Where do you think the biggest customer experience innovation of the next 10 years will come from?

In a LinkedIn poll completed last month, that is the exact question posed by Rapide, a U.K.  enterprise feedback and customer insights company.

The survey included about 350 responses from professional of all varying ages and positions. Some major brands included were Sony, eBay, O2, BT, Groupon and Thorntons.

And the most common answer? Mobile technology, with nearly half the votes at 37%. Oddly, social media scored much lower, with 16% of the votes. Other categories included on-demand services, augmented reality and predictive customer analysis.

The truth is, most trends seem to indicate that it is a combination of mobile technology and social media that, when combined, offer a very powerful set of tools for customer communication and feedback. With the virtual ‘megaphone’ that social networking presents, and the accessibility of mobile devices, companies would be seriously mistaken not to consider social media along with mobile power when outlining their customer experience strategies.

According to Nigel Shanahan, managing director at Rapide, “we launched this poll to find out how brands really feel about the future of customer experience, and the results show that the industry as a whole feels the same, that mobile is the way forward. Mobile technology is available to all, customers can connect with it instantly and it provides a quality platform for communication between brands and their customers, so in a way it is a very obvious tool for the future.”

While this poll seems rather small to make definitive claims, it does lend insight into what brands across varying customer-focused industries consider the future of customer experience innovation.

What do you think will be the next big thing in customer experience?

via MyCustomer.com