Table of Contents
2022 Experience Trends Report
Four Trends That Are Changing Customer & Employee Experiences This Year
2020 & 2021 Flipped Experiences on Their Heads…. Now It’s Time to Innovate
It’s safe to say the last few years have been challenging for businesses and society as a whole. As we move forward and hopefully past the pandemic, experience-focused businesses are faced with a new challenge: there is no back to normal.
To be successful in 2022, businesses need to break from the status quo and make the choice to innovate by listening to their customers, non-buyers, employees, and other experience stakeholders to determine their strategy going forward.
That’s where the 2022 Experience Trends Report comes in.
About the Research
This is a trends report unlike any other, built for a time unlike any other.
InMoment’s Strategic Insights Team collected data from both consumers and employees of brands within North America across 11 different industries about three core topics:
-
The Future Stakeholder Journey
Consumer and employee expectations for 2022; what are the new drivers of loyalty, retention, and acquisition?
-
The ‘New’ World of Experience
Understanding how brands across industries need to adapt the digital and in-store experience.
-
The Emerging Internal & External Personas
What do emerging consumers and employees look like? How can brands meet their needs
Not only did we survey both employees and consumers via InMoment’s Market Pulse solution, but we also combined that direct feedback with indirect and inferred feedback to create an even more holistic view of experience expectations.
Four Experience Trends for 2022
You know the where, how, what, and who of this research. Now we need to know what those experience stakeholders need from us. In our research, we identified the following four trends:
Experience Standards Are Changing… Again
As COVID keeps changing, brands need to be prepared to adapt to new journeys and emerging generations
Surveys Will Not Be Enough for Ongoing Experience Improvement
Emerging consumers and employees—Gen Z and Gen Alpha—will be less likely to engage in surveys and digital forms.
New Loyalty Indicators & Drivers Are Emerging
Focusing on your industry alone can lead your brand to lag behind emerging cross-industry trends, reducing your market share.
Gen Z & Gen Alpha Will Revolutionize the Workplace
The emerging workforce is full of collaborative and innovative individuals—and they’re looking for positions that fulfill those needs.
Trend #1
Experience Standards Are Changing… Again
A Word About COVID
We know: everyone is tired of talking about the novel Coronavirus. But if we didn’t mention it, we’d be remiss, especially since mask mandates and other safety measures are still common. What we wanted to know is how experience stakeholders feel about the possible loosening of these protocols.
We found that 1 in 2 consumers and employees were comfortable with the possibility of reducing of COVID restrictions and precautions in the coming year.
The Future of the Customer and Employee Journey
When it comes to experiences, you can no longer examine your industry standards in a silo because trends will defy industry lines. Your customers and employees will be comparing the experience you provide to the ones they recieve in other industries.
We asked, “what experiences are you looking forward to in the following industries?” Here’s what we heard:
The Future of the Customer’s Journey
The Future of the Employee’s Journey
Trend #2
Surveys Will Not Be Enough for Ongoing Experience Improvement
Are Surveys Best Practice for Listening in 2022 and Beyond?
The short answer is no, surveys alone will not be enough for ongoing experiences. However, surveys are far from “dead.” They simply need to evolve to meet the needs of tomorrow. We added additional insights by comparing to a similar survey we conducted three years ago. The circled items in this chart (Microsurveys, social media and review sites, and live chat) are the listening methods that have seen significant growth of interest in the last few years.
To understand the role of surveys and other listening methods in 2022, we asked how stakeholders would like to provide feedback in the next year. Here are their responses:
Trend #3
New Loyalty Indicators & Drivers Are Emerging
Loyalty Is No Longer Linear
The customer journey is more complex than ever before (and that’s even an understatement). Gone are the days when they view their experience in the silo of an industry. The modern experience stakeholder is comparing their experience across industries, and that is impacting their loyalty to individual brands.
Today’s brands truly need to collect data from everywhere to understand the journeys their experience stakeholders are having with other brands so that they can identify opportunities to provide differentiated experiences that increase loyalty.
We found that each industry has a specific action it could take to provide differentiated experiences for its consumers and employees. Here’s what experience stakeholders expect in exchange for their loyalty:
Trend #4
Gen Z Will Revolutionize the Workforce
A Portrait of the Gen Z Employee
As we collected data from employees, we honed in on the emerging workforce: Gen Z. And for good reason! These up-and-comers are looking for something very specific in their workplace.
Leveraging both our Market Pulse and research from InMoment client Glassdoor, we can pinpoint three areas where Gen Z-ers differ from Millennials:
1. Culture
“[I] am likely to choose a [company] that allows me to express myself […] and [get] creative with mentorship and support.”
2. Diversity
“I’m looking for [a company] that bring in diverse [experiences and] talents that can challenge one another.”
3. Connectivity
“I believe that success [means] bringing everyone together […] we all [want] to be part of the equation [not just our executives].”
Which Industries Are Aligned with Gen Z Ideals?
Next, we looked at each industry through the lenses of culture, diversity, and connectivity to see how each is performing according to our employee feedback data.
Here are the industries excelling at bringing culture, diversity, and connectivity to the table, and those which have an opportunity to further attract Gen Z to open positions:
There’s more where that came from!
Fill out this form and you’ll gain access to the full length report, which includes exclusive content, like:
- Action steps from our expert strategists, detailing what you can do tomorrow to address these trends
- How effective are social media influencers for expanding awareness and market share?
- How does customer loyalty and employee engagement affect investment decisions?
- What specifically can employers do to attract and retain employees?
- How can brands reach the emerging Gen Z consumer? How do they want to leave feedback as consumers and as employees?
- And more!