Editorial
The Gist
- Enhanced engagement. AI integrates empathy, enhancing 1:1 customer interactions.
- Streamlined tech. Modular martech supports tailored, impactful customer experiences.
- Data insights crucial. Effective personalization hinges on comprehensive customer data.
Now, more than ever, customers expect tailored and informed experiences at every touchpoint. Anticipating next actions with a thoughtful content experience just makes sense to leaders seeking to drive growth through digital channels.
That’s why businesses are investing significantly in artificial intelligence to advance their ability to anticipate and support the more critical needs during their customers’ journeys. AI personalization of digital customer experiences, far too often and historically, have failed to live up to the vendor hype of extraordinary superior conversions and hyper-personalized next-best actions.
With “AI fever” permeating into increased technology and data investments, pragmatic digital leaders ask, “Will today’s new AI innovations close the personalization value gap that has existed for decades despite multiple innovation waves? How will this AI innovation wave be different from previous inflection points?”
AI Personalization: The Impact on Tailored Customer Experiences
Prior to the mainstreaming of AI across the business landscape, personalization failed to deliver against its promises for several key reasons:
- Monolithic personalization technology. Businesses misunderstood personalization as a technology and data endeavor instead of a growth and customer experience program — resulting in vendor “lock-in” and an over-dependence on single software vendors and specialist technology resources instead of customer-facing professionals.
- Lack of useful data. Armed with personalization technologies but lacking in customer data, teams could code and deliver diverse experiences — but they weren’t tailored enough to make a meaningful impact on the business or the customer. The useful data just didn’t exist.
- Martech interoperability. Yesterday’s marketing technology was designed to be an “all-in-one” suite, whereas modern composable martech is designed modularly using microservices, APIs, cloud-native SaaS tools and headless architectures supporting the notion that AI personalization can easily and intelligently integrate with other martech — thus enriching the ability to create tailored customer experiences that deliver winning outcomes.
Related Article: How AI and Data Analytics Drive Personalization Strategies
Aligning on Intrinsic Needs (Autonomy, Relatedness and Mastery)
Your business has invested in AI, has developed a useful customer data layer and has interconnected important marketing technologies so that tailored, personalized customer experiences are delivered. What’s missing? What is the critical linchpin that will drive outcomes?
It is aligning teams, processes, data and technology around the intrinsic (not extrinsic needs) of the customer. Rather than tailor experiences for external reasons like rewards or punishment, intrinsic factors have been proven to deliver more tailored CX outcomes because user engagement is less superficial and at a deeper, more motivational level.
At the core of self-determination theory are three basic psychological needs (intrinsic) that apply to every person that interacts with content and digital experiences, regardless of age, gender or other psychographics:
1. Autonomy
Autonomy is the experience that you’re in charge of your life. It means you are engaging with offers and next-best actions that are of your own volition and not the ones being thrust upon you.
2. Relatedness
Relatedness is the experience of belonging and quickly connecting. The sense that “I matter” to you, and you matter to me. Failed personalizations are those that don’t go the extra distance to make the content, images and tools as relevant or connected to who you are and what you value.
3. Mastery
Mastery is feeling effective in what you’re undertaking, that you’re successfully tackling tasks and challenges and constantly growing in the process. Tailored customer experiences are ones that consider your current level of knowledge and deliver the right level of engagement, making you feel like you can handle what is coming next.
Improved AI personalization goes beyond mere personalized communication and tailored content engagement. In fact, AI personalization has a superpower in being able to sense and engage like an empath who can, at scale, engage customers on a 1:1 basis by tapping into these three intrinsic needs.
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Final Thoughts
Personalization failures or missing value can be addressed going forward using empathetic AI personalizaton. Tailored customer experiences that meet autonomy, relatedness and mastery needs have the potential to transform the customer experience and redefine personalized digital engagement.
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