Consumers kill for digital convenience: Can AI help your business?

We’ve all seen countless images of the proverbial empowered consumer.  That mythical creature seeking convenience and instant gratification.  It’s a conjured-up image of a time-strapped digital native that juggles five devices and 15 tasks, interacting simultaneously on a host of channels, using their super-human consumerism to wield terrifying powers capable of paralyzing unworthy brands.

AI in business

Hyped-up as they are, these visuals still serve a healthy purpose.  They remind us just how far digital bars have been raised, and that should cause pause and beg the question, “as businesses, are we measuring up?”

Collectively, the answer is we’re not.  In fact, consumer satisfaction studies repeatedly confirm it.  Simply search on, “consumer study poor digital experience” and voila – hundreds of examples.  One study conducted by Software Advice found over 90 percent of consumers had one or more deal-breaker digital experiences when seeking customer support on mobile[i].  So, in an age with so much technology at our fingertips, why are we falling short?  What can we do to fix this?

Too often, we fall short because we focus on the wrong problems in the wrong order.  To correct this, it’s important to first consider a modern consumer’s mindset and what they’re demanding.  With greater resolve, they’re chasing after nirvana, in a quest for brands that deliver products, services and experiences that are:

  • Valuable / relevant
  • Consistent / high-quality
  • Enjoyable / attractive / personalized
  • Familiar / trusted
  • Secure / lower risk
  • Compatible with values / social beliefs
  • Convenient / simple / timely

Enterprises, however, can’t perfect all seven of these deadly-important areas simultaneously.  So, the trick is finding what matters most, and then using AI and automation technologies to help.

AI in business won’t magically transform a company with fundamental structural flaws, such as poorly designed products, no unique selling proposition, or cost containment issues. These take great human leadership, creativity, and collaboration to fix.  And it won’t manage the job of building and maintaining corporate culture.  But in other cases, AI applied pragmatically to streamline processes and eradicate friction can make an enormous difference.

What’s proven to be a winning recipe in business is paying attention to customer-centric details.  Brands hyper-focused on customer experience build a lasting reputation and increase in value.  Look at Apple, Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, and even Booking.com.  All built on the backs of nailing digital experience, often with a mobile-first mentality.  Yet, with seven major areas and hundreds of experience details to consider, where should you start?

Is convenience king?

Out of the above seven criteria, convenience may be the most important in terms of driving long-term value, and the one CX professionals can influence the most.  Perfecting convenience can separate winners from losers; sellers from re-stockers. Consider this quote from a CEB study[ii]:

“Brands that help consumers simplify the purchase journey have customers who are 86 percent more likely to purchase their products and 115 percent more likely to recommend their brand to others.”

AI in business

And convenience contributes to and builds up other factors, such as being viewed as valuable, familiar, and trusted.  It may be one of the chief drivers of loyalty.  It can even trump something like price.  For example, wireless carriers have learned consumers prefer unlimited communication plans because they’re convenient and simple, even though they may cost more[iii].  Consumers make impulsive and emotional purchase decisions when enough of the factors align, and tend to justify things afterwards.  Since consumers’ assessment of convenience is qualitative, figuring out how to elicit positive emotional responses regarding convenience is crucial.

In a consumer’s mind, the label of convenience translates into a business being viewed as:

  • Useful and suitable
  • Easy to buy from, use, and transact with
  • Requiring less overall effort
  • Simple to understand / responsive to issues
  • A time saver

Each is a judgment call by an individual, but with critical mass and time, these opinions converge to a collective market consensus (the wisdom of the crowd).  They manifest themselves in the form of review scores, ratings, and tribally-shared social advice.  It’s this reputation that drives commercial allegiance.

Largely, consumers make emotional decisions when they choose one product over another.  Sometimes they want combinations that are seemingly impossible to get:

  • A readymade desert that tastes great and is nutritional
  • A car that is inexpensive, fast, great looking, economical, and durable
  • A delicious pizza that comes in a few minutes, is made by an environmentally-conscience brand, and oh…costs less than $10

It’s no wonder brands struggle to satisfy whimsical consumer desires, but fickleness aside, they cry out for brands to simply simplify things.  Ironically, they work longer and harder to live in a world that supplies them with exploding choices for everything but precocious little time to weigh options, which in turn drives them to crave simplicity in decision making. They demand trusted information that is easily accessible.  They want user-friendly ways to weigh options, and help navigating processes.  In a 2016 survey on travel shopping preferences, consumers picked ease of use as the top reason they booked using an online travel site.[iv]

AI knows there’s no second chance to make a first impression

Consumers want convenience, but which actions will achieve maximal impact?   Before answering this, keep in mind a marketing 101 maxim: perception is nine tenths reality.  And perception is often built-up on first impressions.  Further, when an initial impression goes wrong, it takes multiple positive interactions to repair it.  As such, consider using AI as tooling in helping elevate levels of perceived (and real) overall convenience in critical first-impression customer journeys such as:

  • Getting a quote
  • Completing an application
  • Navigating a sign-up or onboarding process
  • Completing an initial purchase
  • Setting up online payments

And during service scenarios such as:

  • Order status checking
  • Returns
  • Claims
  • Lost card replacement process
  • Scheduling an appointment
  • Finding a doctor

How does AI support these?  If we agree that AI is a mixture of automation and intelligence technologies, AI can help streamline the process for consumers getting answers such as the status of an order, return, or claim.  Further, consumers can even ask these systems to schedule a store or branch appointment, find the most convenient time and location, and then add the appointment to their calendar.

AI-powered chat bots (and other self-service portals) can provide 24 x 7 first-line support for answers to questions like:

  • How to transfer funds
  • Make an online payment,
  • Get account and policy status

In many cases, without any human intervention, bots can answer questions, close out an inquiry, and even assist with completing a transaction.  In situations requiring human agents, AI-based systems can orchestrate seamless hand-offs of data and case details, allowing humans to pick up precisely where machines left off.

Make no mistake, AI skills are already going far beyond performing simple tasks.  Today, AI engines can give nuanced advice, surface unique insights, and provide proactive recommendations.  The most sophisticated systems even factor in customer context, such as location, weather, mood, and motivation before arbitrating on the next-best-action.

In banking, for instance, AI can help track savings and spending habits, and send threshold alerts. To illustrate, suppose a consumer has a recurring transfer from checking to savings each month.  AI can monitor account balances and send an alert when upcoming bill payments are forecasted to drain a checking account beyond non-fee thresholds.

In healthcare, there’s Dr. AI from HealthTap, who can engage in conversation aimed at providing triage and care advice, using a locally-stored health profile, a network of over 100,000 doctors, and Bayesian learning AI to serve up the next-best-advice.

What’s the right set of technologies for your stack?

Well, there’s good news and bad news.  First the bad news – there is no one right answer, and with thousands of vendors (6,829 in this marketing landscape), open-source packages, and resulting combinations of solution stacks possible, there’s no evidence anyone has found the absolute best combination, or ever will.

Now the good news – you have a ton of alternatives, with many combinations likely to work, but finding a stable and winning blend is tricky.  Some tools, on the surface, look easy to use but aren’t.  Others won’t live up (functionally) to their marketing hype.  The best advice is to form a solid basis with at most one or two platforms covering essential infrastructure (that you can’t afford to switch in-out), and make sure these platforms allow for plug and play with adjacent pieces likely to have shorter useful lives.

For example, find vendors with durable connectors for wrangling data into an actionable customer profile, a real-time hub that acts as a central brain to arbitrate customer decisions, and integrated customer analytics.  These components are foundational, and must be centralized so they operate in a channel agnostic fashion.  New channels may spring up, and others diminish in importance, but a decision engine which feeds on key behavior data, arbitrates decisions, and renders appropriate next-best-actions is a necessary constant.

Final thoughts

There’s a real irony forming with AI in business.  We’re building and teaching computers to be more human, while as humans we’re being led and conditioned by our busy lives and workplaces to be more machine-like.  The problem is computers are no humans, and humans are poor computers.

Step back and consider what’s best for the consumer.  Providing great first impressions, as well as seamless and gratifying ongoing experiences, requires well-functioning and well-behaving humans and machines working in concert.  Consumers want products and services they’re proud to recommend because they make life easier and more enjoyable. When things go wrong, they expect flexible help and fast solutions.  When self-service isn’t working, they demand cases smoothly transition to well-informed, caring, and compassionate humans.  Brands must skillfully, judiciously, and mindfully weave together computer systems with humans as they design for convenience in all the complexities of customer journeys.

Delivering convenience must be a paramount goal, so reflect on the unique characteristics of the individuals you serve and the nuances of their voyages.  Dry run how each will navigate your services:  some will be older and less familiar with technology; some will be capable of juggling five devices on five channels; sometimes technology will fail and require fallback processes.

Ultimately, your convenience reputation will be defined by a diverse set of consumers steering through a wide variety of conditions and processes.  Use AI and humans to start off on the right foot, deliver consistently under normal operating conditions, and to proficiently handle the inevitable miscues.

[i] https://www.softwareadvice.com/resources/improve-cx-with-mobile-support/

[ii] https://news.cebglobal.com/press-releases?item=128138

[iii] https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/17/14647870/us-carrier-unlimited-plans-competition-tmobile-verizon-att-sprint

[iv] http://www.traveltripper.com/blog/why-do-travelers-prefer-booking-with-otas/

 

4 well-intended Marketing Automation BAD HABITS to break

Let’s face it.  No one sets out to botch something up or fall short of reaching a goal.  When marketing automation was in its infancy, and pioneers like Don Peppers, Martha Rogers, Tom Siebel, and Paul Greenberg envisioned marketing and CRM systems in the mid 1990’s, they set the right vision, believing great customer relationships could be initiated, fostered, and brought to scale with the right data and technology.  Essentially, their collective creed was:

  • Focus on the individual customer (e.g., be one-to-one and customer centric).
  • Manage the relationship by understanding customers’ buying cycles, needs, and behaviors across the marketing, sales, and service functions.
  • Use that knowledge to custom-tailor and personalize the experience.
  • Use technology to deal with the scale required by larger businesses.

Thirty years later, sadly, this vision still seems out of reach, or at best, only partially realized.  So why is that?  What’s held back the realization of the vision?  What are we still doing wrong?

Here are four unhealthy habits of nearly every marketer (so the good news is you’re not alone).  Fix these, and you’ll get a distinct advantage, and get closer to marketing optimization and CRM nirvana.

 

Bad habit #1 – Focusing on customer segments and not individuals

Customers are individuals.  Each has unique characteristics, nuances, and contextual needs that define who they really are.  And though we’re awash in a wealth of unique behavior data, it’s a common mistake to continue trekking on the beaten path, making decisions based on segment characteristics rather than individual ones.  For years, we’ve slotted customers into segments because we had no other choice, oversimplifying who they really are.

1 to 1 marketing automation

It’s understandable in the initial stages of relationship management that businesses make broad customer classifications such as:

  • Returning visitors
  • Mobile visitors by geography and device type
  • Registered users by gender and age (leading to segments like Millennials, Gen Zs, and Gen Alphas)
  • Non-responders to an email campaign

Yet after these customers repeatedly interact and transact, clearly stating their implicit and explicit preferences, continually handing over lifestyle and contextual data, there’s no excuse for still making generalized, segment-based decisions.  We’re spending millions collecting, storing, and refreshing specific behaviors and preferences, so we should use this data to drive individualized decisions and to customize treatments.

In a recent paper titled “Crossing the chasm: From campaigns to always-on marketing,” [i] Rob Walker and Matt Nolan contend that “building audiences using segmentation is a process that introduces severe challenges such as compromised relevance, unscaled labor, and collisions and conflicts.”  They go on to suggest using a next-best-action approach, describing it as one that “targets individual customers, rather than segments – leveraging their unique needs, preferences, and context.”

 

Bad habit #2 – Focusing on selling products instead of customers’ needs

Sounds crazy, right?   How else will we make money if we don’t sell products?

Still one of the cardinal sins holding back modern marketers is focusing strategy and tactics solely on selling products.  By doing this, we’re exasperating two problems:

  1. Product owners, incented to relentlessly push their products, bombard consumers with ill-conceived campaigns containing messages and offers that conflict, overlap, or worse, aren’t even applicable. When viewed through a customer’s lens, these promotions have little to do with their actual needs.  As such, marketers often completely miss the relevance mark.
  2. Even when a product fits, companies fail to provide well-timed promotions, convenient services, and a context-sensitive experience. Oblivious to the individual’s situation, they make company-focused timing and interaction decisions, such as blindly promoting a product simply because ad budget might otherwise expire, or failing to promote crucial services in conjunction with the product..  Consequently, tactics are entirely out-of-synch with the customer’s buying cycle and experience expectations.

Together, these problems compound customers’ negative brand perceptions.  Rather than providing a stellar buying service, well-intentioned marketers inadvertently (and increasingly) overwhelm, turn off, and tune out consumers.  Essentially blind to journey requirements, marketers miscalculate customers’ value calculus, timing preferences, and the overall interaction experience they need and expect.

In study after study (year after year), consumers and brands acknowledge these issues, both resoundingly stating their desire for solutions.  For example, in 2012 the Corporate Executive Board (now part of Gartner) surveyed more than 7000 consumers and 200 CMOs, finding that what consumers want from marketers is relevance and “simply, simplicity.”[ii]  That was 2012.  It’s 2018, and not much has changed.

If corporations keep strategy oriented on selling products, customer relationships will remain transactional and experiences sub-optimal for many more years.  Maybe we’ve forgotten what the R in CRM stands for.  It was put there to remind us that what matters most is long-term relationship building.  Our quest should be to unravel the mystery of a customer’s ever-changing needs, their journeys, and what drives their loyalty.  Our job is to use that knowledge to create custom-tailored experiences.

 

Bad habit #3 – Building channel-based versus coordinated intelligence

Shortly after September 11, 2001, the US government came to a stark realization that its various intelligence agencies were massively disjointed and compartmentalized.  This hadn’t happened overnight.  It was years in the making, and although for decades ample resources were poured into each agency, no one agency was responsible for coordination.  Attempting to solve this problem, the government established the Department of Homeland Security.

channel intelligenceIn a similar vein, some firms have built up marketing automation and CRM intelligence in silos for over 30 years.  In each channel (e.g., email, contact centers, web), they’ve poured substantial resources into projects aimed at beefing up customer intelligence.  Each channel amassing data, rules, and intelligence, but no one designated as the coordinator, and information rarely shared.  Subsequently, as more channels emerged, the problem grew larger. Today, many companies have 15 or more channels to manage, and no coordinating function.

To provide wonderful experience, brands need a function responsible for coordinated customer analytics, intelligence, and decision making, such as depicted in Figure 1.  Its role is straightforward:

  1. Collect interaction intelligence and contextual data from each touchpoint, and connect it directly to a system that can leverage that information immediately.
  2. Be brain-like, tracking behavior patterns in real-time, sensing needs, and using analytics to dynamically calculate value, comprehend preferences, and predict intent.
  3. Play the arbitrator, weighing an individual’s needs against corporate initiatives, policy, risk tolerance, budgets, and economic goals. Make instant and well-balanced decisions, track the results, and learn from each decision.

 

engagement hub

Figure 1: Engagement hub provides coordinated omnichannel intelligence

Think of this, not as another physical department, but instead as a virtual customer-centric hub. Designed from the ground up to be connected to all customer touchpoints, it’s journey oriented versus channel centric.  Cognizant of what transpired, why, and what’s best to do next, its embedded strategies and rules act as a real-time arbitration committee – making data-driven decisions in milliseconds versus months.

This hub is also more than a customer data platform.  It’s an end-to-end engagement hub responsible for not only gathering and coordinating intelligence, but also gleaning real-time insights and taking action.  To deliver on that, it manages key data, customer analytics, corporate rules and processes, and channel interfaces.  In a calculated and auditable fashion, it makes recommendations, delivers them to touchpoints (the channel apps fine tune the experience), and it learns from a systemic set of impressions and responses.

 

Bad habit #4 – Worrying primarily about marketing automation and technology, instead of experience

Automation, and the technology that enables it, efficiently repeats tasks.  That’s great, if you computerize the right tasks that deliver the right experience.  Look at it this way:  spammers are very effective at marketing automation.

Above all, to achieve lasting loyalty and build value, avoid the temptation to recklessly make existing marketing processes more efficient.  Granted, some existing tactics may work, yet chances are many need to be revamped (or ditched entirely), and recognizing that requires reframing priorities.  Preferably, focus on customer journeys, and ask if marketing tactics contribute to a better experience.  Consider journeys such as:

 

  • Prospects searching for products to discover and learn more
  • Customers seeking out trials to test those products
  • Customers embarking on a buying or upgrade process
  • Customers doing research on price, available incentives, and financing options
  • People filling out an application, making a booking, or redeeming rewards
  • Consumers getting stuck, struggling, or in need of assistance
  • Clients reaching milestones, entering new life stages, or affected by key events

No organization can serve its customers without supporting people.  To illustrate, assume your kiosk has a reasonable self-service experience, but then something goes wrong.  The technology hiccups, and a customer begins agitating.  Without back-up mechanisms, this situation can quickly turn disastrous.  To avoid it, you need reasonable levels of redundancy, well-tested cut-over processes, and intelligent detectors that gauge the need for human intervention, and then bring the right human into the loop.

Brands that thoughtfully consider these scenarios, elegantly weaving together marketing automation, people, and processes, will deliver better customer experience.

But how can you be sure you’re improving experience?  In short, hyper-focus on one journey at a time, pick metrics to measure each, and correspondingly measure overall satisfaction.  Once more, here’s where many firms trip up.  Instead of measuring whether the customer is fully satisfied with, say, the onboarding journey, they only measure certain tactics, like whether a welcome email got sufficient opens and clicks.

Conclusion

Be honest. We all have some bad habits that admittedly we should give up for our own good.  But breaking old habits isn’t easy.  And like any habits, we’re comfortable with our marketing automation traditions because the outcomes are predictable.  Nonetheless, just because they’re predictable, doesn’t mean they’re best for our customers.

When we force-fit customers into segments, push products on them that we want to sell, confuse them with conflicting and poorly orchestrated channel messages, and hyper-focus on our efficiency (versus their experience), the results will be predictable alright – in other words, we’ll get our anemic 0.5% response rates and slow growth.

If you think, however, you can do better, then take a chance.  Collect as much individualized data as you can, use it to personalize customers’ experiences, coordinate decisions with one principle engagement hub, and as Steve Jobs said, “…start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.”

[i] Crossing the chasm: From campaigns to always-on marketing, https://www1.pega.com/insights/resources/crossing-chasm-campaigns-always-marketing , December 2017

[ii] CEB Press Release, https://news.cebglobal.com/press-releases, May 2012