Happy Friday! We’re bringing you the latest roundup of industry news. This week, we’re looking at the new Metaverse Experience showcase, social media trends report and financial product and service onboarding pain points.
We also have the latest business updates from the cost-of-living crisis. This investigates the most recent actions and impacts on customers and organisations alike.
Key news
- Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Meta, the parent company who owns Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, will cut at least 11,000 jobs globally. This figure makes up for around 13% of their workforce. Zuckerberg admits that he is responsible for the company’s optimistic over-hiring. The cuts are likely to be some of the biggest this year in the tech sector, and will affect all Meta teams.
- Genesys reveals that 61% of banking executives say the bar for customer experience is continuing to rise. This signals a growing need for investment in CX strategies. In the current economic challenges, customers are reaching out to banks more than ever. 72% of banks report that personalised services become more important during times of financial crisis. 45% are struggling to keep up with increased demand.
- On Tuesday December 6, Alida will host Innovation Day. It will be a global virtual event showcasing the top innovative brands in experience delivery. The event will feature companies such as Morning Brew, Twitch Ads, Indigo Books & Music and more.
- Interactions, leader in conversational artificial intelligence (AI), launched Trustera. This platform is the first and only real time, audio-sensitive redaction platform. It pre-emptively identifies and protects sensitive information, like credit card numbers. It seeks to solve the biggest compliance challenge in today’s contact-centre environment: protecting a customer’s Payment Card Information (PCI). The platform is designed to make the customer experience more trustworthy, secure and seamless.
- NICE have been named a Leader for Voice of the Customer by Quadrant Knowledge Solutions, in the 2022 SPARK Matrix.
- SOTI (MobiControl and Surf) – mobility provider and IoT device management solutions – are offering a new integration with ProGlove. ProGlove are a provider of wearable industrial barcode scanners. After the device and the ProGlove scanner are connected by scanning a QR code, SOTI Surf communicates with the scanner via the Insight mobile app. This ensures that the alerts or notifications received on the ProGlove wearable scanners correspond to the scanned data transmitted to SOTI Surf.
Gartner IT Symposium/XPO showcased the ‘Metaverse Experience’
Shown on 8th November at Gartner IT Symposium/XPO in Barcelona – Avaya demonstrated a new virtual territory. Coined the ‘Metaverse Experience’, the concept builds the link between the metaverse and the real world.
It demonstrates, through a range of customer journeys, how organisations can extend their contact centre capabilities into the metaverse using Avaya Experience Platform™. This demo shows the art of the possible, where businesses can imagine how their contact centre agents can support and interact with customers within the virtual world.
This is just one of many concepts being demonstrated by Avaya at the XPO. The company is showcasing solutions that enable organisations to turn every moment with customers into momentum for their businesses. The use cases demonstrate how the Avaya Experience Platform can deliver seamless customer and employee experiences. This is without the need for rip-and-replace technology refreshes that disrupt existing operations.
Avaya are also aiming to showcase emerging trends and disruptive technologies in how they are revolutionising the future of IT and businesses.
“For Avaya, bringing the metaverse into its contact centre wasn’t a complicated process – the company just sees it as another channel because the Avaya Experience Platform is fully cloud-native and designed to be open. Avaya customers can experiment with the metaverse and add contact centre capabilities without having to bring in a new platform r go through a major upgrade.”
– Zeus Kerravala, Founder & Principal Analyst at ZK Research
Emplifi’s Q3 Social Media Benchmark Report results
The CX platform, Emplifi, have revealed the quarterly social media trends and findings of global brands.
According to the report, median engagement rates for brands remained consistent with the previous quarter. An exception to this is for Instagram brand engagement rates, which saw a slight uplift. Looking at the format of the platform’s top-performing posts by median interactions:
- Reels came in first (35% higher than other content types)
- Carousels second
- Then video
- Finally images ranking last
Instagram Reels have outperformed all other post types since the start of the year. 80% of brands on the platform have published at least one reel in Q3 2022. This is a significant increase since 2021 when only 41% of brands on the social media network were posting reels content. Instagram Reels are most popular within the sporting industry –
- 92% of sports organisations, sports and sports events,
- 88% of sporting goods brands publish reels to boost engagement with followers
Instagram outperforms TikTok for median reach by a wide margin (63% to 37%). Brands also earn more interactions and more video views on Instagram. However, TikTok earns higher reach engagement for brands. This is with a 57% to 43% advantage. Follower growth for brands on TikTok continues to climb – up 200%.
“The biggest takeaway is that short-form video is a vital part of a brand’s marketing mix and is here to stay. This has only been reinforced throughout 2022, and social platforms have continued to increase their video capabilities this year”
– Zarnaz Arlia, CMO of Emplifi
In terms of social customer care, brand response rates to user questions on Facebook had a 14% year-over-year drop. With Instagram, the rate has declined almost the same in the past two quarters, falling 13% since Q1 2022. Brands continue to be the quickest to respond on Twitter, taking 3-4 hours for the fifth straight quarter.
Is your business utilising the power of short-form videos for marketing? Are you on Instagram or TikTok yet? These forms of social media marketing are truly steaming ahead into 2023. These results are interesting to help brands rethink their strategies and what works best for customer engagement.
OvationCXM reveal pain points experienced during financial product and service onboarding
The CX management leaders released their 2022 Financial Services CXM Impact Report. The company surveyed 4,073 business owners and operators in Q4 to uncover significant pain points.
The results indicated that six in 10 businesses found recent onboarding experience with a financial product or service to be “somewhat” to “extremely difficult.” Overall, 76% of the business owners surveyed said they found onboarding so complicated, they walked away in the middle of the process. Over 30% of businesses said it required four or more contact points with their financial institution to resolve their issue.
Here are some highlights from the report:
- The number one frustration during onboarding was working with too many people and/or organisations throughout the process.
- 60% of respondents said they will move on after 48 hours if their onboarding issue is not resolved.
- 25% of respondents reported that confusing instructions or processes were their biggest frustration during onboarding.
- Of those that say onboarding “wasn’t easy,” 1 in 4 say they are unlikely to give their financial institution another chance with a product or service.
- Nine in 10 businesses said they needed to contact their financial institution for additional help.
Through this data, financial institutions can learn how intimately CX impacted their ongoing relationships with business owners.
Cost-of-living crisis business and customer updates
Here’s the latest updates of the cost-of-living crisis on businesses and customers, how they are being impacted and predictions of the impact.
Despite the crisis, 52% of young UK consumers plan to shop sustainably this Christmas
Sustainable shopping is notorious for being more expensive, yet half of 18-34 year old consumers are prepared to pay more for these products this Christmas. This comes from new research released from SAP.
Key stats include:
- 51% of younger consumers are willing to wait longer for sustainable purchases. This is compared to 28% of 35-54-year-olds and 24% of 55+
- Two in five of 18-34-year-olds are prepared to pay significantly more for a sustainable product or service. Only 30% of all UK consumers are willing to do the same
- 43% are looking to buy locally sourced products for their Christmas dinner or lunch. This figure rises to over half (54%) in younger respondents
Brits can no longer afford to be loyal to brands
Latest research from Emarsys has found that 56% of Brits have already switched from a brand they were once loyal to due to the increased inflation. One in five admitted that they “can’t afford to be loyal”.
Key stats from the survey of 2,000 consumers also include:
- 64% have changed their attitude to loyalty as a result of the cost of living crisis
- The top driver of brand loyalty is a personalised approach
- 57% of UK shoppers are more likely to be loyal to UK-made products
- 31% are staying loyal to products made in Ukraine
- UK shoppers will actively avoid products produced in China or Russia (42% China), (57% Russia)
70% of UK workers now more concerned about cost-of-living than the pandemic due to disproportionate ethnic impacts
New research by non-profit organisation People Like Us showed that redundancy worries were worse for workers from Black, Asian, mixed race and minority ethnic backgrounds. 41% are concerned about potential job cuts, compared to 27% of those from a white British background. Additionally, despite an increased focus on diversity and inclusion over the past few years, only 37% of respondents said they felt it remained a priority for their business.
Thanks for tuning into CXM’s weekly roundup of industry news. Check back next Friday for the latest updates of the week!