The Future of Experience in a Hybrid Reality

HFS Research, with support from Startek, surveyed 300 customer experience decision-makers with the goal of understanding how customer experience strategy is evolving compared with other stakeholder experiences and how the future of experience strategy will unfold. Not only has experience strategy gotten harder to design, but it is also impossible to do in a silo, without ecosystem partners to assist on the journey. Here are our major findings:

• The digital dilemma. The pandemic exacerbated the challenges of an already stretched-thin CX organization, and the aftermath is getting even worse with record underemployment and talent shortages. Now enterprise experience strategy faces an existential crisis. Developing digital experience strategies for both customers and employees is the top challenge and also the biggest opportunity for brand differentiation.Experience strategy has been turned on its head in a hybrid world. Creating digital solutions for customers and employees is mission critical for driving brand differentiation.
• Changing the leadership guard. Leadership roles require change for a digital and hybrid consumer world and work environment. Ambitious organizations are creating new roles focused on bringing experiences together for employees, customers, and partners. Our survey found that the role of the chief experience officer has had an overwhelmingly (93%) positive impact on customer experience. Growth is the most crucial outcome CXOs must influence.
• Avoiding the experience pitfalls. Speed, strategy, partnerships, and data are all critical elements of developing and executing on experience improvements. We’ve identified five experience mistakes that will make your experience strategy fall flat: making investments without strategy, overestimating technology, underestimating partnerships, neglecting data at the center of experience strategy, and not moving fast enough. Avoid at all costs!
• The future of experience. Humans + bots, strategic partnerships, and data at the core will revolutionize experiences in the future.

To read the rest of the report, click the download button below.