Sales and marketing leaders all search for a better way to communicate with their customers. Digital transformation is not just a buzzword or a paradigm; it’s a major driver of the change across all businesses — regardless of size, market share and vertical. Move toward the cloud and ensure you’re a digital-first company, the technology can support you in many ways, but only as long as it not require heavy integration work or large customization efforts to keep all legacy systems integrated. The challenge is to find something that’s ready-made and can be implemented quickly — without heavy implementation and operation support. Using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve your journey analytics is a step in the right direction.

In addition, tools that were very effective yesterday could be ineffective in the new digital world. Processes of the past now are powerless or even meaningless. The fundamental shift in technology forces change but the technical solutions don’t come clear directions on how to apply them with low effort.

Companies must understand that:

  • What being digital means for them, and how the digital technologies can be applied in their specific case
  • How customers’ behavior and needs changed or will be changing over time
  • What tools can effectively support the digital shift without requiring complete Business Process Re-engineering
  • Which partners to work with to adapt to these changes with reasonable effort

Then you can decide how to implement the technical solutions to improve your journey analytics.

The Digital Shift

Every company has a vision, and most of them know exactly what success means in terms of sales, customer experience and efficiency. The challenge is how to support the execution of this vision by using the available technologies, as there’s no silver bullet or golden strategy to fit every company.

The best way to execute the vision, if we analyze what the customers are doing on our Digital Market Place and understand what they expect from us. Most probably you already have some valuable insights into their needs and behavior which is good, but bear in mind most of the data you have may come from past interactions when your clients were in contact with you. It could be still unclear what they did before contacting you or what they are doing in the digital world between two contacts.

DemandGen find that “B2B buyers progress more than 70% of the way through the decision-making process before ever engaging a sales representative”, but “92% of buyers said the sales rep they dealt with was educated about their company and communicated relevant information, and 85% said the experience with their sales rep influenced their decision to select that vendor.” – DemandGen Report 2017

Surprisingly, Gartner research found that “83% of surveyed customers accessed digital channels even in the late purchasing stages.” – Gartner 2018

According to Forrester, “In today’s world of channel-agnostic consumers, Martech means investing in the technologies that enable you to orchestrate cross-channel messages and experiences, because your customers expect holistic experiences, regardless of channel.” – Forrester – Martech for B2C Marketers 2018

And remember to the bold but still valid statement what the Webbiguity survey said, “The B2B Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is dead as 86% of B2B buyers see no real difference between suppliers.” – Webbiguity report 2016

It seems the technology, which can increase your conversion rate and decrease your sales effort – both in case of B2B buyers or direct consumers – would be a solution to improve your journey analytics. The capability of tracking and actively shaping all your customers’ and prospects’ digital buying journeys in real-time, could be a real differentiator.

The Age of Artificial Intelligence

Well said, but tracking all customer and prospects’ all journey steps by 24/7 is looks effort consuming. And if you are using manual resources, it’s not only costly but it’s also nearly impossible. This is where AI can help.

With journey analytics AI, you can track every customers’ individual journey in real-time. That enables you to proactively advise your sales teams who to engage, when and with the perfectly matching offer, which can help you to increase your conversion rate dramatically and decrease your cost of sales.

It comes back to the importance of the human touch, which now augmented with AI capabilities that can detect which prospects or customers need support, who has a question, or who is just hesitant to choose a product or service. It then automatically engages the best available sales rep with a predictive offer.

Predictive analytics, powered by the customer experience AI from Genesys, follow all customers’ journeys — simply. Companies such as AppDynamics, TaxAct, and Infoblox have proven to be forward-thinking; they’re seeing tremendous value in the real-time intelligence they provide to their sales and customer success teams.

A significant increase in pipeline velocity, Net Promoter Score and time-to-resolution are two key metrics that companies consistently report. Genesys predictive analytics provides insights into what customers are doing on your website. It also offers a set of digital tools, such as chat, web call back, push notifications and proactive offer widgets, that engage prospects in real-time to support the buying journey. The goal of the AI behind this solution is to understand the holistic customer journey and predict when who and how (via channels) to offer products or services to the prospect closest to the final sale.

AI-supported human augmentation offers several benefits.

  • Customers are happier and receive help when they need it but also are engaged only when they require support.
  • Sales reps use their time more efficiently because they are engaged only with real opportunities, and only at that time when the chance of the conversion is the highest.
  • Sales managers get valuable insights about their customers’ buying journeys as well as visibility across all customer-buying behaviors.
  • Machine learning collects actual outcomes and continuously fine-tunes predictive models to make even better decisions over the time.

Whether selling to new customers or supporting existing customers, the entire journey is very important. Additionally, customer journey analytics identifies who your visitors are based on attributes like geographic location and device type. By integrating with CRM and marketing automation systems, you also see the lead source, products owned, industry and even company name.

Genesys predictive analytics lets you:

  1. See what customers are doing before, during and after interacting with your company.
  2. Notify sales or service reps so they’re aware that important visitors are on your site or taking relevant actions—searching for new products or services, considering upgrades, and following campaign invitations or referral site
  3. Engage with visitors automatically based on attributes and behaviors that indicate buying interest or need for support.
  4. Predict how, when and with whom to engage to achieve desired business goals or improve customer experience.

Visit us online to learn more about using predictive analytics to shape the customer journey.