Zendesk releases global annual customer experience trends report for 2021

Zendesk has released a 2021 Global Customer Experience (CX) Trend Report.

According to the report, customer experience is an increasingly important part of a company's business success, and successful companies in each industry are adopting new technologies at an unprecedented rate to improve the customer experience. 

Half of the Asia-Pacific companies (53%) plan to increase their investment in CX software in 2021, and 2 out of 5 survey respondents (44%) said CX is more important than a year ago. In addition, 67% of companies responded that their CX priority was higher than a year ago.

Regarding this trend, Gendesk Asia Pacific Chief Operating Officer Wendy Johnstone said, "This year, Asia-Pacific companies are rapidly embracing digitalization to cope with the rapidly changing business outlook." "Customer experience is more important than ever. It is expected that the acceleration of technology adoption will continue in 2021. Companies need to make sure they have the right strategies, procedures, and skills in place to support their customer support team and drive business success.”

From changing customer behavior to the emergence of new customer channels to new forms of work in the workplace, the ZenDesk 2021 CX Trends Report provides a roadmap for companies to move forward for great customer service. The main research and trend analysis results contained in the report are as follows.

First, the transformation from the customer experience to the digital world is accelerating. Businesses are adopting digital technology at the speed of light. Considering customer services evaluation criteria such as customer satisfaction (CSAT) and response speed in the Asia-Pacific region, companies with high performance have a high proportion of omnichannel solutions. Over 54% offer self-service support services in addition to core channels such as phone, email, and messaging. On the other hand, only 20% of companies with low performance chose Omni channels.

The second is the interactive customer experience driven by the rising popularity of messaging apps. 69% of ZenDesk customers in the Asia Pacific region adopted a new way of communicating with customers last year. Many of them received support requests from customers on messenger apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook. This trend has exploded as Covid-19 continues for a long time. In the Asia-Pacific region, the use of social messaging to communicate with customers has increased by 117% since February 2020.

Third, perceptions about how customer support work is done are changing. With the prolonged COVID-19 outbreak, social distancing is becoming more important, and companies are sympathizing with the need for a smarter way of working with customer support teams. 41% of Asia-Pacific managers said they do not have the right analytical tools to measure the success of their teams in remotely working customer support, and 49% of customer support outsourcing agencies do not have the right tools to assist agents in telecommuting. Answered.

The fourth is team composition optimized for agility. Faced with constant volatility, service and support organizations must find ways to quickly catch up with customers. CX leaders said the ability to respond quickly to rapidly changing customer needs was their biggest challenge in 2020 and will continue to be their top priority.

Fifth, we need to focus on CX and provide an easier and better customer experience for our customers. With CX at the heart of the business, online channels are growing unprecedented in speed and scale. Accordingly, companies are under pressure to meet the rising expectations of consumers. In the Asia-Pacific region, 74% of consumers are willing to pay more for companies that offer great CX, and 75% say they will use other companies if they have a poor customer experience.