What’s Next in CX?

2024
Digital Customer
Experience Trends
Table of 03 What’s next in CX? 16 Social
04 Artificial intelligence (AI) 18 Digital trust
contents 06 Personalization 20 Digital accessibility
08 Immersive experiences 22 Mobile
10 Customer centricity 24 About Contentsquare

12 Data-driven insights 25 Research methods

14 Omnichannel experiences

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Table of contents 2

What’s next
With businesses competing on CX, it’s those
that embrace emerging innovations and
digital trends that will stay ahead of their
Top 10
in CX? competitors in 2024.
digital experience
In this report, we dive into ten digital
customer experience trends set to dominate
trends for 2024
Customer experience (CX) is the landscape next year, as identified by a 1. AI
global survey of 2700+ business professionals
the number one priority for in marketing, UX and product roles from 2. Personalization
business professionals. And retail, B2B, financial services, telco and many
more industries. 3. Immersive experiences
with good reason: 88% of
consumers say the experience Keep reading to find out: 4. Customer centricity
a company provides is as • Which trends digital professionals think
will matter most 5. Data-driven insights
important as its products or • How digital professionals think about
services. these trends (and how to adapt to them) 6. Omnichannel experiences
• What you can do to prepare your
7. Social
business for 2024—and beyond

8. Digital trust
Plus, find out how our digital experience
analytics platform is already putting these
9. Digital accessibility
future trends into practice to help brands
increase customer happiness and drive
10. Mobile
growth.

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends What’s next in CX? 3

01 Top trends in AI
1. Generative AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) 2. Chatbots and conversational AI
3. Personalization with AI
4. AI-powered tools for businesses
Digital professionals predict AI will dominate customer experience in 2024.
Shocking, we know…

With the rise of Chat GPT and large language models (LLMs), AI has
quickly become embedded into the digital experience. And clearly, digital
professionals don’t foresee this trend slowing down anytime soon!

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Artificial intelligence (AI) 4

Generative AI will be everyone's best friend
“I don't think Gen AI is going anywhere. I think we're going to get smarter
about how we're going to use it, how we adopt it across all levels, what
prompts to ask it, and how to think about what the follow-ons from those
are. Generative AI is all the rage—it's going to be everyone’s best friend,
but only if we figure out how to use it.”
Sehr Thadhani,
Chief Digital Officer,
Nasdaq
AI-powered product review summaries
Product detail pages (PDPs) are arguably the most engaging
pages for retailers, where people go to find out about products
and read customer reviews.
The challenge is that customers often have to go through
hundreds, even thousands of reviews. Electronics retailer, Elkjøp
(part of Currys plc) solved this issue by using Open AI’s ChatGPT
to summarize their product reviews on their PDPs. The summary
is run on a weekly script and looks at the top features and

Taking into account the environmental impact of AI pitfalls of products.

After adding the AI-powered reviews to their PDPs review

“Large language models have a dirty little secret; they require massive
section, their click rate to purchase went up by +23% in just
amounts of energy. If you want to build and deploy AI, you need to have a month.
access to a lot of storage and even more computing power from hundreds
of servers in massive data centers. So, we believe that the future of AI
will not only be about improving customer experiences and performance
metrics like bounce rate, exit rate, conversion rate and average order
value, but it will take into account environmental standards."

Gary Roth,
VP of Business Value Services,
Contentsquare and ex-CEO at Upstride

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Artificial intelligence (AI) 5

02
Top trends in
personalization
1. Hyper-personalization

Personalization 2. Data-driven
3. Customer journey
4. Privacy and security
Providing customers with relevant experiences tailored to their needs
and wants is kind of a no-brainer. And brands such as Netflix, Spotify
and Amazon have set the bar so high customers now expect intuitive,
personalized experiences wherever they go.

In fact, according to McKinsey, 71% of consumers expect customized

experiences—and companies that get personalization right generate
+40% more revenue.

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Personalization 6

Delivering the right content
at the right time with The Gift Finder
hyper-personalization
With customers coming to their site for different reasons every
“Hyper-personalization is going to be the time they visit, Virgin Experience Days (Virgin) created a hyper-
big trend for brands. It’s all about delivering personalized experience with its Gift Finder. The tool asks
the right content at the right time to the customers what they’re looking to buy, the price range, and the
right people, which has always been the occasion they're buying for.
challenge in marketing—it’s always about
relevance and timing. Before the days of data, While most personalization is based on behavioral data, the Gift
Finder uncovers specific customer intent, which enables Virgin to
personalization wasn’t possible. But now, we
leverage a product recommendation engine to serve customers
have more data than we've ever had before.
highly relevant products for their needs.
We also have tools like Contentsquare that will
help us with personalization.”

Denise Persson, During the peak traffic season of November

Chief Marketing Officer,
Snowflake
to December 2022, over 100,000 people
went through the Gift Finder with a
near 100% completion rate, leading to a
conversion rate of

8.5%.
2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Personalization 7
03 Top trends in
Immersive experiences immersive experiences
1. Augmented reality (AR)
2. Virtual reality (VR)
Advances in immersive technology such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR)
and 3D content are helping bridge the gap between physical and digital experiences.
3. The metaverse

These technologies are already prevalent across many industries, particularly in retail
and eCommerce, where they’re helping bring in-store experiences (such as trying on
clothes and testing out furniture and makeup) into the digital space.

The mobile AR market alone is

expected to grow to 1.73 billion user
devices worldwide by 2024—that’s a

+23%
year-over-year increase! Source: Statista

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Immersive experiences 8

Finding the right fit with AR
“We're going to move more towards being able
Virtual try-on
to understand how clothes are going to fit on
you as a person through digital experiences. e.l.f Cosmetics’ virtual try-on tool lets customers choose a
model, upload a photo of themselves, or use a live camera to try
So whether that's scanning your body and
a product on. This AR experience is available on their site and
being able to see what a product will look like
mobile app, allowing customers to experience their products
on you or being able to choose a model that's digitally without going to a store.
your skin color or your body type.”

Jasmine Baker,
Consumer Insights Associate,
Spanx

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Immersive experiences 9

 Top trends in

04
customer centricity
1. Human-centric approach
2. Customer loyalty and retention

Customer centricity 3. Authenticity

Customer-centric companies are approximately 60% more profitable than

those that don’t focus on their customers. So it's no wonder that digital
professionals believe that customer experiences in 2024 will focus on taking
a human-centered approach that drives loyalty and retention.

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Customer centricity 10

From a one-size-fits-all to a
customer-centric approach
"Transitioning from a one-size-fits-all to a
customer-centric approach is the way to go.
Understanding the ever-evolving customer
needs along with the constantly changing
life realities (whether they’re training for a
marathon, becoming a parent or eating vegan
for a month) will be pivotal for a product
market fit and sustainable company growth."
Juliane Kappel,
Chief Customer Officer,
HelloFresh
2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends
Reward program gamification
Health insurance company Vitality, operates on a Shared Value
Model, which puts customers at the heartbeat of everything
they do. Vanessa Barone, Head of Product at Vitality, explains
this as “doing what is best for our members, which in turn is
best for the business and best for society.”
This approach is emulated in their
Vitality Program, which rewards positive
customer behavior; the more customers
care for their physical and mental health,
the more points they get. Customers can
use points towards free coffee, movie
tickets and other rewards.
Customer centricity 11
05 Top trends in
data-driven insights
Data-driven insights 1. Data analytics
2. Optimization, testing and
experimentation
In business, decision-making based on gut feeling is already a thing of
the past, and in 2024 customer experiences will be entirely powered by
3. Speed and friction
data-driven insights, with data analytics platforms giving companies an 4. Analysis and insights reporting
unprecedented understanding of customer behavior, feelings and intent.

The big data market is projected to hit

$84 billion
in revenue in 2024. Source: Statista

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Data-driven insights 12

Mapping out the full digital
experience Data-backed decision-making

“Long gone are the days where you're just Relying on data to guide decision-making rather than opinion
trying to figure out what happened on a page. and intuition has helped New Balance build trust and take a
It's now all about user pathways (which can customer-first approach.
jump from one experience to another across
different devices), mapping out the full digital Using Contentsquare's side-by-side Zoning Analysis, the
New Balance team knows how experiments impact
experience and connecting it with your offline
engagement and conversion metrics. They can draw key
experiences. We can talk about AI and many
learnings from experiments while staying grounded in real
other tools, but you have to get the basics insights to share with the rest of the team.
right. Do you have the right data quality to
have all the right processes in place? And do
Discover how a simple experiment helped New Balance
you have a culture of experimentation to fuel improve conversion rates by 6.8%. →
the innovation on the right experiences for your
customers?"
Ayuna Tckachenko,
VP of Digital Analytics and Experimentation
American Express

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Data-driven insights 13

06 Top trends in
omnichannel experience
Omnichannel experiences 1. Phygital
2. Omnichannel technologies
3. Omnichannel customer journeys
From in-store browsing, to mobile apps, smartwatches and the metaverse,
customer experiences span more channels than ever before. In fact, the
number of touchpoints consumers use before buying has tripled in the last
15 years—from two to six on average.

But the approach to omnichannel experiences is changing; it’s no longer

just about providing seamless experiences regardless of the channel a
customer uses.

In 2024, it’s all about creating one unified experience. And that means
brands must take action now to support future front-end innovations.

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Omnichannel experiences 14

Preparing your back-end for the
future front-end Creating a phygital experience

“If in the future we want our customers to The team at LOOKFANTASTIC combined physical and
be able to say ‘Alexa, I'm looking to go on a digital experiences to great effect when they took beauty
camping trip with my wife, where we can have influencers on a trip to the Coachella Valley Arts and Music
an open fire’, we need to start layering more Festival in California—and brought the whole experience
information into the back-end, while making to life for thousands of customers via their social media
it as human as possible. Businesses that get channels.

ahead of it now will gain advantage in the

They hosted Q&As with their influencers and streamed a live
space in the future.”
shopping event on TikTok. To boost brand awareness, they
Mark Williams, also set up a pop-up stand in the Arndale Shopping Center
Head of eCommerce, in Manchester and the Battersea development in London.
Virgin Experience Days

“Omnichannel is about the experience

—it’s not about the channel."
What is phygital?
Jenna Lindberg, Phygital is a portmanteau word combining (phy)sical and di(gital). It describes
Customer Success Leader,
Contentsquare the process of using technology to link the customer experience in the physical
and digital spaces.

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Omnichannel experiences 15

07 Top trends in social
1. Video and short-form content
Social 2. Social commerce
3. User-generated content (UGC)
4. Influencers and partnerships
Consumers can now research, interact with and buy from brands via social
media platforms—whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or TikTok.

What’s more, brands can use social channels to ask for and publish user-
generated content that acts as a highly credible brand testimonial and
helps customers feel part of a brand community.

Already a huge market, social commerce shows no signs of slowing down,

with the global social commerce industry expected to reach a whopping
$1.2 trillion by 2025.

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Social 16

Moving towards community
commerce Increasing conversions with UGC

“The future of CX is social commerce. But Beauty brand Cosnova tested whether integrating user-
I don't mean seeing something great on generated content into its product detail pages (PDPs) would
Instagram and clicking the link to buy it. It’ll positively affect customer loyalty and conversions.
be more about bringing your friends into
purchase decisions and planning things in They added a widget that automatically loads images when
customers add certain hashtags to their Instagram posts.
groups. Our customers travel together, so we’re
looking at how we can bring them together in
The result? Products with the social native widget on the page
a space where they can talk and connect. And had a +30% higher conversion rate than products where the
also, how we can actually engage with that widget was not displayed.
group from a brand perspective, either through
a digital experience or with a live human
being.”
Kellay Buckelew,
VP of Digital Experience,
Norwegian Cruise Line

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Social 17

08 Top trends in
Digital trust
Digital trust 1. Zero-party data and cookieless
tracking
2. Data security and privacy
With the gradual phasing out of third-party cookies in 2024 and increased
data privacy concerns, brands will need to take action to prepare for a 3. Conscious customer experiences
cookieless world—especially with the need to provide hyper-personalized
experiences.

Building trust with customers and finding direct ways to capture customer
data is the key to creating meaningful and unique experiences that tailor
to the unique needs of the individual.

And as consumers become more ecologically and environmentally

conscious, factoring in sustainability and business impact into customer
experiences becomes key.

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Digital trust 18

Adopting trends while
prioritizing data protection
“In the realm of digitalization, 2024 will see a
shift towards hyper-personalization, with AI-
driven algorithms tailoring user experiences
at an unprecedented level of granularity,
while also prioritizing user consent and data
protection in compliance with evolving privacy
regulations.”
Veronika Morozová,
CRO Manager,
IU International University of Applied Sciences
Cookieless Experience Analytics
The increased data privacy concerns has prompted the need for brands
to change the way they track user behavior and interactions. Cookieless
analytics platforms allow brands to understand their user behavior without
the use of traditional browser cookies.
Take Contentsquare’s digital experience analytics platform, for example. It
offers users the option to not use third-party or first-party cookies. Instead,
Contentsquare uses intent-based customer data and insights to help
brands unlock a deeper understanding of customers without compromising
privacy or security.

Learn more about cookieless analytics →

“Zero-party data is data that a customer

intentionally and proactively shares with
a brand.”
Forrester

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Digital trust 19

09 Digital accessibility is not a
Digital accessibility trend; it’s a necessity for all
businesses.

With 16% of the world's population (that’s one in six of us) experiencing
a significant disability, companies must ensure they provide inclusive
experiences that allow everyone access to the same information and
services. In 2024, this means embedding accessibility into business culture
and existing processes.

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Digital accessibility 20

Embedding accessibility into your
existing processes Accessibility is a team sport

“It’s all about building it into your existing processes. It can’t just be an Digital accessibility isn’t only your development team’s
add-on; it has to be part of what everybody does. responsibility. Everyone in the product design, marketing, and
customer-facing teams has a part to play.

From building your products all the way through to your design,
content, research and user testing. That’s how you ensure that
everything stays accessible.
It takes a long time, so I’d suggest working out key points in your
existing processes and then embedding it into them.
For example, members of Microsoft’s digital team are
constantly asking themselves: “How can I help to make the
digital experience more accessible?” This leads to a sharing of
responsibilities, such as digital content creators adding image
descriptions and alt text to content, rather than relying on the
development team to do this for them.

Try not to create a new process—people don't want that. An example Get more tips in the
of this is marking up design specifications. Design specs are already Digital Accessibility Handbook →
created with a ton of information in them that a developer needs. Just
add a new section in there for accessibility information, and mark up
the designs with the info you want to relay like focus order, heading
levels, alt text and accessibility labels.“

Heather Hepburn,
Accessibility Lead,
Skyscanner

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Digital accessibility 21

10 Top trends in
mobile
Mobile 1. Mobile-first design
2. Mobile app experience
3. Super apps
With the number of apps downloaded worldwide growing by +80% since
2016, standing out in the highly competitive mobile apps market is no
mean feat.

Brands that understand their user behavior and continually optimize and
provide frictionless mobile experiences will stay ahead of the curve in 2024.

In 2024, the number of smartphone users

worldwide is predicted to reach

4.7 billion. Source: Statista

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Mobile 22

Shifting towards native app experiences
The big app-ortunity
“I think a big focus will be on how we can experiment and optimize
native experiences, and not just focus on desktop-responsiveness to
In order to optimize your mobile app experience, you need to first
cater for mobile web experiences. I think there is a really big shift in
understand how users interact with your app and where they might
customer appetite from using mobile to browse the internet to looking struggle. App analytics provides brands with insights into their in-app
at content in-app.” user activity and behavior.

Akila Chintamani,
Digital Journey Optimization Manager, And using a platform like Contentsquare brings the power of digital
Commonwealth Bank of Australia experience analytics (DXA) to the mobile app user experience, turning
app data from a black box to a treasure chest. Our mobile app
analytics solution enables you to:

Understanding mobile app behavior • Understand your users’ behaviors and feelings
• Fix issues and errors fast
“We've been saying mobile-first for quite some time now, but it’s • Prioritize actions based on business impact
important to understand what your app is actually used for and why
your customers are using your mobile app versus desktop, especially Learn more about app analytics →
in a hybrid world. And then you should build for that in mind because it
might not be a one-size-fits-all solution and your customers might be
using your app for different aspects.”
Alexandra London,
Head of Digital,
Zoom

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Mobile 23

Future-proof your CX
with Contentsquare
Contentsquare delivers the power to make the digital world
more human. As the leader in digital experience analytics,
our AI-powered platform provides rich insight into customer
behaviors, feelings and intent, enabling businesses to
develop empathy, create lasting impact and build customer
trust with security, privacy and accessibility.

Watch a quick tour →

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends About Contentsquare 24

Research methods Overview of the 2024 Digital Customer
Experience Trends survey
This report is based on a survey of 2751 digital professionals
within marketing, UX and product functions across industries
globally conducted between April and October 2023.

Upon signing up for Contentsquare’s flagship CX Circle

events across the globe, registrants were asked “What do
you think will be the biggest trend in digital experience next
year?”. The data was collated and sorted using thematic
analysis as a prompt for Open AI’s Chat-GPT4 tool. All data
was translated and grouped into the 10 categories and
2751
Respondents
48
Countries
sub-categories.

Our primary data has been supplemented by secondary

research from Statista, McKinsey, Deloitte, Forrester,
Precedence Research and others.

32%
Senior leaders
68%
Managers and
15
Industries
practitioners

2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends Research methods 25