Top Digital Trends To Look Out For In 2023 - Vol 1 - Your Daily Dose of Digital - 29/12/22

Woah. 2022 has been hectic, so I have 100% let the "Daily Dose of Digital" newsletter slide, becoming more of a "Sporadic Occasional Dose of Digital, Maybe, Sometimes"! I apologise for this! However, with 2022 coming to an end and marginally more time available to me as clients have wound-down for the festive break, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on some of the DX, CX & DCX trends to look out for next year.

This is just a snippet of a full article I wrote for the Sagittarius website, discussing the Top 5 Digital Experience & Marketing Trends To Look Out For in 2023, and I'm hoping to share a few of the insights from the article in this LinkedIn Newsletter - But, please feel free to grab yet another plate of Christmas leftovers (you know you want to), get comfy in that 'Oodie' your family bought for you and go here to read in full!

2022 into 2023 - Adversity or Opportunity?

There is no doubt that the economy (both in the UK and globally) is rather unstable and, in many ways, scary right now. Meaning consumers are taking extra consideration when it comes to any spending decision, personally or professionally. It’s therefore understandable that some business leaders may choose to “play it safe” by looking at options to reduce overall business spending, or at least maintain current spend levels. 

However, with customer-facing technologies, it really should be a different story. When experiencing an uncertain economy, brands are actually presented with some significant opportunities for investment that can ultimately differentiate businesses, delivering memorable positive experiences, leading to increased operational efficiencies as well as new customer acquisition and loyalty.

So, let's dive in to the first of the digital experience & marketing trends to look out for in 2023. 

CX & DCX will be high on the agenda

This will likely seem like a bit of a no-brainer to many of you reading this and it certainly will to my Sagittarius colleagues, as one of our core mantras is to ‘deliver remarkable customer experiences that convert’. However, for many brands CX (customer experience) & DCX (digital customer experience) just hasn’t been at the forefront of their agenda, or it has been masquerading as different, silo’d ventures into user experience, customer service, marketing and so on… 

A study by innovative CX/tech research firm Metrigy reports that “CX is the number one priority for companies increasing their technology spend during 2023, with 65% of companies planning to do so – by an average of 24 percent”. In addition, the study showed that no other technology area garnered a higher number of companies with planned increases in spending. In fact, despite the current economic uncertainty, only 9.6% of companies plan to decrease their CX spending, the lowest of any technology category measured in the report. 

There’s more evidence that brands and businesses will be prioritising CX so highly in their plans for 2023. Research from PWC found that 73% of consumers rank CX as an important factor in their purchasing decisions (as you’d expect in current times, “price” and “product quality” were the only factors which ranked more highly). Consumers are also willing to pay a 16% price premium for a great customer experience. The same survey also demonstrated that within CX, “speed, convenience, ease-of-use and friendly service” are the most important elements. So, it makes sense that any tech-driven initiatives aimed at improving CX in 2023 should prioritise these key attributes. 

There’s no denying that Covid-19 accelerated the adoption of tech and migration of experiences into the digital space, which led to brands having to pivot and adapt rapidly, creating new and exciting tech stacks in the process. As a result, there’s an ever-expanding plethora of customer-facing technologies that can live under the umbrella of “CX”. Improving all of these systems, tools, interfaces & platforms to reduce friction really can enable you to give customers what they want, where they want it, when they want it, how they want it. From a digital perspective, this will continue to include tools like websites, social media and chatbots but will increasingly take in exciting emerging channels such as the metaverse and augmented/mixed reality (I’ll come on to this in another newsletter). 

Making sure all these different technologies work together is important and delivering a consistent customer experience across all touch points is absolutely vital (which is why both our Experience Design and Experience Marketing teams work so collaboratively at Sagittarius). 

2023 has more in store...

There's another four (or more) trends to look out for in 2023 and I'll be sharing a few more of them in this newsletter in the coming days as we move into the new year - but if you want to read ahead, go and check out the full article here.

For those of you interested in delivering experiences that convert in 2023, don't hesitate to reach out to me or find out more about what we do at Sagittarius over at: https://sagittarius.agency/