With the power that AI yields over predictive analytics and forecasting future market trends, it’s often easy to focus solely on growth, profit gain and beating competitors to The Next Big Thing. What is often left out in this approach to AI and predictive analytics is the power to learn more about customers, and how we can alter our methods to provide them with better service. Understanding your consumers – how they think, feel and act – is the real benefit of AI, as this gives businesses the information about how best to drive loyalty and brand engagement.
Modern business is powered by AI, and will be until an even greater technological approach comes along. AI-driven algorithms are constantly processing data, forecasting market trends, and responding to market stimuli in real time. All data captured from consumers, the market, and the competition are crunched and analysed at speeds never before seen, making essential insights readily available, and allowing them to be used by companies of all shapes and sizes.
With companies routinely logging every visit to webpages, every interaction with chatbots, and enquiry response centres and every email received, the customer experience is captured through feedback, questions and queries. Loyalty cards and apps allow trends in purchases to be tracked, so merchants have data from a huge number of their frequent customers, which give them real and actionable insights.
Using AI to deliver personalised experiences
Knowing why sales occur allow businesses to conduct intelligent marketing campaigns that pro-actively drive sales rather than just waiting for them to happen. Companies should turn these insights and forecasts into meaningful actions that drive the strength of their brand and create new business opportunities. By taking customers on a journey that has been crafted specifically for them, businesses can earn their trust and loyalty with ease. What companies are tending to find is that by customising the make-up of the customer experience – through email personalisation, digital advertising or targeted suggestions – consumers do not see the marketing as abrasive or a nuisance, leading to open-mindedness to new ideas and products.
Micro-targeting and personalised, personable sales conversations are fast becoming the ultimate path to success for merchants, as this attention to detail is key to capturing consumers’ focus, and enticing them to the marketplace. Personally relevant, value-heavy, individualised interactions powered by AI and micro-targeting are leading to better customer experiences and retention. Businesses are not only sending out personalised content via a variety of key channels, but they are also becoming increasingly proactive in persuading customers to engage with the brand and become drawn into the brand’s story and ethos.
Additionally, AI can speed up the process of acquiring new customers by using algorithms which can cross channels and consumers, and explain why certain customers were attracted to a certain brand above and beyond its rivals. AI can be used to pick the right channels to tell the right stories to potential customers and customise the content being delivered to audiences.
By handing over much of the legwork to AI, businesses free up resources to concentrate on developing the invaluable insights which help their brand to appeal to the right customers and ultimately drive more sales. By successfully combining the meteoric technological innovation that is Artificial Intelligence with the highly important approach of improving customer-brand interactions in a tactile way, companies will be able to capture customers’ loyalty and nurture it for many years to come.
Join Trust Payments webinar series co-hosted with engagement architects Mobilize Systems. Mobilize manage the engagement and loyalty systems for some of the UKs largest loyalty schemes, and are offering loyalty workshops to all of Trust Payments customers who attend the webinars.
“We are delighted to share our knowledge with such an innovative payments company and their customers,” said Martin Steinmann, Managing Director of Mobilize Systems. “Most loyalty or engagements systems are built on legacy technology which can seem daunting to try to change and improve. We hope that this education series will allow merchants to grow their customer base confidently,” he added.
