2022 is here, and with it comes new ideas and opportunities. If it hasn’t already been done, now is the time to set new marketing goals, KPIs, and targets for the year ahead. The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a massive shift in consumer expectations and behavior. As such, the customer experience is now more important than ever. In fact, a study conducted by SuperOffice found that up to 86 percent of buyers are willing to spend more of their hard earned cash on products with superior customer experience. Pricing is not the only thing that needs to be competitive today, the customer journey is now equally as important.
Avoiding Digital Inconvenience
Coivd-19 has brought with it a massive paradigm shift. Online purchasing was already gaining traction before the pandemic hit, but the coronavirus has caused adoption to skyrocket over the past two years. This in turn has led consumers to expect more out of their online shopping experience. As such, we are beginning to see a real and growing intolerance for digital inconvenience. Brands and products that offer a slow and frustration online experience will likely face many problems with securing customers.
This ‘zero tolerance’ mindset is here to stay, and many major online shopping websites such as Amazon or eBay have made efforts to improve the online shopping experience. According to a report by PwC, up to 1 in 3 loyal customers are likely to drop a brand after just a single bad experience. In order to counter these issues, companies will have to actively seek out dissatisfied customers in order to learn, understand, and adapt.
Everything as a Service
Gaining the trust and loyalty of a customer in today’s business landscape is incredibly difficult. In order to stand out from the competition, organizations have to delve deep to understand the customer journey and figure out how they can add more value in the life of individual customers. The ‘everything as a service’ approach includes finding ways to establish a brand or product as a ‘life partner’. Brands need to think about how their products or services can help introduce more positive energy into the lives of their consumers in order build a deeper emotional relationship. One of the key drivers of this is the ever increasing amount of data of the internet-of-things, which has become increasingly entangled in everyday life.
Metaverse Commerce
The emergence of the Metaverse concept into public consciousness has bee one of the biggest stories of 2021. While Virtual Reality technology is not yet at a level that can cause wide-sweeping change, especially due to its current inhibitive costs and lacking UX quality, companies do need to start thinking about their strategy for conducting commerce and marketing within the metaverse. After all, it is just a mater of time before said technology improves.
In general, the idea of the metaverse is to simply take the trend of social commerce that we are already seeing and making it even more immersive. The opportunities and possibilities are truly endless. With so many aspects of the metaverse still hard to predict, companies who have a head start in understanding the metaverse and all its associated technologies before it becomes mainstream will have much greater chance of success in the near future.
