It seems to me that the pace of change has been increasing over the past half decade. Trends that would have taken years to set in are now assimilated in our lives in a matter of months. We've taken the time to reflect back on the year that's been, and take a look at what's lying ahead for 2015 on the CX side of things. Here, in a nutshell, are the 5 trends based upon our work with organizations in both India and around the world.

1) Omni-channel is the wave of the future
Customers now expect to receive service from your organization on the channel of their choice, which might be voice, email, SMS/text, web, mobile or social media. Companies provide service on most of these channels. But too often, those channels exist in silos.

While multi-channel customer experience is a given for most large organizations, very few have evolved to build a truly omni-channel customer experience. Omni-channel experience is the desired state for many companies in 2015. What distinguishes omni-channel from multi-channel is that there is true integration between channels on the back end. For example, when a store has implemented an omni-channel approach, the customer service representative in the store will be able to immediately reference the customer's previous purchases and preferences just as easily as the customer service representative on the phone or the customer service web-chat representative can. The only way this is achievable, is by utilizing solutions that help you understand, predict and adapt to your customers' needs in real time - across channels - so that you can create tailored experiences that go beyond what customers expect.

When you offer such an omni-channel experience throughout your customer journey, your customers' favorable brand perception is made up across their entire journey with your brand. This is why in many organizations, the CMO - who is responsible for the brand - also owns the customer journey. It's been mentioned more than once that there is an increasing overlap or blurring of boundaries between Marketing and CX.

2) Data goes cross-channel too