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Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) in sales and marketing is a hot topic. But early adopters often wonder how to select the first AI implementation use case that makes sense and delivers quick wins — without the risk. To see the most from AI, choose a high-value, low-complexity process to enhance or automate. For this use case, you should have a few consistent and reliable data points that can drive your AI predictions with high certainty. Hyper-personalization at scale is a good first use case that can deliver notable business benefits — quickly and with low effort.

Engage at the Right Time — With the Right Message
My latest shopping experience is a good example of how hyper-personalization works. Recently, I went into a store to find a hands-free device for my 2007 Ford, which doesn’t support a Bluetooth connection for my phone. I was looking in the $80-$100 price range but discovered few devices that could connect my iPhone to my existing car stereo for the right price.

I considered the in-store options while also browsing online to see what else was available. I was about to leave when a shop assistant offered his support. He had probably been watching me because he guessed what I was looking for and said he might have a better solution for me. He showed me some new car stereo devices that support Bluetooth and Apple CarPlay, since he saw that I was using an iPhone.

All of these devices were in the $250-$300 price range and, on top of that, I’d still need to pay for installation. The shop assistant saw my hesitation, asked my car type and then searched inventory to found a nice full-featured touchscreen device for $249. That was still far over my original budget. I went online and found the same device elsewhere for $198. He offered a price match, but I was still undecided because of the unexpected $100-plus installation cost.

This prompted the best deal of all: He offered free installation. He also summarized the benefits over a simple hands-free adapter. I’d get not only the Bluetooth connectivity, but also Apple CarPlay features, like GPS navigation, Siri services and the ability to share my iPhone screen to play YouTube videos on the display. He also offered to schedule an appointment for the installation at my earliest convenience to enjoy my new device without delay.

In-Person Hyper-Personalization
I decided to buy the device even though it was almost double the price of my original budget. I felt that I received good value for my money, with convenient and free installation service that made it easy for me.

The shop assistant closed this deal because he:

  • Engaged me at the right time by identifying my moment of struggle
  • Kept me in the shop by suggesting a workable alternative solution
  • Up-sold additional features that I hadn’t wanted initially, but offered only those that made sense to me
  • Gave me his best offer through the accepted price match
  • Added free installation and offered to schedule it at a good time for me

If any of these active journey shaping events didn’t happen or happened in the wrong sequence, I probably would have left the shop before purchasing anything.

Online Hyper-Personalization at Scale
This example shows that you can sell — and even up-sell — to undecided customers if you can engage them at the perfect time with your best offer. However, what works well in a physical shop doesn’t necessarily work well in an online marketplace.

Here’s why:

  • There are too many customers shopping at the same time; many customers are shopping outside of regular business hours because websites are open 24/7
  • Visitors often browse anonymously, so you can’t see who they are and what they’re doing
  • They spend less than six minutes, on average, on a website before they decide to make a purchase or leave without a trace
  • Visitors often add items to a shopping cart and then abandon the cart without giving a reason
  • Businesses have very limited resources to engage visitors in a meaningful manner

The ultimate challenge is figuring out how to overcome these issues and deliver hyper-personalization in a shopping experience through your website at scale.

Increase Website Conversion Rates With Predictive Engagement
Most of your customers and prospects visit your website to search for new products or to get support before they call or email you. Based on the latest AI technology, you can automatically follow the buying journeys of individual prospects and capture their moments of struggle. You then can proactively engage them in a fully automated way.

You just need to deploy a simple code (snippets) on your website. This enables AI to follow each individual, even those browsing anonymously, and capture the moment if and when they need support. Instead of trying to engage with all online visitors through proactive chat, you could select only those who need support to complete their buying journey or struggle to find information they need. AI determines what your customers are up to and when they consider leaving the site before completing their purchasing transactions.

AI tools can also pop up your best offer, based on the actual customer contextual journey stages, at the perfect time. Or it could suggest that you perform the next-best response. And AI can connect your best available resource — bot, human or a combination of the two — to any customer in real-time at the right time. With AI, you can proactively shape your customers’ buying journeys toward their desired outcomes.

Adding machine learning to AI further improves automated customer engagement practices without implementing manual audit trails or continuous improvement processes.

Fast Results and Better Outcomes
The implementation time for the predictive engagement use case typically is very short. You need only a couple of days — or possibly weeks for very large companies — to put it into full operation. And the expected business benefits are high.

We’ve seen sales conversion rates improve by two to four times as you reduce customer effort. And Net Promoter Scores, lead capture rates and overall customer satisfaction scores will improve.

Hyper-personalization without AI consumes a lot of time and effort to do at scale. AI does the heavy lifting for you, delivering mutual benefits for your business and customers — without adding unnecessary complexity or cost to the customer engagement processes.

To learn more about how this use case works, start your predictive engagement free trial here.