The last two years have proven that customer-first businesses must be flexible to thrive. That means meeting customers where they are—and where they haven’t been able to be. How do you, as a business, satisfy the human need for social interaction amid physical distancing? How do you nurture brand loyalty when you can’t work off of facial cues? And—keeping your ultimate goal in mind—how do you convert interactions into sales and ensure a good experience remotely?

Although most agents enjoy solving customer problems, the pandemic has put them under a new kind of pressure. Mix frustrated customers, soaring query volumes, budget cuts, and new remote work setups, and you’ve got a recipe for burnout. In 2022, many businesses recognize the importance of workplace mental health, and are taking steps to ensure the well-being of their teams.

In 2022, omnichannel will replace multichannel as one of the top strategies for brands to reach digital-first consumers in a highly personalized manner. The 2022 CX trends report confirms this statement. How do the two differ, you ask? Omnichannel customer engagement uses data points from several channels (like email, SMS, and in-store interactions) to craft a cohesive chronological customer journey, while multichannel takes a siloed approach to manage the channels it makes available to customers.

What is the most important thing you can do to reduce churn and increase word-of-mouth referrals? The answer is obvious, but it’s often overlooked: improve your customer service. No matter how awesome you think your product is, or how skilled you think your team is, what your customers are most likely to remember is the direct interaction they have with your company.

As we enter 2022, we must reflect on how the digital-first experiences of the last two years have redefined our future. Based on increased demand, businesses are meeting customers in the digital realm more than ever and seeking to offer a service experience that respects the individual behind the screen. Consumers fundamentally haven’t changed—they want their service needs met as fast as possible.

Creating an experience in the SaaS space is immensely important when you’re looking to delight your customers, every step of their journey with you. Freshworks strives to do exactly that. We take a fresh approach to how businesses discover, engage with, and realize value from software throughout their journey. Over the past few years, prospective/existing users have used G2’s growing community of trusted reviewers to make intelligent software buying decisions for their business.

According to Statista, 88% of customers expect companies to offer an online self-service portal. Creating a great knowledge base article is the first step to promoting self-service. But how do you create a great knowledge base article? How do you choose which questions need to be answered in your knowledge base? And how do you measure if your knowledge base is successfully helping customers get quick answers, while unburdening your support team?

When you want to find out how your customers feel about your brand, metrics such as customer satisfaction score, customer effort score, and net promoter score are indicators that always come to mind. But, have you considered measuring customer value? Customer value is a metric that holds the answer to understanding the value your customers derive from your business and, therefore, their likelihood of being your long-term customer.

The year ahead will see more and more brands leverage certain technology tools for deepening customer relationships and improving CSAT scores. Here are three key trends likely to help agents and keep customers delighted: 1. 2022 will be the ‘return to human’ as we hit the chatbot ceiling. As the pandemic pushed business online overnight, companies quickly scaled automation and self-service technology like chatbots and FAQs to deflect and resolve customer issues.

We all realize that customer feedback is a goldmine of insights. But it’s easy to lose track of what your customers expect, want, and need from your business. That’s why you need a structured and organized feedback management system, a.k.a, a Voice of the Customer(VoC) program that taps into the voice of every customer segment to gain business value. If you’re looking for more reasons, techniques, and best practices to kickstart a VoC program, then we’ve got you covered.