15 Most Impactful Customer Experience Technology Investments For 2023

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Harsha Khubwani

December 22, 2021

“It’s ALL about CX today, more than ever. Use technology to create breakthrough customer experiences. Personalize, personalize, personalize VIP service. Improve customer service for fast & easy order tracking, fast answers to product, billing, or logistic questions,” says Jaime Vidal President at VIDAL COSMETICS GROUP, in Clootrack's 102 CX Expert report.

Today to make products and services relevant and authentic, technology is helping brands deliver customer experiences that customers cherish in the long run and show loyalty towards their brands. Furthermore, your customers become advocates for your brand, which assist you in maintaining a positive brand image.

Possessing 360 degrees of knowledge regarding the technologies to be used for maintaining customer experience endeavors is critical to avoid resource wastage. If you know the whys and hows of using the right set of technology, you will definitely get the desired business results.

What is Customer Experience Technology Investment?

Customer experience technology investments are investments that businesses make to enhance the customer experience. These investments include technologies such as AI, data analytics, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and customer service platforms.

These technologies help businesses better understand their customers, increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, and improve customer engagement. Additionally, these technologies can be used to improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, and create new revenue streams. Ultimately, customer experience technology investments can help businesses gain a competitive edge and ensure customer loyalty.

Why are Businesses Investing in Customer Experience Technology?

Enterprises are investing in Customer Experience (CX) technology to understand better and serve their customers. With the right technology, businesses can better understand customer needs and preferences, deliver more personalized experiences, and improve customer loyalty.

CX technology also helps businesses quickly identify and resolve customer issues, leading to improved customer satisfaction. Additionally, CX technology can provide better insights into customer behavior, allowing businesses to optimize their products and services and maximize the value of their customer relationships. Ultimately, investing in CX technology is a strategic decision that can help businesses drive long-term growth and success.

Here are 3 major advantages due to which your company should consider the implementation of CX technology for providing better customer experiences:-

1) End-to-End Customer Experiences

With customer experience technology, you can ensure your customers receive connected experiences at every point of contact. With the assistance of customer insights produced by the customer experience analytics program, your brand can guarantee that all the processes of different departments align to maintain the quality of experiences you provide.

2) Automation

Automation of the processes eases the work making it quick and further allowing speedy delivery of the solutions to customers. Each business unit of your company can employ automation through CX technologies. For instance, your marketing department can use automated emails to spread awareness about the products and services, and for more efficient customer service, your customer support team can implement chatbots.

3) Support Business System

Business leaders can back company operations and systems by making CX technology investments in cases where the business wants to create a more customer-friendly environment for the consumers. Cloud, AI/ML, CRM, and many such tech solutions, help decision-makers fulfill business priorities that aim to retain and acquire customers without much hustle.

Why is it Important to Invest in the Right CX Technology?

Investing in the right CX technology is crucial for businesses that want a great customer experience. Technology can help streamline customer interactions, provide easy access to information, and create a seamless customer journey. It also helps create a personalized customer experience, essential for building customer loyalty. CX technology can also provide valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences, allowing businesses to understand better and meet their customers’ needs.

Companies not investing in the right CX technology, in most cases cannot enjoy a competitive advantage over the others. As we already know, brands are competing based on customer experience. Ignoring the apt set of CX tech can restrict you from reaching the quality and quantity of the audience you want to achieve business objectives.

Here are 3 troubles you can get into if you sidestep investment in the right CX technology:-

1) Burden on Employees Increases

At the pace with which the current market is growing, for a flourishing business, employees alone are incapable of serving the customers properly, resulting in undesired consequences. Without the right CX tool, the workload on employees will increase, decreasing their productivity and hampering the smooth functioning of customer-related processes.

2) Hinderance in Company Growth

Brands are adopting the digital-first strategy using technologies to build authority in their niche market. Not incorporating customer experience technology ruins customer experience and pushes them away, negatively affecting brand revenue. Further, troubling the company's growth as the brand will not be in a position to seize and work on new opportunities.

3) Absence of Quality Customer Service

Addressing customer queries and concerns with much greater efficiency is necessary to make them feel heard. CX tools aid customer-facing employees in delivering quality customer services that increase the Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score and Net Promoter Score (NPS). Without CX technology, the personalizing experience of each and every customer is difficult enough.

15 Must-have Customer Experience Technology to Invest in 2023

Customer Experience (CX) technology is transforming the manners in which a brand operates. From onboarding to billing, technology is used in several brand operations that involve customers as an entity. It has created an irreplaceable position in business systems. Apart from the technologies that perform basic procedures, you need to invest in CX technologies that increase customer conversion rates and ROI.

Here are the top 15 must-have customer experience technology to invest in 2023 to support and make your customers happy:-

1) Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)

Well-known companies use technologies like AI and ML to understand customer behavior and expectations to develop customer-centric solutions. With Artificial Intelligence technology, computer systems think and perform like a human, and with Machine Learning, the machine learns and provides relevant output by using historical data as input.

AI and ML are used as core technologies by several other CX technologies platforms, such as the Customer Data Platform (CDP), CX Analytics platform, and similar others, to produce various meaningful solutions to serve their customers. These two technologies must be integral to your business system in 2023 to make the right decisions and take impactful actions.

2) Customer Data Platform (CDP)

"Unifying customer data from different marketing and advertising systems is the only way brands will be able to eliminate blind spots and make every customer interaction matter." - Rob Tarkoff, Executive Vice President, Oracle Cloud CX and Oracle Data Cloud.

A customer Data Platform (CDP) is a software package that generates an all-inclusive customer database that provides a unified view of customer data collected from various first-party data sources. It also allows you to manage, share, and provide access to the collected customer data. CDP forms customer profiles used by marketers to create personalized marketing campaigns.

3) Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software

As the name suggests, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is an application that assists brands in the building and managing their relationship with customers. CRM software keeps track of customer interactions and data and stores the data in a centralized database.

CRM software help businesses streamline their marketing, sales, customer service, and other customer-related operations to establish a frictionless workflow and maintain a strong customer bond. Adopting this technology will increase business efficiency and enforce a customer-first culture in your organization.

4) Customer Experience Analytics Platform

A Customer Experience (CX) analytics platform assists leaders at the executive level in making impactful decisions concerning products, services, and customer-related operations to improve customer experience by analyzing billions of customer reviews. These platforms provide you with a granular view of processed customer data using which decision-makers can bring necessary modifications to their business operations.

The CX analytics platform supplies customer analysis reports that contain in-depth information on customer preferences, concerns, expectations, and requirements. It will be wise of you to invest in a CX analytics platform to serve customers with top-notch customer experiences.

5) Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs)

Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) are those platforms that consist of an integrated set of technologies that handles digital experience across a wide range of digital experiences. DXP ensures you deliver experiences that empower customers in their entire lifecycle. It allows you to preserve consistency and quality of positive customer experiences on different channels.

With DXP, your customers desired work will be performed quickly and efficiently compared to a staff member fulfilling the same customer desires. Employing DXP in your business approach will help you attract more customers as experiences will be greatly optimized.

6) Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a network of interconnected devices that combine physical devices and the internet. The data collected through these devices are utilized by brands to improve customer experience. After analyzing the customer data, brands make decisions accordingly and implement what customers ask for and expect from your brand.

IoT devices handle tedious and repetitive consumer tasks and increase the brand's authenticity. IoT has many opportunities to develop innovative ideas that customers want to sort basic operations in their daily lives. Investing in IoT can be profitable for your brand as it supplements customer service management and adds value to both customers and your company.

7) Customer Self-Service Software

Customers today prefer self-service more than human interaction as it saves them time, for they do not have to explain their problems to a customer support executive. And to make it easy for you, customer self-service software is available that allows customers to solve their queries independently, decreasing the work burden on employees.

In the market, you will observe several automated customer support tools that allow integration with several other tools to make customer self-service tasks easy-running for customers. The major benefit that customers get is that the services are available round the clock. They can easily access the services whenever and from wherever they want.

8) Cloud-Based Solutions

Cloud-based solutions are IT infrastructures accessed over the internet and can be opted for as per the business needs. Cloud technology brings flexibility and agility to your business which assists in delivering customers solutions with much comfort. Additionally, the cloud is affordable and makes it easy for your business to build in-house IT infrastructure.

Through cloud solutions, different departments can collaborate actively on customer-related projects and access the same data to avoid ambiguity. The cloud solution is a game-changing technology that supports customer experience endeavors and business tech infrastructure.

9) Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)

Brands today are driving customer experience using AR/VR technologies by implementing them in physical and online stores. Well-recognized companies are leveraging their power to enrich customer interaction with the brand. These techs allow virtual product try-on that prove to be one of the most impressive features that help customers choose the right product.

Besides that, AR and VR have huge applications in different fields, such as marketing, travel, eCommerce, gaming, healthcare, and various industries where the consumer base is diversified. Every market sector can use these technologies to increase customer engagement and provide unique experiences to convert potential leads into loyal customers.

10) Marketing Automation Tools

Marketing automation tools are software programs that sort your marketing workflow and make the processes more efficient. From performing repetitive tasks to reducing errors made by marketing staff, marketing automation tools integration in business brings profits as the sales funnel is optimized, bringing in more and more customers.

In addition to that, your team can focus on building strategies and frameworks that are more complex in nature to improve customer experience. The automation tool helps you connect with customers well with personalized emails, follow-up marketing messages, and other elements that trigger customer interest.

11) Customer Journey Mapping Tool

Customer Journey Mapping (CJM) tools are the assistance that enables you to visualize the customer journey using flow charts, diagrams, and other meaningful graphs. You can view the entire picture from where the customer starts and ends the journey. Moreover, you can get to know the customers' perception regarding your business as you can access their movement at multiple touchpoints.

Your brand can interpret consumer behavior and tweak strategies accordingly to increase customer satisfaction. Also, you can remove the roadblocks for the customer by recognizing what factors irritate or restrict customers from reaching their goals.

12) Mobile Application

Enterprises are developing mobile applications to provide brand services and products to add convenience and elevate the customer experience. With mobile apps, organizations increase their business by furnishing customers with different offers. Also, they run a reward system that presents prizes to customers who refer the brand to others.

The mobile application for a brand is more like a direct marketing pipeline to amplify brand awareness. Furthermore, apps become a path to communicate with customers adding one effective omnichannel mode to influence them to increase customer loyalty.

13) Chatbots

A chatbot is a software program that conducts a human-like conversation to interact with users to resolve their queries. It uses AI, ML, and NLP (Natural Language Processing) to deliver automated responses that are relevant. A chatbot gathers and processes the data to learn to furnish customers with conversational responses.

On top of that, quick responses provided by chatbots delight customers, and with every basic query solved by chatbot burden on customer service employees reduces to a great amount so that they can focus on more complex tasks. Also, it reduces operational costs, which benefits your business in terms of revenue.

14) Voice-Enabled Technology

Voice-enabled technologies allow businesses to smoothen the customer journey by simplifying the interactions. Organizations are using voice assistants in chatbots, which are much better than text-based chatbots. Customers prefer voice assistance due to several advantages like ease of use, speed, no-screen interaction, and many such.

Investing in voice technology will assist your brand in satisfying customers as they can enjoy hands-free work. Moreover, it provides freedom to multitask, which saves customers time and enriches the customer experience.

15) Omnichannel Customer Engagement Platform

Omnichannel customer engagement platforms let your business unify customer experience by solving complex customer interactions. Customers tend to interact with a brand from different channels. And with the help of this tool, you can maintain consistent customer communication at every channel consumer starts interacting with your brand.

You can provide timely responses and customer service by upgrading the points that cause issues in the customer support system. Further, your brand can upsell and cross-sell products and services by analyzing the customer's situation and status to enhance their experience through this platform.

To Wrap Up

With every decade passing, new technology is emerging, and its importance increases with the results it brings. The popularity of the technology uplifts if its performance is exceptional and brings better organizational results by attracting more and more customers. CX technology investment done with thorough planning obtains wanted outcomes that please customers.

Happy customers become the path to a thriving business that fulfills its customer needs at any cost. Enterprises that start tapping into customer experience technologies often witness business success. If you want to become one of them, start using CX techs, such as AI/ML, CDP, DXP, IoT, and any CX technology that can add value to your customers' lives.