Today's consumers expect customer-centric experience and Accenture's research proves it: 91% are more likely to shop with brands that offer personalized recommendations. But bridging the gap between expectation and reality is a challenge.
Here's where next best action comes in to empower businesses to go beyond generic recommendations. They use the power of big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning to predict a customer's next move.
This approach help marketers, sales reps, and customer service teams. make the most of each customer interaction and achieve better results.
The next best action is a concept in customer relationship management and marketing that involves determining the most effective action to take with a customer at a given moment. The goal is to optimize interactions and drive the best possible outcome based on the customer's current state, history, and behavior.
Let’s consider an online travel agency. A customer visits the travel website. The customer browses through various destinations, reads reviews of hotels, and adds a flight and hotel package to their cart but doesn't complete the booking. Next-best-action decisioning can leverage all those past and current customer behaviors to drive an optimal business action for this user.
What are possible business actions at this point? Here are a few examples of actions that could be taken with the prospect described above:
The challenge is picking the right decision for each unique user, based on an almost infinite number of paths and actions those users have taken in the past.
The integrated data is used to build detailed customer profiles, including attributes like purchase history, preferences, and engagement patterns. These profiles are segmented into groups based on similarities, with techniques like RFM modeling refining these segments further. This segmentation ensures that the next best action is tailored to specific customer needs and behaviors, thereby improving customer satisfaction.
Predictive analytics models, powered by statistical and machine learning algorithms, analyze these profiles to identify patterns and forecast future behaviors. This analysis helps predict which actions are likely to be most effective for each customer. Real-time decision-making updates customer profiles with the latest data, enabling personalized recommendations and automated actions across channels like email and SMS.
The effectiveness of these actions is continuously monitored and optimized based on metrics such as customer engagement rates and conversion rates, ensuring that the next best action remains relevant and effective over time.
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) does more than just gather zero, first or other types of data; it creates a complete customer profile by combining information from various sources. This allows for precise customer segmentation, which enhances targeted marketing and service, leading to a better overall customer experience.
The CDP processes data in real-time, enabling businesses to quickly adapt strategies based on current customer interactions, which aids in optimization. It also ensures data privacy and compliance, handling customer information securely and in line with GDPR regulations. These features help deliver the right actions to customers, increase customer satisfaction and business results.
Leveraging a next-best action strategy through a CDP can significantly enhance your marketing campaigns by integrating real-time data. This data-driven approach ensures every interaction is timely and relevant, meeting their needs and driving better outcomes.
If you're trying to make sense of complex data and need a solid plan, Crystalloids can help. Contact us or schedule an call with us to get started.