Since online shopping turned out to be a reality, businesses have increasingly changed. From doing shopping in person to being digital and internet-driven as a customer service trend in 2022.
Traditional stores have started to include the features of online experience to continue attracting customers to visit them. They have also realized the power of personalized service experience to customers.
However, after the year 2020, predicting the customer service trends in 2022 is a daunting task for many. The covid-19 pandemic has changed the way trends will play out in the year 2022. And offline businesses have been hit the hardest.
Customers’ have been changed forever by the Coronavirus outbreak. Customers have resorted to retail shopping and preferred home deliveries. Because they are required to stay indoors to stop the spread of the virus.
To add, it has led to the sudden boom in online shopping and home delivery businesses across the world. In this post, we will discuss the various business and customer service trends in 2022. How to move forward from the resulting Coronavirus pandemic.
What are customers doing differently in the middle of the Corona pandemic?
Online searches have tremendously increased since the start of Coronavirus and the imposing of WHO restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus. And customers have shifted very first to online buying and interactions between connected devices.
Even businesses that thought they are better off without an online presence have realized that being online is the current way of doing things.
Though the brick and mortar stores, exhibitions, store floors, and trade fairs won’t disappear completely, their presence will be less effective than they were before the pandemic strikes.
Therefore, it means that there will be major adjustments for businesses to get into the online space. However, every change brings with it some light of hope and benefits.
These changes will be implemented on various eCommerce tools to drive your conversions, sales, and the overall objective of businesses.
You will need to do this depending on the customer needs that keeps changing from time to time without compromising the business’s primary aim.
Business Customer Service Trends to Expect in 2022
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Single channel-online is offline, and offline is online
This is one of the biggest changes in trends that we must expect in 2022. It involves putting together new trends such as robotics, AI, IoT, and extended reality like augmented and virtual realities.
Using these technologies helps provide the convenience of online shopping to brick and mortar stores. In return, they introduce the offline shopping environment to the world of ecommerceeCommerce.
Though generally offline businesses have been associated with the move to online presence, lately, there has been a move by online companies developing a physical presence.
For instance, Amazon has been seen opening physical stores without cashiers in some parts of the United States. Walmart has also tried to have customers buy and pay at the store and have their goods delivered to their homes.
In 2022, the use of virtual realities will increase in online businesses to continue giving satisfying and feature-rich experiences. At the same time, augmented reality (AR) will be used by offline businesses to enable customers to access the information about the products they find in the stores.
These connections in digital trends mean that online and offline businesses both benefit from these technological advances and changing customer service trends.
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Autonomous fulfilments and deliveries
Though it has been on the system for a while, but due to these pandemic-driven changes, we are more likely to start seeing ideas such as self-driven delivery cars and the use of drone deliveries.
Though adapting to online ordering and placements reduces the chances of coming into contact with infected people, there still exists some risk of contamination due to poor hygiene at the order and packaging centers.
In the coming years, autonomous initiatives will be implemented under the last mile solutions, providing air-borne drowns and self-driving vehicles to do home deliveries to customers.
Also, various trends will be required in this course, including artificial intelligence to handle routing and logistics. You will also need other features like blockchain for transparency and security along supply chains.
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Increase in influencers and TV advertisement. See it, like, buy it basis
Forget going to the stores or visiting online sites for shopping; there will be an increase in purchases made directly from the company through an influencer or after checking the advert on TV.
Businesses have encouraged influencers and bloggers to earn some money by sharing affiliate links and advertising via product placement on their sites.
Additionally, businesses can cut the middle man and transact directly with the customer who follows and interact with these online content creators.
This trend began with superstars like Kim Kardashian and has since become a marketing strategy for businesses and one of the useful customer support trends.
Major brands like Body shop have effectively co-opted direct sales models started by the likes of Avon, hence creating a network of small influencers usually selling to friends and families.
To further cut on the middle man in the business, there is an experiment called Shoppable TV. NBC rolled out this technology to allow its app users to get notifications when a product they see on TV is available for direct purchase.
It means that customers can make a direct purchase directly from a TV advert. It is expected to be rolled out in entertainment and sports coverage since most brands are looking for ways to promote their brands and engage more with their digital audience.
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Personal shopping scale
Wealthy shoppers like receiving personal attention during their shopping at expensive stores. They also like customizing their expensive purchases like cars, jewelry, and clothes.
However, technology is introducing a new era of mass personalization. Technology spread across all the scales of growing products and services.
Various ecommerce tools have in-built recommendation engines that direct us towards products we are likely to buy or want. Similar technology is being rolled out in traditional outlets, giving assistants the necessary knowledge of the present and past customers.
Initiatives like this are supported by analysts at McKinsey, saying it reduces marketing costs by up to 20%.
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The AI-powered system is increasingly becoming customer face within the retail industry
Retailing driven by AI has been maturing over the years, having big retailers increasingly relying on the improved analytics to let them know what they need to stock in their respective stores and improve logistics.
New developments have seen the technology shifting from behind-the-house to front with customer-facing initiatives like virtual assistance and chatbots.
Robots have stocked in the store for some time now. We can expect them to be introduced in the stores helping with inventory management.
Many people are stuck at home to prevent the spread of Coronavirus infection. Most of businesses cannot get customers by convincing them to get in their store. Many resources will be directed toward growing customer base using AI outreaches.
This will be used to determine whether most customers spend time on Facebook, Twitter or in zoom calls. This helps in knowing the sites that are most preferred by your customers.From here you can evaluate your advertising budget accordingly.
Voice recognition powered by AI has seen many improvements. This includes an extent AI can be applied to add value both via ecommerce apps and in-store selling.
In a similar way, we have been using our voices to unlock our devices and internet passwords; we are facing a point where we will use our voices to get information and make purchases, and businesses will improve their infrastructure to accommodate these settings.
Conclusion
Hopefully the pandemic will end. The transformations it has brought on peoples’ lives especially the shopping trends, are here to stay.
Being that consumers have reduced their buying habits and don’t purchase as much, should not give you worries. This is the right time as a business to experiment and adjust by testing new approaches. This is because there are fewer risks involved during such a period.
Both brick and mortar stores and established online businesses should prepare to face a new trend in managing businesses and positioning better for maximum profits.
The traditional store should understand that every transaction is moving to being online. Implementing solutions that will give them an online presence can be beneficial to them.
Likewise, for established online businesses, they also ought to become present at the physical stores and improve their online experience.
This type of balance will ensure needs of both the online and offline shopper are catered. Hence improving your customer base.
Businesses need to set aside enough resources that will help them implement the necessary adjustment and to cater for online marketing campaigns such as affiliate marketing, influencer advertisements, and social media campaigns.
These campaigns are the most common ecommerce marketing techniques that will drive your business to its objectives.
