Customer experience trends that went unnoticed 2020

Many people will look back on 2020 and say that the major business trend of the year was health-related. The pandemic has, of course, changed the way we live and work, and it has transformed the relationship between brands and consumers – possibly forever.

However, there have been a number of much less obvious evolutions in business, that many people won’t have noticed but will hopefully give you a little inspiration.

Customer trends: 1. The rise of C-commerce

This year we have seen several commerce trends surfacing in the West that have quite literally been copied and pasted from Chinese companies like Alibaba and Tencent, with trends like social commerce, influencer commerce and live streaming all very much China-inspired.

This year has highlighted the importance of integration and the use of digital channels to create a smooth and frictionless offering. We are spending more time on social media, for example, so it is only natural that the channel should become where we also shop for clothes, books or event tickets.

Similarly, while we have been confined to our homes, it’s natural that retailers in the West too are increasingly livestreaming their offering. In China, this type of streaming commerce is already worth about $5 billion, and Europe looks to be following in these footsteps.

China’s perfect blend of online and offline and its heavy use of influencer marketing is also entering the European market.

Clothing retailer C&A was a great example of this with its TikTok- shop window in Belgium, using huge phone-like screens in the window display showing several influencers quickly changing outfits to show their favourite looks.

Consumers, too, can participate and record similar videos in the fitting rooms with a chance to be selected for display in the shop windows themselves.

Walmart seems to be very serious about China-inspiration too, as it is still considering investment in the US version of TikTok together with Oracle.

It is a move that will allow it to become one of the first retail movers in the West to dabble in social commerce – where users can buy products directly on social channels – and also increase advertising space.

Facebook, too, is looking at social commerce with payment services launched via fingerprint or facial recognition, while YouTube is investigating the possibilities of adding general shopping functionality to its videos.

2. Mental health pushing new business models and functionalities

Over the past year, entertainment and social platforms have played a crucial part in keeping people mentally healthy during the pandemic.

Technology has become our door to the outside world, our connection with loved ones and it has helped us to grow.

Companies in this sector such as Netflix, Disney+, Twitch, Instagram, Facebook, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Youtube, are having a growing and diversifying influence upon our social fabric, and I think the concept of “essential industries” and “key workers” will shift beyond physical health into mental health.

Instagram’s influence has grown from a purely social and visual channel to one that is becoming the main source of news for 11% of its users in 2020.

YouTube organized the 10-day global “We Are One” film festival, co-curated by over 21 film festivals from across the world, to help fight COVID-19, support the movie industry, and help people stay entertained.

Other pure entertainment players moved into education. The BBC focused on promoting its free online study support resource platform, Bitesize, while Netflix started to offer a Chrome extension – Language Learning with Netflix – that allows to study languages with films and series.

Google Career Certificates launched to help participants get qualifications in high-paying, high-growth job fields without attending university.

We will see more shifts, convergences, and industry-hopping in these segments in the coming months, and mental health is going to open up a multi-billion dollar market in the coming years.

3. Game of ethics

There were actually two dynamics in this trend. Firstly, we saw a real concern from a lot of tech companies on fighting bias, racism, and fake news in response to the public’s need for more ethical best practices.

IBM, for instance, no longer allows the police to use its facial recognition software for racial profiling, making sure to never again unintentionally facilitate racism, while Microsoft President Brad Smith announced that his company has not been selling its technology to law enforcement until there is a national law.

In the battle against fake news, Twitter added a fact-check label to a tweet from Donald Trump. It also is testing a feature that aims to discourage users from sending a reply using language that could be “offensive or hurtful”, while both Facebook and Twitter have been taking down QAnon – a very bleak far-right conspiracy theory pages and accounts to fight disinformation.

Tech companies have been taking steps to be more self-regulating and ethical, but governments have joined this project to investigate whether tech giants hold monopoly power and should have parts of their businesses effectively broken up.

This second part of the dynamic is much darker. We have seen people in power perhaps pretending to care for ethics and the rights of the public, and using this as an excuse for their own hidden agenda.

President Trump targeting companies like TikTok and Huawei on the grounds of national security and identity theft was arguably just pushing the US-Sino trade war to a new height.

His anger at the “Get the facts about mail-in ballots” Twitter label resulted in an executive order calling for a rewrite of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides a shield to online publishers from liability for content generated by users.

So, even though the ‘fake ethics’ trends from less bona fide players is terrifying, it’s above all positive to see how governments, users, and tech companies are all trying to keep each other in check and ethical.

About the author 

Steven van Belleghem is one of the world’s leading thought-leaders, speakers, and authors on customer engagement. His new book, The Offer You Can’t Refuse is out now.

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