Authored by Parham Saebi, Customer Service Solutions Director at Arvato CRM Solutions
More than four in five customers are likely to buy from a business that offers highly personalised experiences. But delivering them can be problematic, particularly for large businesses with legacy systems that are moving along their digital transformation journey.
The answer to the challenge lies in implementing new technology to transform how you collate, analyse and use data on each of your customers and the ability to adapt to changes in preferences or circumstances in real-time.
Developing an in-depth customer profile
The first step in personalising the experience is to develop a detailed 360-degree profile of each customer, built on personal information and data that covers the entire purchasing journey, from the products consumers have looked at to how individuals interact with a brand.
The challenge is bringing all of this together into one place and making it available for teams to analyse and use to guide how they engage with each customer.
Gathering it usually requires drawing information from a large number of different systems and manipulating it into consistent formats, which can often be a labour-intensive and time-consuming task.
We’re helping businesses tackle these hurdles through intelligent automation, which works by extracting information from disparate systems, cleaning and normalising it, before feeding it into a centralised Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.
This solution works at a low cost and around-the-clock without the need for human intervention, enabling businesses to efficiently build and maintain the data banks they need, while also reducing overheads and freeing-up employee time.
For example, intelligent automation could be used to collate sales data from point-of-sale systems into a CRM or to manage and update delivery and returns information in returns management systems to give an up-to-the-minute picture of how a customer is interacting with a brand. By removing the need for agents to do this manually, it means they can spend more time delivering the more complex, value-add, elements of a customer interaction, and can quickly access and reference the information as and when they need it.
Delivering a new level of personalised service
Once a business has built detailed customer profiles with the help of intelligent automation, the next step is being able to draw real-time insights that it can use to tailor the experiences it provides, no matter which channel a customer engaged with the brand through or the specific need they have.
Our solutions use artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive behavioural omni-channel routing to provide the data agents need in real-time, along with recommendations for next best actions.
In a practical setting, this could involve producing a bespoke, on-the-spot offer for a product that a customer’s browsing or purchasing history suggests they would want or need – ultimately helping convert their initial interest into a sale.
The technology can also generate advice to help agents more quickly and proactively address specific problems or queries and reduce customer effort. By making the process smoother for customers, this can in turn drive greater brand loyalty.
Importantly, predictive routing can operate across a business’ full range of contact channels, meaning the same level of personalisation can be delivered however the customer prefers to engage.
At Arvato, we have extensive knowledge and experience of helping organisations transform their customer experience offering and implementing technologies like intelligent automation and predictive routing to deliver greater personalisation.
Contact us to learn more about how your business could benefit too – CRMSE@arvato.co.uk.