Customer Retention And Acquisition Using AI

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Mrudul

‘Efforts reap when planted at the right places’

Isn’t it?

You can put an immense amount of effort into getting something, but if it isn’t the right time or place or people, you will never get that. Similar is the case for businesses. When a strategy doesn’t work for a company, what do you do? You change the approach. Staying at a place, trying the traditional jargon and methods that suffice in vain, take neither the company nor the efforts forward.

The same was the case when trending researches claimed AI is the next big thing, and every industry should start incorporating its features and tech sticks. So, for a couple of years, we started seeing a trend in big hunched companies of applying AI tech in their work trends and values.

Uber, Zomato, Amazon, companies from different industries integrated AI and ML methods to read customer data to understand them better and work accordingly.

It is an era where promotional baits are failed baits, people do not open such e-mailers, people don’t reply to messages that speak less and sell more, and people close sites that try to sell them something intentionally.

It is an era where people want to look through words and see if actions are reflecting through your presentation of concepts!

It is an era where people want to feel welcomed and essential.

Even if an email starts with your name, you open that one because it talks to you. You feel familiar and connected.

If really, then it is better to take priority in your shoppers and not your products. Of course, don’t sell out fake products!

So, in a nutshell, talk about the products and your site by knowing your customers.

Some ground rules to use AI tech to your advantage:

Know your audience: I guess, the way Amazon is winning the big shots for online selling of products is because of PERSONALIZATION. Amazon hired a big team of AI experts and ruled out all other strategies to play around with AI tech. They created their team internally and started working out with the ML models. Machine Learning Algorithms reads and analyzes customer data to suggest similar products.

Machine Learning helps the companies to know their customers better to retain them.

Therefore, knowing your customer base and working toward them is the best hack not just to acquire new customers but to retain the existing ones.

Manage your services: By recent stats, it is clear that 85% of the customers will be reaching out for problems to bots than actual humans. Right! Because of the way we see it, AI is making to every nook and corner, and increased demand for everything makes it harder for humans to tackle. And where we are in a constant progression to automate everything, making humans do the cost and reply work is so not-worth-it. Therefore, AI tools like chatbots have come to rescue to manage customer-related issues and provide variable services.

But when we talk about automated replies, we don’t talk about ‘Sorry for the inconvenience caused, we will get back to you shortly!’ NOOOOO

Bots that talk like humans and give the customers a feel of human interaction. Like, ‘We are sorry that you had to cancel this order. But we have so many other options for you that you might like.’ and display those options in grid.

Not only are you making your shoppers happy but also giving them a chance to return to you.

Remember the old days, when our parents would take us to only the shop that they liked, saying, ‘They know all about you from size to choices.’ Well, indeed, a great way to gain trust

Predict customer behavior: ‘Oh, we see. You like black shades, the Nike brand, and glittering dresses. Let us show you something in the same category.’ Imagine sites talking to us like that. Some of them have even reached an inch closer to it by displaying products that have been similar to a shoppers’ previous search journey or likings. In this way, people welcome themselves to your site with a broader smile and buy their intended products.

With ML algorithms, you read the data, with the neural network system, you understand it, and with AI tech, you implement it at the fore-front.

Stay at the top: Staying at the top of tech means to define the pattern of shoppers’ search queries. Large eCommerce businesses know that, at an average, they get around 15% new queries every day. IMAGINE! Staying at the top of such data is an impeccable effort. Without AI, imagine people tracking every question, managing a database for the same, and then updating the sheet with new queries. Whoof!

Divide the queries into parts:

  • Implicit Signals: Know the time, location, device, search history of the searched query
  • Explicit Signals: Know if the entire question is unknown or only parts of it are.

When you talk about implicit signals, you deliver results according to the data that you infer. Analyze customer data and, by tracking them, pin down their geographical location to show results relevant only to their region

Personalization

Because, we know, showing results for ‘Winter clothing’ when it is Summer in India, makes no sense. The customer usually frustrates out and leaves.

So, decoding queries and attracting customers based on them makes a massive difference to your sales ratios

Never lose out on creativity: We saw a hurricane a couple of years back when ‘Big Data’ was a hype. We saw web series, movies, and a lot of content online that talked about arranging vast chunks of data, partially what Google was doing then.

But data in itself is nothing until you do something with that data. So, companies started analyzing the data with AI to use it for their advantage. And when the AI sheet covered the insecurities of people, everyone questioned, ‘Are machines going to take over?’

No one knows, and no one will ever see the future with machines.

But, training machines with data in itself is a statistical as well as a creative task.

Let’s take creating CHATBOTS, for instance. Chatbots are chatting robots that reply to customer queries. Remember the tiring old school way of dialing the customer services, waiting for your chance to come, narrating your problem, and then getting resolved in 3-4 zillion working days?

Chatbots solve that quickly for you. With chatbots, you receive quick replies and issues resolved. But the main problem is ‘CONTENT.’ I want to look into the bot’s screen and find statements that make me feel welcomed with personalized messages and personalized product suggestions.

As a company, you should always make sure you never run out of creativity that makes people feel connected. Because to state, there will be millions of bots, but a few that stand out! Be that one.

We know how hard it is to adopt AI tech without a team that isn’t technically sound in the models. But did you not read our article on ‘How did AI change the Moneyball game’? It is not always about knowing hard-core technology to stand out; it is even better if you know how to understand that data.

Customers are crazily selfish for finding their product upfront as quickly as possible

  • Millions of sites.
  • An infinite number of products.
  • And a hard choice to make!

Customers will always choose you over and over again if you want them as well. Your marketing playground to attract as many customers as possible fall flat if it doesn’t involve automating tasks.

So, make a customer-centric approach to handle your marketing and products. PERSONALIZATION IS EVERYTHING.