The Future of Personalization: How AI is Reshaping Customer Engagement  

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is a set of technological advancements used to track and personalize customer engagement and experiences. These innovations have been increasing and have gotten more and more advanced in how they shape customer engagement. Today’s AI isn’t meant to take the place of personalized interaction between a brand and a customer. Instead, it’s created to enhance personalization and engagement further. The following is some more information about the future of personalization and how AI is reshaping customer engagement and overall experience:

How AI Works to Reshape Customer Experience

AI effectively utilizes a variety of customer data to personalize their experiences in a variety of ways. This data includes browsing history, past interactions, customer preferences, previous purchases, and more. This data is compiled with various algorithms to direct businesses on how to engage even more effectively with their customers.

Improved Customer Retention

AI also plays a significant role in brand loyalty and customer retention. This is because when customers feel they are being seen, heard, and valued, they are more likely to stick with a brand. It makes them more loyal to a business. In addition, since AI learns from previous customer interactions, it can continue to promote future engagements with customers that will prompt additional interactions and enhance customer expectations and, subsequently, loyalty and retention.

Real-Time Personalized Experiences

Another way that AI is reshaping customer experiences and engagement is through real-time, personalized experiences. This involves more than just evaluating data from the past. It also instantly evaluates data as an interaction is occurring, which provides a personalized experience for customers. This can look different ways based on the type of software businesses use. For example, it could be a chatbot offering personalized product recommendations based on recent data. This real-time data can help a business communicate more effectively with customers and further personalize their experience.

Content Delivery

Content is also an important part of customer engagement, and this is yet another way that AI is reshaping customer experiences throughout the industry. AI allows brands to alter various aspects of their content to better meet customers where they are and even better address pain points. This can include all sorts of content such as blog posts, social media posts and activity, and website landing pages, but can also include altering even the most minute content that is often overlooked, like product descriptions, effectively creating content that is engaging, relevant, and speaks directly to a customer.

Personalized Coupons

Another way that AI is being used to reshape the way businesses engage with their customers is through personalized AI-generated coupons. While just about every customer enjoys coupons now and then, AI takes this entire process up a notch by evaluating customer data to personalize these coupons, making each coupon a highly tailored promotion. AI can also modify what is being “pushed” via coupons based on current inventory levels and the customer’s past purchase history.

More Seamless Omnichannel Experiences

Today’s businesses often use multiple channels to interact with customers. This often involves a form of brand management. Thankfully, AI also assists in this endeavor. It seamlessly interconnects customer data across many channels, drawing from email, social media, apps, website data, and more to ensure that a customer gets a unified experience from a brand. It can even further enhance predictive product or service suggestions.

Moving From Reactive Customer Service Models

Prior to the latest innovations in AI, customer service models were reactive in nature. It often involved a customer first contacting a business for support after they have experienced an issue. This model was riddled with issues since it usually took much longer to resolve a problem for a customer and often included complex or confusing automated systems. Today’s AI-backed customer service model is much more efficient at getting to the root of the issue quickly and then arriving at a solution before too much time has passed, making it more proactive than reactive in nature. Some of the issues that have been positively addressed by AI when it comes to customer service include fixing the following common complaints:

Reduces long wait times or having customers on hold. It also prevents them from having to navigate automated systems that can be confusing.

Reduces the amount of repetitive information requests customers are forced to encounter. In years past, customer service models without innovative AI formats would prompt data entry of the same information over and over, which is less than ideal from a customer service point of view.

 Reduces the need to transfer a customer from one department or agent to another before finding a solution. AI allows the system to better identify the problem and direct the call to the right department or agent who can best address the situation.

Makes customer service more consistent with more regular outcomes. Previously, the outcome a customer experienced would largely depend on the agent or system that was part of solving the issue. With the new way that AI is allowing a more personalized approach and accurate classification of an issue, the customer service and the experience each customer will have should be much more consistently positive.

How Various Businesses Utilize Advanced AI to Reshape Customer Experience

The following are ways that AI is being used in various industries to make a significant difference in customer engagement and overall experience:

E-Commerce and Retail

AI procures product suggestions to best fit a customer’s preferences based on purchase history. AI efficiently leverages customer touchpoints to offer a unique, individualized experience.

Healthcare

Even the healthcare industry has benefited from the utilization of AI by offering health monitoring services, personalization, and even patient-specific diagnostic tools. This all enhances the way that patients can interact with their health care providers.

Hospitality

The hospitality industry, hotels in particular, are also using AI to reshape the way they interact with customers. This includes using AI-powered phone systems to provide 24/7 service, chatbots that can help with queries and reservations, and more. This allows a personalized approach to dining out and staying in hotels that further enhances the hospitality industry overall.

The Future is Here

As stated above, AI is not meant as a substitute for human interaction. Instead, when used right, it can enhance the way that real people representing a business interact with their customers. They no longer have to do arduous tasks like data entry and evaluation to determine what a customer would likely want to do or figure out a way to fix an issue. Instead, much of that is handled by AI and its powerful algorithms, allowing real people to come in and offer an amazing customer experience.

Megan Isola

Megan Isola holds a Bachelor of Science in Hospitality and a minor in Business Marketing from Cal State University Chico. She enjoys going to concerts, trying new restaurants, and hanging out with friends.