How AI and data can transform the customer journey
Technology powered by artificial intelligence (AI) is enabling organisations to improve their customer experience and boost loyalty and revenues.
The role of customer data has never been more crucial. A recent expert roundtable discussed the importance of personalisation and how data drives smart decision making. It outlined why employees need the right skills and should feel empowered to take action on the insights being generated every day.
Excellent data management, powered by AI-enabled platforms, can result in improved customer experience, engagement and loyalty.
Kate Mulligan-Brown, vice-president small business at accounting software company Sage, explained how the company partnered with Digital Britain to survey 5,000 SME customers. The ‘Digital Britain: How small businesses are turning the tide on tech’ report confirmed that businesses see investing in technology as fundamental to survival, resilience and growth.
“When it comes to customer experience, we must think of this as a human-to-human interaction and not business-to-business,” says Mulligan-Brown. “Technology must treat people as they expect to be treated and give them a personalised human experience. You need data to help you listen to your customers.”
AI technology and data improves personalisation, however large the organisation. “But personalisation needs to be finely tuned. It all comes back to treating people as human beings as opposed to just a number of clicks on your website,” Dun & Bradstreet’s customer success director Patrice Bendon says. “When we look at business-to-business (B2B), with the right audience data, software from companies such as Coveo can support personalised content so that individuals are reached at the right point in their buyer journey.”
Dun & Bradstreet’s ‘The Future of Data Report’ reveals that quality data will become more crucial to drive easier transactions, improve customer support and personalised offers and to identify which services would encourage customer loyalty.
When it comes to customer data, organisations can worry about not having enough or having too much. Ideally, the insight generated should enable leaders to make smarter business decisions.
But to do so, machine learning technology needs to be in place to support decision-makers. Coveo’s enterprise sales director Ben Wild says machine learning is so valuable because it enables organisations to interpret small or large amounts of data and do something useful with it. The key is to personalise an experience in a subtle and refined way rather than being too obvious.
Indeed, Brian Holliday, managing director at Siemens Digital Industries, cites a recent example in which the company attracted 3,000 business registrants to a technology conference in Manchester by serving customers with differentiated content on the invitations. This number was up from 1,000 attendees in 2019 when the event was promoted using a more generic approach.
Listening to customers and using data to improve their experience is something intelligent automation software company Blue Prism is already doing with its voice of the customer programme. Customer programmes manager Gabriella Blake says technology should enable people to easily reach the right places within any organisation to get the answers they need.
Customers want, and increasingly expect organisations to act intuitively and for their experiences to be seamless. This means having mechanisms in place to report whether the software being used is influencing the customer in the right way. Salesforce senior director, customer transformation Dipika Sawhney says technology should be helping the organisation to listen to the customer and make smarter decisions.
One company which has moved to being more intuitive is low-code CRM technology provider Pegasytems. “We have to be switched on before the customer arrives,” says Fari Pirouz, director customer success.
