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Why 2022 Will Be The Year Of Hybrid CX — And What It Means For Brands

Forbes Communications Council

CMO of ActionIQ.

Predicting what new trends will shape business, technology and customer experience is a time-honored end-of-year tradition. And while shiny objects like NFTs, cryptocurrency and the metaverse get lots of hype, I don’t think they’re what companies should be focused on as they head into 2022. Hybrid customer experience (CX) is.

The rapid changes to consumer behavior that Covid-19 drove — such as the massive surge in e-commerce penetration we saw in 2020 — have not dissipated as the world has opened up. Instead, we’ve moved from a period of disruption to one of evolution. What began as a necessity for safety — changes to the way we work, eat, shop and live — has morphed into an expectation for convenience. The world is no longer online or in-person — it’s an amalgamation of the two. And it’s up to brands to keep up.

How The New Became Normal

Do you need a bellwether for the permanence of our hybrid lifestyle? Look no further than the office (if your company still has one). A combination of on-site and remote work has become par for the course and will likely remain that way. 2020 and 2021 data from human resources consultancy firm Mercer found that 87% of employers are embracing greater flexibility post-pandemic. Why? Likely because more than half of employees in a 2020 Mercer and AECOM survey said they’d consider switching employers if location flexibility wasn’t an option.

Do you need another indicator of the hybrid future? See how our habits in and out of the kitchen have changed. Indoor dining has once again become widely available in many areas, but one-third of consumers plan to dine out less often than pre-Covid-19 after the health crisis ends, according to research from Deloitte. Of course, that doesn’t mean everyone is donning a chef’s hat — 40% of consumers also said they’ll order takeout and delivery more than before. Uber’s delivery business became bigger than its original ride-hailing service soon after the pandemic began, and I think that trend is likely to continue. Uber Eats accounted for 24% of meal delivery sales in the U.S. during October 2021 and was bested only by DoorDash.

I've found that customers now expect this level of convenience across all types of brand interactions. For instance, if you’re a retail brand that doesn’t provide customers with different ways of shopping — from online to in-store and buy online, pick up in-store — you can be sure your competitors will. In this kind of environment, it’s important to identify, predict and cater to customer behaviors, whether that means personalizing communications or providing omnichannel engagement options.

Keeping Hybrid Customers Happy

How consumers engage with brands may have changed, but in my experience, their high expectations for relevant, valuable interactions have not. Customer experience is still king — and will only continue to become more important as brands attempt to differentiate themselves from each other in a crowded marketplace. After all, 75% of customers say they’re willing to spend more with companies that provide a good customer experience, according to Zendesk’s “Customer Experience Trends Report 2021,” which “surveyed customers, agents, customer service leaders, and technology buyers and looked at data from more than 90,000 companies across 175 countries on Zendesk.”

To deliver, brands should have a full view of their customers, from their affinities for different products to their preferences for different channels.

Unfortunately, achieving this is only getting more difficult. With the deprecation of third-party cookies, brands can no longer rely on anonymous third-party data for consumer insights, identification and targeting. In the cookieless future, I believe authenticated first-party data will be what powers personalized, impactful brand interactions and enables brands to give hybrid consumers what they want.

Thriving In A Hybrid World

As we get closer to the new year, here’s a resolution every brand should make: They should develop a first-party data strategy that helps them truly know their customers and meet their expectations.

This will be easier said than done for some brands. Companies in certain industries — such as financial services and media streaming — generally have a head start because they’ve built collecting and authenticating customer data into their business models. But no matter how high the hill to climb is, remember that consumer trust is key.

By being transparent about how you’ll collect and use customer data — as well as what security measures you have in place — you can build trust with your customers and protect your brand as privacy regulations continue to evolve. Your goal should be to collect only what’s necessary, not more than you need.

As recent laws and updates to user tracking illustrate, voluntary agreement is now the standard for collecting customer data. Brands that make consented data sharing the norm will be better prepared for whatever comes next from both legislators and tech companies.

But it’s important for brands to provide value in exchange for customer data and highlight how collecting it benefits customers. Smart companies are already taking notice — recent research from Sitecore (via PR Newswire) revealed that 51% of marketers are “increasing the value of discounts and other services offered to consumers in exchange for their data.”

The story of the hybrid future is still being written, but it’s clear to me that high-quality data that helps brands better understand their customers will be as good as gold.

Whether you build data-sharing partnerships with other brands or invest in new technologies, remember that you should keep your customers’ wants and needs top of mind to succeed in the hybrid world.


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