be REAL is about being yourself and bringing your authentic self to life, and certainly to work. Be REAL is a lot about being yourself, not trying to lead in a way that works for someone else. Lead in a way that works for you so you can bring your authentic self and best strengths to work every day.

My experience is you’re a lot more successful if you can lean into your strengths, so that’s the first piece. The second piece is about being relevant and just understanding that being relevant is contextual – sometimes it’s being on the field with your players, sometimes it’s more about relevance to customers, relevance to the external world, and sometimes that’s different than being relevant to your front-line employees.

I believe strongly in creating an environment where people feel empowered to tackle opportunities, to solve problems, to step beyond what they’re asked to do, to not wait for all of the direction to come from the top of the organization.

I’m a big believer in creating empowered teams and part of what goes with that is creating some accountability and making sure that people also feel like they can experiment a bit. They feel empowered to go after new opportunities, but they also feel accountable for results or accountable for bringing forward situations that need to be resolved and accountable for the actions they take with their team.

The last piece, around learning, is this idea of having a continual learning mindset. Staying relevant takes an awful lot of learning. Sometimes I like to encourage people to pick something to learn about that might not be what they’re doing day-to-day in their job; maybe it will bring some new ideas.
Be yourself. Play to your strengths. Be authentic. Figure out how to be relevant, empower your teams, feel empowered yourself, take accountability – and always, always, always be learning.
 
CSJ: With more customers turning to brands that are authentic and accountable, how can the Be REAL philosophy be applied in the CX industry?

SS: It starts with having a lot of clarity about what you want your brand to stand for. What’s the authenticity of your brand and what’s the essence of how you want customers to see you?

Authenticity about your brand is important in terms of relevance, and that’s very contextual when you think about customer experiences. How do you be relevant to customers of different generations, customers in different parts of the world? And how do you be relevant in the moment to your customer based on what they’re trying to accomplish?

If I’m calling to ask a simple question, can you give me some options where I don’t have to wait on the phone to talk to somebody? Can you provide a digital messaging option, as an example? And so being relevant in the customer experience world takes a lot of work.

Regarding being empowered, for me that would be about empowering your customers through things like self-service, empowering them to be a brand ambassador for your organization where that makes sense.

In terms of being accountable, customers expect companies and brands to take accountability – when you know they screw up their order, as an example – or take accountability for solving their problem or for a faulty product. That’s obviously important to customers.

From a learning perspective, this is where new technologies and data that are available to all organizations is just so powerful. There’s so much that companies can learn about their customers, and through that learning, to evolve that idea of relevance.
 
CSJ: Looking ahead, what are you most excited to see as TTEC and the CX landscape in general evolves?

SS: I think this whole world of digitally enabled customer experiences – not just through technology but this combination of technology and talent and data-rich experiences – is super-exciting.

There’s a lot of opportunity ahead for us. We have a lot of great capabilities here at TTEC to make that happen. I can see some areas where we can expand our services. So, more to come on that, but I’m excited there.

And from an employee experience perspective, that’s more critical than ever, with all of the things that have happened in the last couple of years of people working at home and the war for talent at the same time.

The employee experience and customer experience are so connected. You can provide your employees with a great experience, make their job easier, and that has a positive influence on customer experience.

There’s a lot of fun work ahead for us and a lot of enthusiasm here at our organization. I’m really excited to see what we do.

The landscape of retail banking is rapidly changing. Physical banks are closing and the age of virtual banking is here. It is a change brought on by upstart fintech firms, forced by the global pandemic, and demanded by consumers. It is causing banks and financial services firms to adapt to a whole new way to provide personalized services.

Consumers still want authentic relationships with their banks, a personal connection even as they prefer to connect digitally. Voice is a legacy service and chat bots a recent digital innovation, both allowing banks to provide session focused engagements. But, these services are not too effective in today’s asynchronous world. This is where conversational text messaging offers a solution that not only improves customer experience but also reduces costs and increases efficiencies.

In our second Meet the Moment LinkedIn LIVE event, TTEC vice presidents Kristen Hein and Brian Martis discussed the opportunity for banks and financial services firms to incorporate conversational messaging into their digital engagement tool kit to gain short-term and long-term benefits.

The shift to virtual banking

During the pandemic, consumers and businesses had to get more tech savvy. Neither wish to return to the old ways of just three years ago. Consumers prefer digital banking, said Martis, and this preference spans all generations. Messaging has become their preferred mode to engage with banks, he said.

Retail banks and financial services firms have adapted to consumers’ digital preferences, and as a response to pressure from fintech companies who led the financial industries drive online. Banks needed to be proactive and meet customers in the channels they were using, Martis said. Yet, they realized going online provided more opportunities than just fostering customer relationships, it offered greater efficiency and productivity.

One client, Martis recalled, realized such an improvement in productivity after adding conversational messaging into its CX strategy that it plans to use messaging for 50% of its global care by the end of 2023. According to Martis, this client sees not only better customer experience with reduced labor costs but also an improved experience for its employees.

Messaging is a dynamic channel

Most contact centers today are equipped to handle single session customer engagements through chat or voice channels. This requires consumers to be on their device and devote their time solely to this interaction. Chats feel like self-service, said Hein, messaging is more like a white-glove service, allowing banks to give a better experience so their customers don’t feel like they’re talking to a bot.

Being fixed to a conversation is not the way consumers want to interact with companies, said Martis, and it’s why messaging is becoming their channel of choice. With messaging, a consumer can start a conversation on their phone with their bank then step away for a few minutes or hours and come back and pick up the thread right where they left off. It’s a level of convenience that meets today’s asynchronous lifestyle.

The business side of messaging

It’s easy to understand why consumers are quickly adapting to conversational messaging as a preferred channel. But is that the only reason for banks incorporate this channel into their mix? Martis and Hein both agreed messaging is an ideal channel for companies and firms across all financial services industries.

Messaging offers an opportunity to improve employee efficiency and productivity while also improving employee experience. According to Martis, firms who have switched to messaging find their employees like working in the channel and realize a lower burnout rate, reduction in absenteeism, and attrition. Banks and firms also gain an average of 8-percent higher CSAT score than traditional live chat.

“The cost benefits switching voice into conversational messaging is the quickest, largest benefit that banking and financial firms will notice,” said Hein. Messaging allows banks and firms to scale operations and to cross-train and uptrain associates currently operating in voice, leveraging their knowledge and experience.

Martis admitted switching from chat and voice to messaging isn’t as simple as turning on lights (and computers). He said TTEC typically starts with small, pilot projects to bring messaging into a company’s overall channel mix. Throughout a 90-day run-time, he said TTEC continually tracks to see how well the channel is working, considering metric such as: closed conversations per labor hour and the difference in labor cost per interaction between voice and messaging. Though, Martis mused, sometimes the best and simplest indicator is the number of customers opting in to use the messaging channel.

Watch the complete, on-demand event here: How to deliver conversational banking with world-class messaging.

Today’s business climate is creating a difficult balancing act for CX leaders. On one hand, they’re looking to provide customers with excellent service while providing omnichannel engagement in customers’ preferred channels. On the other hand, hiring skilled labor and retaining a trained workforce continues to be challenging in the current market. These opposing criteria can strain contact center operations and effect their ability to provide customer service at the desired level.

A recent poll suggests that financial services leaders see several items as the top CX issues facing the industry. Opinions show four areas of concern: high call volumes, long wait times, talent retention, overall CX costs. After considering the results, it may seem prudent to keep to the status quo until economic conditions improve. But, is that good strategy to meet the current moment and prepare for 2023?

This is a question posed to two of TTEC’s banking and insurance experts —Group Vice President Kristen Hein and Vice President JoVanna Dukes during a recent LinkedIn LIVE webinar. Here are some highlights of the conversation.

A domino effect is hitting CX

Staffing issues are the biggest issue affecting many firms’ ability to provide quality customer experience, both Hein and Dukes agree. Companies unable to fully staff their contact centers are realizing higher call volumes and longer wait times, resulting in a lower level of customer care. In turn, this can increase stress for contact center associates. Many end up leaving their jobs. A cycle is created.

“The CX industry has struggled to retain talent,” says Dukes. “We’ve seen a lot of attrition and turnover and it leads to longer hold times and less capacity within your contact center operations.” Even if the is not an increase in call volume, she says, fewer employees mean capacity to volume will be higher.

Outsourcing can be an effective solution

Hein sees the situation as good opportunities for companies looking to get creative with their solutions. Don’t be afraid to outsource as a way to be flexible and provide expert service, she says.

“Outsourcing has matured beyond cost reduction,” says Hein. “It’s really a way for firms to be better and to access talent and capabilities. It gives flexibility and drives innovation in a space where you can partner with someone, especially someone who has experience in financial services.”

Personalization important for impactful CX

According to Hein, one study shows that 78% of Americans prefer to do their banking digitally. “The financial services industries are dealing with a different engagement level. They need to up their digital game,” she says.

Upping their digital game does not stop at providing a choice of digital channels, from voice, chat, apps, and websites, Hein says. It’s also about making sure CX associates have the right training in these channels and can still provide a personalized customer service.

It’s important to not take personalization out of the digital engagement, Hein adds. In today’s digital environment, employees need innovative training so they can provide a high-level of personalization and expertise. “Whether they’re handling that engagement over the phone or through a digital channel, personalization has to resonate with your customers.” It’s a level of customer experience that calls back to the days of branch banking when customer service was an important part of employee training.

EX will be key for 2023

The ‘Flex EX’ model of employee work is a becoming a trend and helping companies to find a magic equation in their overall CX services, Hein says. A mix of part-time, full-time, and floater employees working with dynamic schedules can bring in diverse, multigenerational talent with experience (and certifications) required in financial services fields, creating a deep-bench that can be ramped up during peak times or used to cover a lag in staffing.

Dukes suggests firms need to look at their overall ecosystem, from employee to tech, as the first place to measure how well a contact center is operating. “Look at every aspect of the agent experience: Is it working or not? How is it helping your agent support your contact center operations and your customers?” She says first call resolution is a great metric, but if the tools, staff, and training are not in place then this is not a meaningful, nor achievable, goal.

“Too often brands don’t think about the employee side of CX as a place to start or where to really make sure they’re delivering a great customer experience,” says Dukes. It’s about setting up an employee experience that agents want and provide them training they need so the call center team can grow and mature, Duke adds.

Whether your contact center operations are struggling with CX or EX or both, Hein and Dukes both say collaborating with an experienced partner is a great place to start.

“It’s really impossible for one party to accomplish all the things – staffing and support – on their own,” says Dukes. Don’t be afraid to bring in a partner.

To dive into Hein and Dukes’ analysis and solutions, watch their full 20 minute webinar Financial Services CX Now and What’s Ahead in 2023.

Text messaging is quickly becoming customers’ preferred way of connecting with brands because it’s fast, easy, and convenient. But new research shows customers don’t just want to receive messages from brands, they want to be able to text back and have two-way communication, which presents new opportunities and challenges.

In 2022, 70% of consumers opted in to receive texts from businesses, according to SimpleTexting’s 2022 Texting & SMS Marketing Report, yet just 55% of business owners and digital marketers texted their customers. While that second figure marks a 27% jump in SMS adoption over the previous year, there’s still great opportunity for brands to capitalize on this growing channel.

Your customers are texting – a lot

Texting has become a huge part of consumers’ daily lives, especially among younger customers, which is why savvy brands are tapping into it for marketing and sales purposes. It’s a great way to engage with customers, particularly at those crucial moments when they’re ready to buy.

Consider these stats from SimpleTexting, which surveyed more than 1,300 consumers, business owners, and digital marketers to gauge how they view texting and SMS marketing:

• One-third of consumers check their text notifications within one minute of a receiving a text
• 51% of consumers reply to a text message within 1-2 minutes
• 53% of consumers check their text messages at least 11 times a day
• On an average day, consumers check their text messages more than nay other app on their phones

“Most consumers want quick, two-way communication with brands,” said SimpleTexting Marketing Director Adam Coppelman.

Against this backdrop, it’s no wonder the study found that 60% of business owners who already text their customers plan to increase their SMS marketing budget this year. Those investing messaging said they like its ease of use, the large mobile audience it taps into, it’s real-time reach, and other benefits.

But are companies using the channel to listen to their customers?

Make it a two-way conversation

It’s important to embrace messaging if you’re not already, but it’s not enough merely to send messages to customers, SimpleTexing found. More than half of consumers (61%) want the ability to text companies back, especially when it comes to things like appointment reminders, customer service, and shipment tracking.

This is a shift brands should be paying attention to, said Coppelman.

“Most marketers and business owners know that they need to personalize their messages, but the research in this report highlights the fact that consumers don’t just want personalized one-way messages,” he said. “They want you to send highly relevant messages and give them the opportunity to respond.”

Most businesses report SMS click-through rates of between 20-35%, SimpleTexting found. By comparison, most of the survey respondents said their average click-through rate on marketing emails was between 1 and 10%.”

“Does this mean that you shouldn’t send emails? Not at all,” said Coppelman. “We still believe email is an effective channel for certain messages, but if you want to get more eyes on important messages, add SMS to your omnichannel approach to customer experience.”

Have a messaging strategy

To achieve messaging success, brands need to do more than merely adopt the right technology (though that’s a big piece of the puzzle). They also need to make sure they have the right people in place to realize that technology’s full potential.

Associates who are great at offering voice support won’t necessarily thrive on the messaging channel. Messaging requires a different set of skills, such as handling multiple customer inquiries concurrently and being able to show empathy and understanding on a digital channel.

Companies will see better results – and deliver better experiences for customers and associates alike – if associates assigned to messaging are trained specifically in that area. Working with an experienced partner can help avoid common missteps and maximize best practices.

Brands that devote the time and resources to do messaging right will see great returns on their investment: shorter handle times, better customer experience, and ultimately increased sales.