2024 Predictions: 5 customer experience trends to watch

CX trends and technologies that will influence the contact center market in 2024.

It was a dynamic and challenging year for customer experience (CX). Generative AI took the industry by storm. Massive brands got ensnared in the culture wars. And historic fines were levied for customer service debacles. It’s clear that 2024 is poised to be a transformative time for CX. Below are 5 predictions—and 5 recommendations—to help contact center leaders prepare for 2024’s key CX trends.

CX trend #1. Economic conditions will improve, but uncertainty will linger.

The economic uncertainties of 2023 tightened budgets and forced many contact center leaders to adjust their staffing levels, manage lower service levels, and even delay purchasing new technology. Moving into 2024 we have seen some positive economic headwinds as interest rates stablize, but balance sheets are still being closely watched. Contact center leaders that are eager to implement new solutions to elevate CX will continue to face increased scrutiny to justify new technology investments.

Recommendation: Partner with a vendor who can evaluate and quantify the potential value of a new application or platform—and the specific features and functionality that will accelerate value. Vendors that provide dedicated account managers can significantly impact the return on investment. 

Talkdesk supports the contact center from Day 1 with effective onboarding, user training, and dedicated customer support managers. We want to ensure that your teams fully understand how to use all of the new features and functionality effectively, so you can maximize your investment.

CX trend #2. Businesses will explore using generative AI (GenAI) to enhance customer experiences, but leaders will require those applications to be safe and responsible.

A recent report from McKinsey found that applying GenAI to customer care functions could increase productivity by 30-45%. Those numbers along with the impact it could have on customer satisfaction and retention have garnered a lot of attention. However, GenAI is not without its challenges. According to a KPMG report, 92% of those surveyed said GenAI implementation introduces moderate to high-risk concerns, with liability (46%) and bias and accuracy (42%) within the top five threats.

Recommendation: Select a vendor that has developed practical applications for adopting GenAI capabilities that allow you to benefit from the new technology in every stage of the customer journey, while simultaneously ensuring accuracy and responsibility. 

Talkdesk enables non-data scientist users to easily deploy, monitor, and fine-tune GenAI in the contact center with no code to eliminate inaccurate and irresponsible AI use.

CX trend #3. Industry-specific CX applications will minimize the risk of genAI, while also accelerating time to value.

Verticalized solutions and AI models that are specifically trained for industry-specific cases—such as those found in Healthcare & Life Sciences, Financial Services & Insurance, Retail, and Education—can help provide higher quality interactions and ensure responsible AI in the contact center. These specialized solutions are pre-built to solve the unique needs of vertical customer experience teams, which also helps contact center leaders realize operational and financial improvements faster.

Recommendation: Choose a contact center platform that provides AI models pre-trained for industry-specific needs, complies with safe AI, and  doesn’t require expensive or lengthy implementations. Verticalized CX applications allow you to focus on improving CX and driving competitive differentiation, rather than on connectivity or basic compliance.  

Talkdesk Experience Clouds are pre-built for your industry so you get value from Day 1. Only Talkdesk offers industry-specific contact center products that are pre-integrated with core industry systems, pre-designed with custom workflows and automation, and pre-trained virtual agents with specialized industry expertise to handle your most common customer service use cases. In Healthcare, for example, GenAI in contact center, has given staff time back to patients and provided more self-service options.

CX trend #4. The market consolidation of CX software vendors will continue, which can be disruptive for current and potential customers.

2021-2022 was a highly active period for consolidation in the CX technology space with several notable megadeals (think Salesforce acquiring Slack for $27.7B in 2021). Merger and acquisition activity slowed in 2023, but as the macroeconomic environment improves and liquidity increases in 2024, anticipate more mergers. The acquisition of a software vendor can be disruptive to customers for several reasons: uncertainty about future support and development, integration and compatibility challenges, shifts in customer support and service quality, and even a loss of focus on customer needs.

Recommendation: Select a reliable CX partner that has demonstrated a commitment to customer success and innovation. 

Talkdesk has a clear vision and is dedicated to natively built innovation, which helps us stay ahead in the market and provide our customers with a future-proof solution. Our customers won’t be subjected to the uncertainty, instability, and disruption that could result from an acquisition.

CX trend #5. Customer expectations for service will continue to move toward ‘always on.’

Customer expectations for immediate, accurate, and personalized service will continue to increase, forcing contact center leaders to have to innovate at the speed of their customers. 

Recommendation: Partner with a cloud-native vendor that provides tools and feature updates to help you stay up-to-date on the latest trends in customer service. Incorporating virtual agents to provide self-service and leveraging interaction analytics to identify intents helps you address customer issues quickly, while also improving your key metrics such as CSAT, average handle time, containment, etc. 

Avoid contact center solutions built on legacy or monolithic architecture, as well as platforms that have been stitched together through a history of acquisitions. That technical debt will slow down innovation, affect platform stability and interoperability, and create headaches for your systems administrator. 

The Talkdesk cloud-native architecture and commitment to rapid innovation ensures that our customers are equipped to handle whatever customer experience trends may come. Over half of our company is focused on R&D, which fuels our culture of innovation. And since Talkdesk CX Cloud is natively built on a single platform, we are able to focus on delivering next-generation CX products and features, rather than worrying about modernizing or integrating disjointed technologies.

Let’s talk about how to stay ahead of customer experience trends.

A modern, AI-powered contact center platform helps you stay on the leading edge of evolving customer experience trends. Request a customized demo to learn how Talkdesk can help support your CX strategy in 2024.