Consumer Dictatorship: loyalty not guaranteed

MODERN consumers are no longer satisfied with being “delighted” by good service; rather, they expect instant results, full transparency, and absolute flexibility - all on their terms. And, if they don’t get what they want, they switch brands without hesitation.

- DHEERAJ GOWRIE

With the rise of Consumer Dictatorship, brands can no longer just look to improve customer experience (CX) but must build new models that embrace customer control. The pervasiveness of technology designed to enhance CX has erased differentiation between brands, and customers have come to expect good experiences as the standard.

In this world where brands that cling to traditional Customer Experience strategies will likely die, while those that embrace customer-led innovation, real-time responsiveness, and absolute flexibility will thrive, how do businesses begin to adapt for the future?

Empowering these customers should focus on eliminating their dependence on the brand for resolution and giving them the tools to shape their experience on demand.

Rather than managing customer journeys, businesses are now able to enable customers to create their own, based on past behaviours. This works best in areas where there is high friction (such as onboarding or billing queries), there are repeated contacts for the same issue or where there is a drop in engagement or an uptick in churn.

To achieve success here, brands must embrace adaptive, real-time technologies that give customers control, such as portals with full visibility into usage, billing, network health, etc, Al-powered self-diagnosis tools for outages, API integrations that allow seamless switching or upgrading of services, and more.

From an experience perspective, companies will need to build feedback loops directly into the customer journey to identify where customers feel stuck or powerless, while customer-facing teams must evolve from reactive support to experience facilitators.