My friends at Keap asked me to share my predictions for the annual, “2020 Small Business Marketing Trends Report.” I wanted to share my ideas with you here as well…

Next Generation CX Must Be Designed as Native Experiences for Emerging Platforms

Search and content are more important than ever when it comes to the customer journey. Beyond digital and social media, mobile was a complete game changer. But many businesses have yet to catch up with how mobile changed customer behaviors.

Almost every customer reaches for their device when they set out to make a decision. Their journey starts on the small screen and with it, an entirely new set of expectations and behaviors unfold. With mobile, their intent and preferences, what they consumer and how, change over that of the traditional web. Yet, customer journeys are largely adapting desktop experiences to mobile screens. While functional, it doesn’t address the human dynamics that mobile lifestyles elicit.

Time becomes important. Intuitive, simple and fast touchpoints become the standard. Highly personalized and relevant experiences are becoming competitive differentiators. This means businesses must rethink the customer journey for mobile experiences. Ads, content, pages, next best actions, click paths, all need to be optimized for mobile customer expectations as they continually evolve.

Now voice is changing the game too and also becoming part of the customer experience. As more users connect with voice devices, all of the above is the same for connecting with Alexa, Google Home and Siri. New skills on Alexa, for example, are helping create vocal customer journeys that optimize for the nuances of more rapid, direct, descriptive and transactional touchpoints.

Visual and augmented reality (AR) aka mixed reality too, is starting to enable the visual customer journey. Apps such as Google Lens allow customers to search by looking at an object and as they do, expect a visual (and mobile-optimized) journey. 5G is only going to propagate this and open the door wide open to new experiences and resulting data that will future require innovative engagement.

The future is about discoverability. You have to be present in ways that are relevant to customer moments, intentions and devices. That’s the context for engagement. From there, dedicated and personalized experiences, how you talk, what you show, what you say, become the differentiation that sets you apart. But if you don’t show up the right way, at the right time, on the right device, then you’re by default out of contention in the customer journey.

As the old saying goes, out of sight, out of mind. Perhaps it should be updated.

Without discoverability, whether that’s text, voice or visual, there can be no consideration.