Key Trends in Customer Experience for 2024: End-to-end Conversational Journeys, Interactive AI, and the Rise of Super Apps

As technological innovations continue to shape the business landscape, 2024 is poised to be a transformative year for customer experience. Brands are realigning their strategies to prioritize customer delight. Here are the key trends to watch out for.

End-to-end conversational journeys with businesses and brands

Consumers will increasingly demand two-way conversational interactions with a business or brand through the channels and chat apps they use with their families or friends. And they will want one smooth experience rather than hopping between devices and channels.

Brands have this year been reimagining this journey through a conversational lens, where much of the user journey is through a single chat app or digital channel like WhatsApp. The focus now shifts from merely adopting these channels to perfecting the end-to-end conversational experience.

We will see the emergence of truly end-to-end platforms, where customers can click through an advert on Instagram, educate themselves about a product, click to purchase, pay, receive delivery notifications, and complete a satisfaction survey within a single conversational thread in WhatsApp.

META, with WhatsApp, is leading this revolution, with new features such as Flows and Payments facilitating users to transition smoothly from viewing an Instagram ad to making a purchase, all within the platform. Google, Apple and regional champions such as Line, Kakao and Zalo are also making waves, and more platforms will follow.

The move from generative AI to interactive AI

Generative AI, or Gen-AI, has made remarkable progress this year, especially in customer support. It has been instrumental in auto-generating content for messages and emails, and AI-driven bots can handle basic queries.

But the future lies in interactive AI, where, according to Mustafa Suleyman, “bots that can carry out tasks you set for them by calling on other software and other people to get stuff done.”

We will see the emergence of a federation of different bots and AI algorithms being used to trigger different actions across the customer journey.

These advanced tools will be central to marketing and sales automation, answering product-related questions, scheduling deliveries, and managing payments. Integrations will span from generating campaign content to providing AI-driven chatbot interactions, ensuring fluid, human-like conversations with the customers, all within a customer’s favorite channel.

The rise of the super app

We’ve heard much about the rise of the ‘super app’ in recent years, whether WhatsApp, WeChat or others. These platforms, boasting billions of subscribers, present a golden opportunity for brands to integrate and offer their products and services. Musk described WeChat as “Twitter, plus PayPal, plus a whole bunch of other things, and all rolled into one with actually a great interface”.

Telegram appears to be moving towards this model, announcing in September this year that “developers can (now) use JavaScript to create infinitely flexible interfaces that can be launched right inside Telegram — and can completely replace any website.”

Envisioned as multi-purpose hubs, in 2024 these apps will evolve into platforms where users can seamlessly interact with multiple brands.