Zendesk CX Trends 2024 Highlights and Implications
Author :
Gon Lee
Mar 6, 2024
On February 21, Zendesk hosted a webinar to discuss the key topics in the CX industry for 2024 with experts.
The CX Trends 2024 report 'Unlock the power of intelligent CX', released alongside the webinar, presented ten trends that customer experience managers should pay attention to this year. The report is based on a survey of 7,000 people in 20 countries worldwide and includes various predictions about the industry landscape that artificial intelligence will transform.
Some of these predictions resonated deeply with us at Syncly. Through this post, we want to share the future of customer experience predicted by global CX company Zendesk and Syncly's thoughts.
※ Through Syncly's integration with Zendesk, you can easily import chat and email data from customer interactions conducted via Zendesk into Syncly. Learn more here.
Full-scale Introduction of Generative AI
Although generative AI is not technically fully mature, it is expected to have a significant impact on the CX industry and customer experience design, as it does in many other fields.
In this trend, CX leaders have experienced uncertainty and stress about new technologies. According to the survey, about 62% of CX leaders feel 'pressure to use generative AI'.
In the global CX industry, the use of generative AI is perceived as not a 'story of the future'. More than 50% of CX leaders are already considering or have considered introducing related solutions.
In line with this, one of the webinar panelists, Cassie Kozyrkov (CEO of Data Scientific), said, "If there was a task automation that you tried and gave up on two years ago, try to find that method again now." She emphasized that any task you want to automate can be done more easily using Gen AI.
The VOC analysis platform that Syncly is building is no exception. Just a few years ago, various customer communication data that had to be read and classified by a manager can now be quickly classified, summarized, and analyzed with Syncly AI.
If you find it too cumbersome to collect, classify, summarize, and analyze VOC on your own, please share your concerns with the Syncly team through the link below :)
Perception Gap between CX Leaders and Agents
As we have seen above, most leaders who operate CX organizations are already considering how to use AI.
However, the perception gap with agents, as revealed in the survey results, provides several implications. According to Zendesk's survey, only 25% of CX practitioners answered that 'AI tools will help provide better customer service'.
In addition, only one-third of the practitioners who responded to the survey agreed with the expectation that the focus of CX practice will shift from 'simple consultation processing' to more complex areas such as 'enhancing engagement with customers' through job automation using AI.
In other words, there is still a gap between the ideal that leaders want to achieve and the reality that practitioners feel, and it can be seen that more consensus on the use of AI needs to be spread to bridge this gap.
The Syncly team is also familiar with this phenomenon. We are constantly thinking with our customers about how to coexist daily operations that need to be dealt with every day and a new VOC management system using AI.
It may be a fundamental story, but the perspective that should not be lost is to aim for AI that can actually help with work, not AI for AI. We are thinking that we need to continue to strive to provide AI tools that can be welcomed from the practitioner's perspective by providing 'AI that makes my quitting time faster', 'AI that grows my career', and 'AI that is not difficult'.
※ Syncly not only provides AI classification function but also provides a function to manually classify feedback. This is in response to customer opinions who want to receive AI's help only in the analysis part while managing VOC according to the existing classification system (Taxonomy). We will continue to think about how to gradually introduce AI while respecting the existing workflow of our customers.
Importance of CX Data that Can Predict Customer Emotions and Intentions
So far, 'personalization' has been emphasized in customer experience, but now 'instant personalization' is expected to be emphasized. It is predicted that the main area of CX will be to provide appropriate experiences by understanding not only 'who the customer is' but also 'how they feel'.
According to Zendesk, 70% of the companies surveyed are actively investing in technology and tools that automatically understand and analyze customer intentions. However, only 30% of customer experience (CX) leaders are using AI to automatically understand customer intentions.
VOC analysis tools like Syncly support the accumulation of customer data that fits this CX trend through the 'Sentiment Analysis' function. In particular, Syncly's 'Dynamic Sentiment Trend' function, which can analyze the constantly changing emotions of customers in a single conversation in detail, has been well received.
In Conclusion
Looking at the feedback from domestic and foreign customers using Syncly, we always feel that they are deeply considering how to leverage the power of AI to effectively enhance customer experience.
Looking at this Zendesk trend report, we were able to feel once again that these concerns and passions felt on the ground are a global phenomenon. It also provided an opportunity to think about how Syncly can contribute to the future of the CX field from a new perspective.
If you are curious about the new way of managing VOC that we are creating with customer-oriented teams, please feel free to contact us through the link below.
※ In addition to the three trends mentioned above, the Zendesk CX Trends 2024 report presents a variety of other CX trends. The full report can be accessed by submitting your contact information through the link.