Hype actions have become a constant when the goal is to capitalize on a trending topic on social media as a marketing strategy. Indeed, this movement cannot be ignored; however, the available technological solutions can and should be much better utilized to attract consumers and turn them into engaged and loyal customers.
The current major leap necessary for online businesses is to embrace innovations to promote personalization in customer relationships. The fact that it’s an e-commerce platform doesn’t mean consumers are willing to accept mechanized, robotic, cold interactions.
Not at all. Centralization and automation of contact channels cannot be synonymous with impersonal communication. The advantage today is that available artificial intelligence resources already allow the development of solutions that personalize relationships between companies and consumers, promoting a complete and assertive customer journey.
This isn’t about the famous technophobia of ‘machines will replace people.’ Robots can and should replace operational work, freeing human intelligence for strategic tasks, creativity, and actual intelligence. But robots can and should be designed for interactions with consumers that capture and respond to each consumer’s specificities.
An example of personalized service enabled by artificial intelligence is what can reconfigure the concept of a store. Whether physical or virtual, standardized service will give way to personalized relationships, made possible by increasingly deep and fast data analysis algorithms, practically in real time.
Purchase history, social media interactions, the words used by consumers in both speech and searches, how this consumer behaves in the store – all this provides information for technology to deliver responses that align with the consumer’s personal, specific preferences, satisfying their desires and needs.
This way, retail will not only be able to meet consumer demands but, more importantly, anticipate these requests and needs. The collection, storage, and analysis of data through artificial intelligence are expanding exponentially; the generative capacity of technology enables segmented, personalized, tailor-made responses.
The trend is that in the not-too-distant future, retail stores will become as personalized as user profiles on streaming or music platforms today, for example, which already offer consumers menus of movies and music that not only meet preferences but keep users connected and loyal.
In this sense, presenting new releases, discounts, and promotions can be tailored to each customer. The customer’s behavior at any given moment can also be understood.
That is, despite the history of searches, purchases, and views, artificial intelligence tracks any changes in taste or even the consumer’s sentiment at that moment of interaction. Thus, an AI-powered chatbot can detect mood variations when faced with frustration due to unmet needs, for example.
Investment in technology providers offering an ecosystem of solutions (management, customer service, sales) becomes essential for retailers to fully incorporate digital transformation. After all, segmented and personalized actions are useless if, when the customer needs to continue their journey, the system isn’t structurally prepared to handle demands and flows.
By César Baleco, founder and CEO of Grupo Irrah*, a technology hub for business management and communication
