9 expert tips for your 2023 CX strategy

With a new year about to begin, CX Network finds out which trends will drive CX in 2023

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Melanie Mingas
12/19/2022

Personalization will become individualization

Shep Hyken, chief amazement officer, Hyken Productions

“Personalization is going to get more personalized, to the point of being individualized.

“We are no longer going to put our customers into buckets or personas, we are going to be able to individualize the experience, especially when they call in for support. Agents will have a little more information and better views of who their customer is.

“In our most recent Achieving Customer Amazement study 74% of surveyed customers said a personalized experience is important, but wait until they experience the truly individualized experience.”

Humanized, innovative and effortless customer experiences

Chip R. Bell, author and CX consultant

“The number one trend will be the balance between how we humanize customer experiences – as opposed to mechanize – and how we focus on the cultural side of organizations.

“We have a real challenge right now around the world: how do we make sure the people who work in our organizations feel excited and passionate about the customer? The more we can bring that orientation to our organizations the more it translates into a memorable and compelling experience for the customer.”

“The second is that people do not talk and tweet about good service, but they do talk and tweet about unique service. I don’t mean it has to be way over the top, but it should be an experience that makes a customer say “well, that was different”. Value-added simply means how do I take what the customer expects and adds more? Whereas I like to focus on what I call ‘value unique’ and how we create a unique and unexpected experience.

“There is a limit to generosity, but there is no limit to ingenuity.”

Post-pandemic culture shifts

yvette_mihelic_board_pic_2L374JQCHdYJ0MiUaQWTCQWJfBvXwLiEDUw3mO6Qp_medium Yvette Mihelic, director of customer experience at John Holland and CX Network Advisory Board member

“I believe the top trend for CX and EX specialists in 2023 is the flux in culture and its impact on CX and overall performance for organisations.

“Many industries are still rapidly evolving post-pandemic and values, processes and systems are all impacting the success, or otherwise, of strategies being designed, developed and implemented with our people changing their own priorities, wanting more alignment of values, increased ability to collaborate and contribute and better engagement overall with the organisations they work with.”

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CX in the metaverse

Jaslyin Qiyu, head of client, digital channels and content marketing for Citibank Singapore and CX Network Advisory Board member

“As practitioners try to finesse the application of human-centric design in their processes and customer journeys, they need to also consider additional marketing channels and touchpoints like the metaverse.

“This must come in addition to the existing digital channels of mobile and desktop, however, practitioners also need to look at how they can deploy a virtual reality platform on these devices as well.

“With the consumer landscape getting more competitive in 2023 due to a tightened economy and shrinking spends, companies need to elevate their customer engagement strategies even more. That's why they need to outshine their competitors and try to explore even more touchpoints, regardless of how well they understand it or how prepared they are to maximize the capabilities.

“There will be more focus on the use of gamification and both virtual and human influencers in the metaverse to give customers a reason to engage with brands. Until marketers find a way to monetize it as a conversion channel, however, it will be mainly used as an engagement and lead generation platform, integrating the purchase journey between the online and the offline.”

Inclusive user experiences

André Grandt, customer experience and digital transformation lead, Saudi Arabia and Gulf

“Specifically in healthcare, I believe the key focus will be skills. How might we best equip all the people working in healthcare – from facility management to senior management – with the right skills, capabilities and mindset to execute simple, seamless, consistent and meaningful experiences.

“This has to happen each time they interact with external customers, defined as anybody that has an impact on the patient journey, including the patient themselves.”

“In healthcare, I believe another important focus will be how we co-create patient outcome driven experiences and impactful digital health solutions so that we accelerate the democratization of care which leads to an equal level health care professional-patient relationship.

“Taking a broader view of CX, In the best interests of diversity and inclusion, how might we design experiences that make lives easier and better for people with disabilities? Or people from different social and ethnic backgrounds, different genders, sexual orientations?”

Mission-driven brands and experiences that drive loyalty

Nate Brown, founder of CX Accelerator

“The future of CX is not some new technology. It's just people serving people, but in all kinds of exciting ways.

“One such way that I believe will be trending in 2023 is what I've been calling "mission-driven CX." This is the principle that customers are going to do business with organizations that actively embody the core values that are most important to them. Purchasing decisions in today’s marketplace are often less about what, and more about who.

“CX professionals need to be about crystalizing the brand core of the organization they serve…both to its employees and customers. Once made clear, the work is ensuring this promise is delivered consistently. This is how lasting loyalty is earned!”

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Employee retention, culture and upskilling

Nicole Cable, chief experience officer, CareMax, Inc.

“As the economy gets tighter there will be more of a push to acquire your best team players and here in the US, if interest rates rise, to quote Elon Musk, we are going to feel that recession.

“At that point we are probably going to see a greater fight for good talent – not just bodies – and for customers. Companies are going to up their game to retain their customers.

“Customers are loyal to brands with outstanding experiences and I always tell our team members that we need to deliver service so memorable, people will tell stories. It’s not your marketing or your sales, but your customers who are bringing in new business.”

Customer-first approaches

Valeriia Chechotkina, CX production operations manager, Revolut

“The new year should bring us even more mutual dependency of CX and EX, as well as simpler CX.

“Companies will have to focus even more on their internal culture and the customer-first mentality that they promote within. The chances are that more and more projects and initiatives within companies will be focused on improving CX and EX, because both are directly linked to the main reasons customers change products.

“In 2023 the best word to describe good CX will be ‘effortless’. In a fast-paced world, with a huge amount of information available and tasks to do, what our customers really need is to receive a quality of service that is intuitive, efficient and does not require additional input from them.

“Simple, elegant and helpful is the recipe for a truly “wow” experience.”

Digital solutions that work

Michael Brandt CCXP, founder CX-Excellence, senior consultant and trainer

“In 2023 there will be a continuation in the shift towards digital and the trick there will be making sure the solutions that are put in place actually work.

“I agree that perfection is the enemy of progress but I think testing, particularly when it comes to digital solutions, is a really important element. Companies have to be sure their digital solutions function because otherwise this is counterproductive. It might save money, but if it doesn’t work it becomes frustrating and it is a turn off.

“The other danger is if companies use digitalization as a way to stop talking to customers. In the US, Frontier Airlines closed its call centers and customers can now only use their digital channels. I think that will be frustrating for many customers when things go wrong and they want to talk to a human being and I see this as an example of digitalization going too far.”