According to recent research by Gartner, in 2020, 85 percent of customer interactions will be managed by AI. According to research by PR-agency Weber Shandwick, the impact of AI on marketing and communication will be greater than that of social media. These studies show that AI has and will have a big impact on marketing and customer interaction. AI enables companies to approach customers more personally, giving them a better brand experience. Two major developments of AI in marketing are chatbots and personalization.
Chatbots
Chatbots with tasks such as customer service are a well-known example of AI in marketing. They are not only useful for communicating with the customer, they also offer the opportunity to gather feedback from customers. Additionally, the chatbot can analyze this feedback and other information it gathers from customers. This will give the company more insight into what customers actually want. This results in a better understanding of the customer which can be applied to the marketing strategy by making it more focused on customer’s needs.
Tommy Hilfiger was one of the first major fashion brand to experiment with a chatbot. Their main goal was (and still is) to attract traffic to the website and to create a personalized customer experience. The Tommy Hilfiger bot will help you identify your style and gives styling advice.
Personalization
AI can also help to enhance visitor experience by personalizing the website. By analyzing data about a single user, AI can display the best-fitting offers and content on the website. Besides, push-notifications can be specifically delivered to individual users, delivering them the right message at the right time. According to the 2017 Real-Time Personalization Survey by Evergage, 33% of marketers already use AI to deliver personalized website experiences.
An example of personalization, which was also discussed during the lecture of the eleventh of September, 2017, is Pandora internet radio. Pandora uses machine learning algorithms to offer customized listening choices based on your personal tastes. In this way, Pandora goes beyond obvious song suggestions and reveals choices that you might have never discovered.
In a time where customers are increasingly demanding personalization and 24/7 services, it is useful to use AI to enhance the marketing strategy and customer experience. By implementing a chatbot, a company can learn more about the needs of a customer. In this way, they can tailor the marketing efforts to these needs. Besides, AI can help to enhance visitor experience with personalization of the website.
Sources:
https://www.emerce.nl/opinie/artificial-intelligence-nieuwe-disruptor-marketing
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2017/08/marketers-use-artificial-intelligence/
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/299611
https://luxurysociety.com/en/articles/2017/03/chatbots-5-luxury-brand-examples/
Could you perhaps give an example of how these chatbots operate? You mention that 85% of customer interaction will be managed by AI, and that they communicate with the customer, but does that mean that (human) personnel will be overseen or guided by an AI, or that an AI actually replaces them?
From the very little I know, an AI can, for instance, analyse the answers employees give to questions, and they can suggest the most successful answers – given by employees that finish helping a customer in the fastest and most satisfactory manner – to other employees, thereby boosting the success of all employees by 55% (as one study I do not recall at the moment claimed). That would be more in line with the oversight / guidance idea – is that what ’85 percent of customer interaction will be managed by AI’ means?
I would be interested in successful examples – if they exist, and if I interpreted your text correctly – of chatbots actually communicating with customers, without human personnel inbetween. Because the only thing that springs to mind is the ad about firing all human personnel and letting customers navigate through a phone menu (for the exit, press zero). But again, I admit my ignorance on this subject – hence my questions.
Regarding personalisation, I was once involved in a project for the municipality of Rotterdam, that, as part of this project, wanted to roll out a website that looked differently depending on the ‘personality’ of the person accessing the website. They mapped all of Rotterdam’s citizens in four broad categories (lively, open, social, interactive – or more prone to staying at home, closing the doors and curtains, not attending much events, and so on), and the website would be more round, warm, ‘friendly’, if one belonged to the first group, for example (by looking at the IP address that connected to the website, I presume). Is that the kind of personalised website experience you mean? Or is it more about Facebook suggesting friends, Google knowing that I mean to search the food ‘date’ and not the activity ‘to date’, and so on?
Thank you for your comment and insights Roy! As a response to your first question, I think that chatbots will mostly replace (human) personnel. An example I can give you from my own experiences is that I once ‘chatted’ with a chatbot to make an appointment. Normally, I’d have to call the store or chat with a human to arrange this meeting. However, the chatbot made it a lot easier to book an appointment. I must admit that the chatbot was not completely flawless in communication but I think that it will develop more and more, making the quality of the responds better. Therefore, I think that chatbots can replace human in tasks such making appointments and giving them advice.
Regarding personalization, the example that you are giving is exactly what I mean! I can also give you another example of Bol.com. I once attended a guest lecture where they told me that they also categorize people in two ways: people who really care about the features of the product and people who care about recommendations. If for example a person who cares about recommendations visits the website, they mostly show the recommendations of that product first. On the other hand, if someone who cares mostly about the features looks at a product, they show him or her the features. They not only do this on the website, but also try to apply this on (personalized) newsletters.
Thanks for your interesting post, Francine!
One of the things you mention in your post is the use of AI chatbots to communicate with customers and analyze their feedback. You also state that AI can personalize a website by delivering the right content at the right time. After reading your post I was wondering whether AI will replace the job of marketers in the future. As a former online marketing consultant, I have experienced that many tasks within Google Adwords and other advertising services were being automated. AI also has the ability to generate content by picking elements from a dataset and translating it into a ‘human sounding’ article. Facebook wants to use chatbots to make it easier for customers to have conversations with brands’ virtual ambassadors. The Grid, is a company that allows users to select input content they wish for their website, which is then built using the power of AI. This is only the beginning as there is more to come regarding the use of AI in marketing. I believe that, for now, humans will still be needed to do the creative parts of marketing. However, in the future, their work will change significantly as many tasks will be taken over by AI technology.
References:
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/ai-marketing-use-cases
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/15-applications-artificial-intelligence-marketing-robert-allen/
Hi Shaina, Thank you for your comment and your examples of AI in marketing! I definitely agree with you that the tasks of people who work in marketing will change. I also have experience as an online marketer and to be honest, most of my tasks could have been automated as well. I think it is difficult to predict how it will change but I am sure that it will become more focused on data and how to use it. I also think that humans will always be needed for the creative parts of marketing and to attend meetings. In my opinion, it will take a while before everything gets automated because a lot of people still like the human touch. For example, I once chatted with a chatbot and I noticed that there were still some flaws which made me notice that I was not talking to a real person. Of course, this will only get better in the future which will make customer service a lot easier. I also checked out the website of The Grid, because I never heard of it, but I think that their way of building a website is amazing! I am really curious about the next developments of AI in marketing and I hope I can be a part of it.
Hi Francine,
It is nice to read about the positive sides of automated bots and artificial intelligence employed by companies in order to provide a more personalised, but still automated marketing campaign. Conversely, I have come across many of the negative sides of automated bots, which in-authentically boost certain ads and posts on social media through the usage of fake accounts. It will be challenging for platforms to differentiate between authentic human users and pre-programmed, automated bots that will boost social media content via bought follows and likes. It is interesting to see that these bots can also be associated with more positive, and effective new strategies for firms to communicate with their customers. Even though I believe human capital will still be key for at least checking and validating automated responses generated by AI, it is interesting to see how the future unfolds.
Sources:
Maheshwari, S 2017, ‘How bots are inflating Instagram egos’, The New York Times, 6 June, viewed 5 October 2017, .
van Niekerk, R, de Graaf, I 2017, ‘Instagram: wereld van gekochte volgers, neplikes an likebotes’ Nederlandse Omroep Stichting, 23 September, viewed 5 October 2017, .