Published on 12.10.2022
The way we approach customer service from year to year is more likely to change than you think. Some customer experience trends, of course, have become mainstays ever since the advent of the internet and are only updated or tweaked to stay relevant as time passes.
But as times change and our culture grows, brands must learn how to adapt and improve their customer service solutions for a modern audience. For example, in recent years, the development of AI-powered virtual assistants has significantly altered how businesses handle their touchpoints.
But there’s more to it than that! Let’s explore what’s going on in the world of customer experience trends for SaaS-related products.
The Impact of Customer Experience Trends
As most may know, the term customer experience (sometimes referred to as CX) describes the quality of service a user receives when interacting with a business. Depending on a business’s customer retention strategy, brands can affect whether they’ve created a returning customer or a one-time customer.
In the best of circumstances, brands that update their customer service for a modern audience can nurture brand advocates as well. In other words, if the quality of a customer’s experience is really high, those individuals may recommend your brand to their friends and family. 
Source: REVE Chat
More than that: when leading a SaaS-focused business, it’s vital to pay attention to modern trends that keep your brand feeling fresh. Continuous improvement of customer experiences will encourage your visitors to interact more, to “buy in” to the product or service. So what can actually be done to see results?
Worry not. Here are the top 10 customer experience industry trends you should expect to see in the year 2022. And who knows? Maybe you will find a strategy that’ll fit your brand.
10 Customer Experience Trends on the Horizon
1. AI Automation for Customer Queries
When customers have a query about a brand’s product, it’s important that a representative meets their needs efficiently. With the advancement of technology, AI-powered assistants can now answer frequently asked questions in an instant. Better yet, these answers can be pre-written by humans to best match your business’s tone of voice.
Additionally, if a company uses AI automation to answer common inquiries, then their human representatives can instead focus on solving other customer issues that require human touch. All visitors to your digital storefront receive answers, and overall satisfaction is boosted. Automation also helps to eliminate human error, such as late response time or answer inaccuracy.
2. Built-in Omnichannel Support
For the unaware, omnichannel customer service refers to an integrated network of communication channels that a customer can tap into. These interactions can occur via social media, the web, email, and many other methods. But it’s more than simply having multiple touchpoint options for a customer to access.
Rather, an omnichannel support network boosts customer experience because all channels are integrated, creating a continuous journey between platforms. Service information can be collated across these touchpoints so that agents may gain customer insight and personalize support as necessary.
3. Predictive Analytics for Optimized Service
Businesses can improve customer outreach by taking advantage of internal data and converting it into valuable statistics. With the right AI-powered technology to accomplish this task, companies gain insight into how to target customer demographics and provide them with personalized service.
In the long run, this means businesses can anticipate digital customer experience trends in advance and accommodate their services to match. Not only do predictive analytics provide a huge boost to revenue in this way, but the proactive decision to rely on this data proves to be a beneficial, long-term investment.
4. Embracing Data Transparency
The relationship our society has with the internet has dramatically changed over the last twenty years. One attitude that remains steadfast, however, is caution towards revealing any personal information. This is justified: many corners of the internet aren’t trustworthy!
With these rational concerns in mind, businesses can improve their rapport with their customers by being transparent on how data is collected and used. A common and effective strategy to accomplish this task would be to expressly ask for data permissions in advance of collecting it, such as before they purchase a product or service.
Not only does transparency build the ethos of your online storefront, but it can also improve customer loyalty when intentions are proven ethical.
5. Jumping Into the Metaverse
The term metaverse has proven itself to be a notable trend in customer experience in the last year. The metaverse, by its most basic definition, can be referred to simply as a series of connective online platforms, or more whimsically, a virtual online galaxy.
More concretely, these may be explored through virtual and augmented reality spaces. For most businesses, the metaverse can thus be considered a new landscape for novel customer interactions.
For SaaS businesses, this primarily means having more opportunities to provide online touchpoint services to existing or new customers. Better interactions with the client base can ensure future customer loyalty, and staying up-to-date with new platforms will keep the brand’s image fresh, enticing a new pool of potential visitors.
6. Responsive Customer Feedback
Studying customer analytics is a surefire way to improve the customer experience — with more data, we can better personalize said experience. But data isn’t the only way that businesses can glean valuable information from customers.
When customers care enough to write feedback or leave a review, the information received can prove insightful by showing how your products are viewed from the outside. How they feel about the product, how the customer experience of purchasing the product is positive or negative
This perspective is constructive and novel, because data can’t convey opinions when it comes to the customer’s experience. Evaluating written feedback means businesses can directly modify their service model to match articulated customer preferences.
In situations where customers don’t feel incentivized to leave feedback (which is often the case), brands may consider implementing a loyalty program.
7. Strong Loyalty Programs
We can expect in the near future that loyalty programs will be a highly effective customer experience trend. Of course, many businesses already employ a loyalty program, providing benefits and rewards to repeat customers.
Moving forward, finding intuitive and effective ways to enroll visitors into such a program will significantly boost customer loyalty. Knowing they may receive benefits or discounts is a strong incentive for most people.
8. Happy Employees Make Happy Customers
Employee experience (often referred to as EX) is similar to customer experience in the sense that both are based on building morale. For new employees, this may mean creating a clear, informative, and inviting onboarding experience. For more experienced employees, this means ensuring they are satisfied and fulfilled in their position.
Regardless of their experience, it’s important to keep employees happy and motivated so their productivity isn’t negatively affected. As such, brand leaders should pursue methods of alleviating customer stress at regular intervals.
This strategy works from the outside in — by checking in on your employees in these ways, we naturally can improve their productivity and output. Better output means customers receive quality service, and everyone goes home happy.
9. Opportunities for Self-Service
Of course, it’s incredibly important to maintain and improve an interactive customer touchpoint. This can be accomplished through AI-powered assistants or canned responses, for example. But not every customer is the same: providing methods for customers to find answers on their own may prove incredibly fruitful.
Let’s face it, a large portion of a customer base may be less extroverted or willing to chat with a representative. Others may simply prefer feeling resourceful. To accommodate this valid demographic of potential customers, businesses should provide alternative resources, such as a FAQ page, for people to access.
Independence is key for some people. These information hubs may also provide helpful navigation techniques, such as purchasing methods.
10. Guaranteed Customer Privacy
Similar to how customers value transparency regarding businesses collecting their data, they also value keeping that data private. Businesses should consider establishing an online page or resource that explains their data practices and security policies.
In conjunction with other trends on this list, businesses may have a centralized location where privacy concerns, data transparency concerns, and a general FAQ may all be found.
In addition to this information, brands may include a statement about their strict adherence to the General Data Protection Regulation. This ensures that businesses are attentively sticking to all legal directives as required.
Customer Experience Trends in Review
Overall, there are a vast number of customer experience trends that SaaS-related businesses can take advantage of this year. Many of these involve building and maintaining a trusted relationship with customers. This can mean providing data transparency, promising data security, and implementing AI customer support.
Other trends in customer experience give us a look towards the future, such as the metaverse and all its platform capabilities, as well as the development of an omnichannel system. Any business looking to improve the value of their online storefront can experiment with these expectations.