Accenture Life Trends 2024 A word from Accenture SongWe create these trends every year as a window into the interplay between people and their behaviors and attitudes to the world around them—be it business, technology, or other societal shifts. It’s now commonly accepted that customer-obsession is the best growth strategy. Superb customer experiences are expected. It takes meticulous orchestration to play a meaningful and relevant role in your customers’ lives. However, customers are messy. They’re emotional and they’re changing faster than you can change your business, so keeping pace is a constant challenge. These trends examine these shifts, and seek to help businesses define how to catalyze growth by staying relevant to customers—which is Accenture Song’s mission.Accenture Life Trends 20242 There are various layers that mediate between people and the way they live their lives, influencing what they think, how they interact, and how they feel within the world around them. Whether driving consumption, maintaining authority, progressing culture, or sharing information, organizations are part of a matrix of intermediaries on which economies are built.There's undeniable fragility in the relationships between people and these influences, because they’re changing. Some are emerging, some declining, some adapting—and all hold significance to people’s lives. This is putting society into a state of flux, where people are now deconstructing everything as they try to figure out who they are in the world. And that goes into the heart of Accenture's Life Trends this year. So... where should we begin?Where should we begin?Accenture Life Trends 20243 ContentsTrend 1 Where's the love?5 – 16Trend 2 The great interface shift17 – 27Trend 3 Meh-diocrity28 – 37Trend 4 Error 429: Human request limit reached38 – 46Trend 5Decade of deconstruction47 – 57Accenture Life Trends 20244 Trend 1Where's the love?Necessary cuts across enterprises have shunted customer obsession down the priority list—and customers are noticing.Trend 15 For years, the correlation between customer experience and revenue growth inspired organizations to hold the customer at the center of every decision. Now, economic considerations are forcing cuts throughout enterprises, driving friction between customers and brands across channels—in the form of price increases, quality cuts, illogical subscriptions, and poor customer service. Customers are noticing, and some feel hard done by. The key question: How do brands keep their product in the basket in the long term? Accenture Life Trends 20246Error 429: Human request limit reachedMeh-diocrityDecade of deconstructionWhere’s the love?The great interface shift|||| * Source: Accenture Life Trends survey, August 2023** Source: Accenture CxO Pulse survey, June 2023What’s going on Businesses are scrambling to cut costs and protect profits against a strained economic backdrop. They’ve made tough decisions to survive, with one major consequence: the erosion of customer experiences. Like it or loathe it, consumerism is a socio-economic fact of life for billions of people, with much of their day-to-day experience influenced or mediated by consumer culture. The changes described in this trend are having a significant impact across multiple aspects of life, affecting how people feel every day. Until recently, the direct link between profit and customer experience made the latter top priority, often at the expense of other factors.2 Widespread digital adoption in the 1990s—particularly the internet and, later, smartphones—pushed focus onto experience, which hadn’t previously been emphasized by many businesses outside hospitality. Screen-driven interaction expanded design’s scope beyond physical and graphic design to include usability and desirability.Accenture Life Trends 20247Error 429: Human request limit reachedMeh-diocrityDecade of deconstructionWhere’s the love?The great interface shift||||of CXOs say they plan to raise prices to pass cost increases to customers. Accenture CXO Pulse survey, June 2023 140%of people worldwide think that many companies are prioritizing higher profits over better customer experience.37% Pine and Gilmore’s seminal 1999 book, The Experience Economy, brilliantly captured this shift.3 Designers realized that a user-focused approach yielded the best results, and people began comparing everything to their best digital experiences, fueling liquid expectations. Without profitability, organizations won’t survive long. As the economic climate sharpens investors’ focus, leaders are seeking ways to reduce expenses and increase operating margins across their business. People feel the impact in multiple aspects of daily life, with many micro-disappointments adding up to a big dent in their lived experience. It seems the promises of value, choice, ease and empowerment are being downgraded, and it stings. For over a decade, brands seemed obsessed with their relationship with customers, fl