“Customer is king.”

This statement made sense a decade ago and it makes sense even today, isn’t it? In a time when customers have ten alternatives for a single product or service, it has become necessary for businesses to focus on the experience they offer to their buyers.

Not so surprisingly, 76% of customers stop purchasing from a business after a bad service. According to Esteban Kolsky, if the customers are dissatisfied, 13% of them tell 15 or more people about their experience. But happy customers will share a positive experience with only 6 or more people.

Negative word-of-mouth is detrimental to the growth of any business which is why there is a need to focus on customer experience more than ever. Interestingly, Andy Yost, CMO at Gannett strongly believes ‘now’ is the time for businesses to service a customer’s needs before they even arise.

In fact, a 2016 multi-industry benchmark study supports this by stating the top objective of 75% of companies is to improve their customer’s experience. If experts are to be believed, leveraging data analytics for creating impactful experience strategies will rise to the top this year.

Now that customer experience is the new battlefield for businesses to compete for driving revenues. Keeping that in mind, let us explore five trends of CX that are going to rule 2018: