Offering an amazing customer experience is an important competitive differentiator for many staffing and recruiting firms. But changes in customers’ expectations and technology make it tough to consistently WOW clients and candidates. What worked yesterday won’t necessarily cut it today, much less tomorrow.

What’s Changing in Customer Experience?

Customer experience futurist Blake Morgan has boldly predicted 5 trends that are shaping CX in 2018. How do her projections apply to your agency? Here’s what you need to know:

1. CEOs are increasing their involvement in CX strategy.

This one makes sense to me. I know from experience that, unless you make creating an amazing customer experience a strategic priority, you can’t expect anyone else in your organization to. As a staffing firm owner or leader, you set the direction. You create expectations and accountability. If you want to transform the experience your clients and candidates have, you need to build a customer service culture - and that transformation has to start at the top to take hold.

2. CX improvements will focus on time savings.

When it comes to customer service, today’s employers and job seekers are seeking greater immediacy, personalization and convenience. In light of these heightened expectations, you should focus on CX initiatives that save customers time. Think: How could your staffing firm make it easier for clients to place orders? Avoid red tape? For job seekers, how could you make it quicker to find relevant job openings - and then make it faster to apply online, especially from a phone?

3. Companies will use data to add value to customers’ lives.

In her post, Blake shares some mind-boggling statistics about the amount of data we create every day (ever heard of a zettabyte?). All that information can be a blessing or a curse, depending on what your staffing firm does (or doesn’t do) with it. As your staffing firm gathers and tracks more information about clients, prospects and candidates, create a game plan for how you plan to use it. Look for new ways to use customer insights to help your account managers and recruiters personalize and expedite their service.

4. The customer experience cloud will become more important.

The way staffing and recruiting firms gather, store, retrieve and manage data will continue to evolve - especially when it comes to CX. Smart staffing firms will implement cloud technology solutions for improved access to information, greater service efficiency and an enhanced customer experience. Because at the end of the day, your clients and candidates don’t care whom they’re dealing with - a receptionist, account manager, back-office support person or owner - as long as that person can quickly, professionally and effectively serve them.

5. Augmented reality will improve CX.

The Haley Marketing team demoed augmented reality (AR) technology at Staffing World 2017. While the staffing industry tends to be late adopters when it comes to technology, I believe AR and its cousin, virtual reality (VR), will become increasingly important tools for making it easier to do business with a staffing firm. If you’re interested in exploring how your staffing firm could integrate AR to deliver a better experience for employers or job seekers, I’d love to chat - drop me a line or give me a call at 888.696.2900.

Need help improving customer experience in 2018?

Give our marketing educators a call. We’ll provide the expert advice, solutions and automation you need to raise the bar in your staffing firm’s customer experience – by delivering shareworthy service, every time.

About Haley Marketing Group

Haley Marketing provides website development, email and content marketing, social media marketing and strategy consulting to the staffing industry. We provide services to more than 1,200 staffing and recruiting firms throughout the world, ranging from solo recruiters to larger staffing and recruiting organizations with regional, national and international offices. Our mission is simple: to make great marketing more affordable!

About Victoria Kenward, Vice President & COO

Vicki is our queen of shareworthy service. She is 100% committed to making everything we do a “WOW” for our clients. She’s also a tech wiz and process guru who is responsible for some of our most innovative web applications, including HaleyMail, our Job Board software and our Talent Showcase product. With her degree in Information Systems and leadership training from Xerox, Vicki’s systematic approach to work and amazing attention to detail are a perfect compliment to the rest of our team’s more “creative” approach.