2023 Trends Report: Digital Customer Experience
Aug 10, 2023 • Stephanie Nardone, Content Marketing Manager
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2024 Digital Experience Trends & Predictions
Dec 18, 2023 • 4 Minute Read • Laura Bernier, Responsable de l'intelligence clientèle et culturelle
At Verndale, it’s our Strategy team’s favorite time of the year—trend forecasting season! We’ve been subsisting on bottomless cups of coffee and heaps of 2024 business trend predictions, across consumers, culture, technology, creativity, digital experiences, digital commerce, and lifestyle. Amidst these categories, one resounding theme emerges: the resurging focus on human-centricity. The shift aims to design customer experiences that proactively anticipate their needs, actively engage them, and foster long-term loyalty.
Verndale’s Strategy team foresees six pivotal ways this human-centric approach will shape digital experiences:
- Intentionality Above All
- The Rise of People-to-People (P2P)
- The Re-Aligned Value Equation
- Hyper-Personalization & Connected Commerce
- Anchoring Experiences in Empathy
- Purposeful Creativity
Explore how these trends will play out in 2024, the team’s predictions, and why they’re excited about the upcoming opportunities for our clients.
Prediction 1: Intentionality Above All
“Intentionality is going to lead our charge around human-centric experiences in 2024. Recognizing technology as a tool for human outcomes is crucial. What matters most is helping people do what they’re trying to do. Gone are the days of being handcuffed by a specific platform restricting our vision or execution. We can now build brand experiences born from a place of human and business needs. This shift resets the bar on where marketers and digital leaders can focus and the commercial impact they can achieve. It's an exciting time for us when we can build experiences that create better connections between brands and humans.”
- Jonathan Tatlow, Chief Strategy Officer
Related Resource: More than one in three digital experience site visits (36%) result in visitor frustration. (Contentsquare 2023 Digital Experience Benchmark Report)
Prediction 2: The Rise of P2P
“B2B customers have long been treated differently than B2C customers, resulting in digital experiences that feel outdated, lack connection, and fail to empower customers to accomplish what they’re there to do. 2024 is going to be a critical year for breaking down the B2B and B2C silos in favor of a person-to-person (P2P) model. All customers are humans who are digitally engaged both in their work and personal lives, and who don’t always wear a completely different hat when engaging with a digital experience. I’m excited to usher more humanity and warmth into all our work.”
- Christina Watts, Senior Experience Strategy Lead
Related Resource: According to a B2B shoppers report, 66% of global B2B shoppers say that they're more likely to buy from a supplier that inspires them. (Wunderman Thompson, B2B Shopper Report 2023)
Prediction 3: The Re-Aligned Value Equation Amid Economic Scrutiny
“Americans are having a reckoning with how they’re prioritizing their values. For example, over the past year, we’ve seen live events like big concert tours and sports becoming the new luxuries that are worthy of a big spend amid an economic climate where people are taking a hard look at their discretionary income. As we partner with our pro sports clients to innovate their fan experience, we’ll be working to capitalize on this momentum, but at the same time, I’ll also be closely watching what else resonates with fans from a values standpoint, not just monetarily, but also in terms of the types of digital engagement that feels aligned with what’s most important to them.”
- Laura Brown, Experience Strategy Lead
Related Resource: Nearly 60% of Americans say they have had to cut back on spending on live entertainment this year and 20% of Americans say they are willing to take on debt to continue to be able to afford their favorite entertainment activities. (Wall Street Journal/Credit Karma survey, September 2023)
Prediction 4: Hyper-Personalization & Connected Commerce
“Critical for 2024 will be the need for commerce businesses to up their game on providing hyper-personalization for customers, seamlessly, across all touchpoints, digital and physical. With the rise of AI-driven individualization, predictive content curation, and dynamic, personalized merchandising, customers will increasingly expect tailored, integrated interactions across all channels throughout the customer journey. There’s increased urgency for brands to digitally transform legacy systems and operations to harness the customer data and assets required for driving hyper-personalization experiences—now table stakes for fueling growth.”
- Mary Brown, Experience Strategy Lead, Commerce
Related Resource: Brands that have invested in AI-empowered personalization saw a 64% bump in their click-through rates, 65% increase in time spent, and 61% Net Promoter Scores increase. (eMarketer Oct 2023)
Prediction 5: Anchoring Experiences in Empathy
“I can’t recall a time when human beings felt as untethered as we do now. From wars overseas to socio-political and economic strife here at home, to extreme weather and climate crises, and the uncertainty from rapid technological advancements like AI (Artificial Intelligence)—we’re living in a state of disruption, unease, and disillusionment. People crave the reliability of a sure bet and something solid and consistent that we can count on when the chips are down. In 2024, I’m on the hunt for opportunities to create digital experiences that resonate with this need for something dependable and empathetic amidst uncertainty."
- Laura Bernier, Customer & Cultural Intelligence Lead
Related Resource: Adults in the United States rate their average stress level at 5 out of 10, and 43% say their stress keeps piling up. (American Psychological Association 2023 Stress in America report)
Prediction 6: Purposeful Creativity
“Despite warnings about over-reliance on AI (Artificial Intelligence) and template-based tech, customers are finding digital experiences to be uninspired and undifferentiated. The age of human-led, creative digital experiences is far from dead. In 2024, we’re likely to see brands and their digital partners striving to earn emotional responses by blending timely and timeless elements using unique perspectives. They’ll invite audiences to immersive worlds with motion and sound. I’m excited for the opportunities we’ll have to co-create these experiences with our clients—not just for the sake of human creativity, but more pragmatically, to influence customer behavior and achieve very real business outcomes.”
- Dale Conour, Experience Strategy Lead
Related Resource: 35% of respondents find app designs indistinguishable across brands, a sentiment that rises to nearly 40% among 18-to-24-year-olds. (Accenture’s Annual Life Trends Forecast, October 2023)