How Businesses Are Using AI and Automation to Personalize the Customer Experience and Boost Sales in 2024
Bladerunner, The Matrix, WALL-E, the Jetsons, and countless others prophesied an era when humans and artificial intelligence would cross paths. The day has finally come for avid moviegoers of the last thirty years: AI is at the forefront of our technological zeitgeist. While we might not use AI to vacuum the house or do the dishes, Artificial Intelligence fundamentally changes how we approach B2B and customer-facing interactions. According to a recent study, 91% of companies worldwide consistently commit to investing in AI. Even small to medium-sized firms are beginning to harness this cutting-edge technology for continual growth advancement and to stay competitive in today’s automation frenzy. While many big-tech firms have built out robust AI teams and set aside millions in AI investment, mid-cap market companies, and even small businesses, are brainstorming how AI can help them cut costs and sharpen the overall customer experience to boost sales. This brings us to the ultimate question that tops the minds of business owners in 2024 — how can businesses leverage AI and automation to personalize and better the customer lifecycle?
AI Chatbots and Virtual Assistants
Easy-to-use chatbot solutions are currently flooding the SaaS market. While chatbots are incapable of sustained human contact, they diligently respond to a number of upfront customer questions, inquiries, and statements. Continual enhancements with audio and visual elements promote an easy and efficient way to implement them across company websites, making AI chatbots an approachable solution to everyday problems.
The next tier above AI chatbots would be virtual assistants, which rely on Natural Language DRSz Processing (NLP), and handle more complex activities and customer demands online. Today, virtual assistant tools are driving a new era of highly sophisticated IoT products, providing 24/7 customer support without requiring human intervention. These assistants can answer various customer questions, provide shopping assistance, and even make personalized product recommendations based on customer preferences and previous interactions with the brand or website. Major strides aside, when a business is ready to use virtual agents for more complex activities, they shouldn’t forget to prep their customer care staff on how to specifically handle any questions that virtual assistants aren’t yet capable of managing.
Personalized Marketing Campaigns
Targeted emails, social media ads, and personalized product recommendations…via AI. This year, companies will ramp up the use of AI to swiftly analyze vast customer data sets, segment audiences, and create personalized marketing campaigns curated to specific demographics, interests, or buying behaviors. Furthermore, AI does things much quicker than humans — including searching through a person’s browsing and purchase history, shopping behaviors, and social media activity — to quickly identify patterns that can be used for personalized marketing strategies.
After collecting all of that relevant raw data, AI can segment customers into smaller, more targeted groups, allowing marketers to build parceled-out campaigns that resonate with each segment’s specific needs. On a subtler note, AI can track and analyze user behavior across different touchpoints to understand how they interacted with a marketing campaign — helping marketers refine their strategies in the future for a higher likelihood of conversion.
Dynamic Pricing
Dynamic pricing (aka surge pricing) is a real-time strategy that adjusts prices based on variables like demand, supply, competitor pricing, time of day, customer behavior, and more. AI has become critical in this type of pricing thanks to its ability to quickly analyze large data sets and make rapid pricing decisions for items with fluctuating costs — such as hotels or car rentals. As a result, AI models can predict future demand for products or services by weighing elements such as historical sales data, seasonality, promotions, events, and even external factors such as holidays or economic conditions. As a result, businesses can then adjust prices to optimize revenue and manage their inventory effectively.
AI can also work to facilitate A/B testing of differing pricing strategies and flag the most effective pricing models. Businesses can run experiments with test groups, analyze their results, and refine pricing strategies that improve performance over time. As more companies pull pricing data with AI, they will continue to make better data-driven, market-responsive, and personalized pricing strategies that drive revenue and profitability.
AI will be in every corner of business development in 2024. Through better, more targeted, and personalized customer experiences, brands are embracing AI's swiftness and accuracy to generate immediate support, more authentic marketing experiences, competitive pricing, and an overall strategy that better matches each individual customer’s needs and interests.