Exploring AI for Personalized Customer Journeys

In this four-part series, we’re exploring four categories of artificial intelligence (AI), how they can meaningfully impact marketers and their customers and what to potentially avoid. AI has great potential to assist brands in providing the personalized customer experiences consumers increasingly expect. This article looks at personalized customer journeys, how artificial intelligence is integral to them and the platforms and tools that make them possible.

When we talk about personalized customer journeys, we mean going beyond simple marketing automation, where the customer experience is tailored to provide the “next best action” for the individual based on their behaviours and propensity to engage/buy specific products and services. Utilizing AI and machine learning, these platforms and methods put the customer at the centre of the action. Platforms often enabling personalized customer journeys include customer journey orchestration (CJO) platforms, real-time interaction management (RTIM) platforms and next best action or offer platforms.

Personalized images and video create an immersive experience. By marrying generative AI applications with personalizing the customer journey, brands can create a truly engaging buying experience. These platforms rarely work in a vacuum, however. In addition to those mentioned above, there will need to be customer data, plus integrated channels that can be orchestrated and automated.

There are several reasons why brands need to pay particular attention to the area of personalized customer journeys. Customers now expect to have personalized content and experiences, and they reward brands that provide them with repeat business. Customers are also using multiple devices before, during and after the buying process, and brands that are tuned into this behaviour win loyal customers by getting them what they want, when, where and how they want it. The platforms are mature and ready for enterprise use, making now the best time to start focusing on creating personalized customer journeys.

To take some initial steps towards personalized customer journeys, brands can do the following: take a step before implementing orchestration; incorporate a greater amount of personalization; expand automated customer conversations; and implement CJO in a limited way on one or two channels. When approaching the creation of personalized journeys, adoption of AI to improve the customer experience can be done in a meaningful yet incremental way that lets you learn quickly and apply those learnings more broadly as your programs expand.

As exciting as this area of AI may be, there are a few things to watch out for in the rush to build a personalized customer journey. Start thinking early about silos, start small and iterate, and don’t over-prescribe journeys. Taking care to avoid common pitfalls can ensure greater success for you and your customers as they embark on the personalized journeys you create for them.

Personalized customer journeys hold much current and future potential and are a strong area to consider utilizing artificial intelligence. While tying together a complete personalized customer journey can take a lot of coordination between teams, data and platforms, the results for the customer can be incredibly valuable.

Originally reported by Martech: https://martech.org/4-ai-categories-impacting-marketing-personalized-customer-journeys/
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