Brands based in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region have long been renowned for embracing cutting-edge innovation and technology. This is true across all aspects of business, but nowhere is it more apparent than in the realm of customer experience.
Surveying the corporate landscape across Asia-Pacific reveals many brands with a finger on the CX pulse, championing new developments and embedding them into their customer offering.
So, with this in mind, let’s take a look at five of the top trends APAC brands are embracing for 2024.
Omnichannel
The paradigm shift towards omnichannel experiences continues to redefine customer engagement, with organizations employing strategies aiming for seamless integration across multiple touchpoints for a unified brand experience.
One of the companies to successfully navigate the omnichannel journey is Telekom Malaysia (TM). Having developed a strategy encompassing retail experience, contact centers and field teams, the brand focused on optimizing resources, strengthening processes and managing customers’ usage experience through analytics.
TM group head of customer experience, Lolitta Suffian – one of CX Network’s Top influencers to follow in the APAC region – was instrumental in the implementation of the strategy. She advises: “A detailed customer journey experience, be it online or offline, should be seamless, consistent and integrated across all touchpoints.”
To keep an omnichannel strategy on track, Suffian advocates encouraging customer feedback – and, more importantly, acting on it.
“Pay attention to suggestions and concerns from surveys, reviews and social media platforms,” she advises. “Engage with customers and take appropriate actions to improve products, services and the overall customer experience.”
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Phygital
The convergence of physical and digital realms – the ‘phygital’ experience – is taking center stage across the APAC region as forward-thinking brands seek innovative ways to create immersive and memorable interactions for customers.
The trend, in part, is being driven by changing customer needs and expectations.
Examples can be found among the banking sector in Asia-Pacific, where many brands are embarking on phygital CX strategies in response to shifting consumer preferences. A 2023 EY strategic transformation report highlights the impact of "disruptive forces", such as the Covid-19 pandemic and technological advancements, in steering customers from a physical to a digital environment.
However, striking the right balance between physical and digital realms is deemed crucial. EY emphasizes that face-to-face interactions will continue to be indispensable for APAC banks when engaging with customers – especially if handling more intricate transactions – despite the ongoing digitization trend. Acknowledging this, banks are actively engaged in "transforming the branch experience to enhance CX and guarantee efficiencies and relevance”.
As APAC brands continue to respond to the evolution of technology and changing consumer requirements, many will be seeking to get the phygital balance right in 2024.
Generative AI
Generative AI is creating waves in virtually every area of business. There has been much debate in the last year over the positive and negative impacts of the technology, but as far as CX is concerned, the emphasis is on the upside.
This was demonstrated in a study by researchers from Stanford Digital Economy Laboratory and MIT Sloan School of management, which measured the number of resolved customer issues per hour.
The researchers found that the introduction of a generative AI assistant boosted productivity by 13.8 percent.
Accenture is one of many companies taking advantage of generative AI’s power. The organization’s Philippine unit is employing AI-powered “co-pilots” to act as advisors for customer agents.
“Our clients are very much starting to explore generative AI, so it’s important that the industry goes in lockstep with this,” Arvin Yanson, managing director of Accenture Philippines’ innovation hub, told Bloomberg.
With the benefits of the technology so readily apparent, it seems clear that the exploration of generative AI will continue apace for APAC brands into 2024 and beyond.
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Humanization
As the capabilities available to practitioners become more advanced, the humanization of technology is emerging as a key theme across APAC. This highlights the importance of authentic connections and personalized engagements to enhance customer loyalty.
A Forrester report, commissioned by CINNOX, emphasizes the importance of infusing digital experiences with the right dose of human touch, especially in the post-pandemic world where customers across Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore crave a personalized experience and authentic brand interactions.
One of the many business impacts of Covid-19 was customers placing a higher value on humanized experience, the report notes.
As Irene Xu, principal industry consultant for banking at SAS, tells Malaya Business Insight: “Innovation is crucial for any business aiming to drive sustainable growth and ensure future success. But blending innovation with a human-first mentality provides the impetus for lasting impact.”
She adds: “With customers increasingly dependent on technology, digitalization that retains the human touch is essential to differentiation and gaining imperceptible insights that enable the customer journeys to be enriched via discovery of new trends and swifter forecasting.”
Digital transformation
The pursuit of digital transformation across the APAC region underscores a commitment to technological advancement, enabling organizations to stay agile and responsive to customers in an increasingly connected world.
Turning once again to the example of TM in Malaysia, the company has used robotic process automation (RPA), AI and machine learning to enable real-time CX. Moreover, digital CX and service tools, such as an app and online portal, enable increased customer engagement.
While striving for a differentiated digital CX, TM aimed to avoid isolating its customers with a confusing user interface (UX). So for the implementation of features like technician and service tracking, the policy was to incorporate functionality similar to that found in existing consumer apps, ensuring a seamless and familiar user experience.
TM's digital transformation has also allowed the brand to enhance customer engagement through more frequent interactions. For example, the company provides personalized content on features like parental controls, tailoring it to each customer based on the data it holds.
This kind of personalization is a surefire route to ensuring that the potential of digital technology is realised in terms of improving the customer experience.
Expect the most successful APAC brands to wholeheartedly embrace this approach to CX in 2024 and beyond – along with the other cutting-edge trends.