Writer: Jouni Satta
What is it about?
The text evaluates how the past years and especially the covid-19 pandemic affect the future changes in how businesses should be operating in the future. From these, they list 12 central ongoing trends which include such as the rise in heightened demand for highly personalized, secure, and authentic online services, a better understanding of the importance of customer-business relations, and the need to maintain the welfare of the company’s workforce. (Feefo 2021, 1-10.)
Why are latest customer experience trends of 2021 relevant?
The Customer Experience Management in Tourism course’s goal is to understand how to create successful customer experiences, and to achieve this they must understand that customers are used to, and are expecting exponentially more personalized and trustful service from businesses. This text highlights exactly that.
I would argue that in the past, people have cared much more for the product that companies sell rather than the delivery of said product. In the present though, the customers trust in how businesses provide their services and run their operations matter much more now than before the pandemic (Feefo 2021, 1-3), which I, as a consumer and a worker in a customer service field, can verify. If a business promised to deliver their service in a safe manner to the customer but failed to deliver on their promise, it often leads to customers seeking out more reliable businesses (Feefo 2021, 3).
Since the text is from 2021 I honestly wasn’t surprised to see these trends, because they are addressed for example, in school lectures. This summer I worked for two months for Bearhill Husky Tours where I saw a general mood of trying to answer to these specific trends, especially employee satisfaction (Feefo 2021, 9) which for me is a significant driving factor for giving and creating excellent customer experiences: If I am happy at my workplace, the higher the chance is of it reflecting to my customers.
3 Most interesting points
Firstly, businesses will have to be more and more versatile in creating and maintaining, not just physical, but also online channels to connect with customers (Feefo 2021, 4-8, 10).
Secondly, the pandemic has shown that businesses that don’t know how to react and change their services according to the updated needs of the customers are in serious danger of losing said customers to the competition (Feefo 2021, 2-5).
Thirdly, because of the normalization of targeted and highly personalized marketing, businesses really need to understand who their customers are and what their customers want (Feefo 2021, 3-10).
Key takeaways and conclusions
The ever-increasing need for digitalized services allows many entrepreneurs many new ways to differentiate from the competition through their online services, but on the other hand, I see that many people considering to become entrepreneurs might see starting a business as much more work since you have to grasp so much more than simply just running a local, physical service.
I feel the importance of trust and authenticity between businesses and customers has reached a new height, which I see is also connected to the trend of employee experience mentioned in the text. I see that it is not just for the reason that the treatment of the employees reflects to the customers but also for the reason that ff an employer treats their employees badly, the news of that can travel quite fast online. If a previous employee decides to openly mock a business online they used to work in, that will definitely lower the impression of the company in the eyes of the consumers.
All in all, if I were to start a business, I realize with this text that it is not as simple anymore as it might have been 20 years ago. Nowadays you need to grasp the use of online tools, online marketing, and responsibility in delivering the services. On the positive side of all of this, is that as a customer, you will find it easier to find quality services that you exactly need.
References
Feefo 2021. CX Trends. Where do you go from here?. Referenced 21.9.2022