With the advent of new technologies, digital tools, artificial intelligence, and Big Data, 1980s marketing is light-years away from what is practiced today. The marketing discipline has been profoundly transformed to take into account the new role of customer relationship management.
Artificial intelligence and customer relationships
Customer relationships are strongly impacted by artificial intelligence. Algorithms are used to collect, store, and process an impressive amount of customer data. Several practical applications are becoming accessible to a growing number of companies:
- Predictive analytics: It makes it possible to anticipate customers’ future behaviors, such as churn, and to plan corrective actions (scheduling appointments, follow-ups, etc.).
- Chatbots, or conversational agents: They automate responses to simple information requests and complaints.
- Content personalization (advertising, email, SMS, etc.): It becomes more advanced based on customer profiles and their online and offline journeys.
- Facial recognition: It can help identify customers online or in physical locations.
- The Internet of Things (IoT): It provides even more precise data on customers’ real-world usage through connected devices, smart homes, and so on.
Knowing how to leverage data
Only companies capable of leveraging this impressive flow of data—combined with human intelligence and artificial intelligence—will be able to adapt their marketing strategies and tactics to their customers’ profiles. Thanks to artificial intelligence:
- Prices will be adjusted in real time.
- Promotional offers will be personalized according to the audience.
- Products will be presented to the right people.
- Routine, repetitive, low value-added tasks will be automated.
Digital transformation
The relationship between customers and companies has been profoundly reshaped by digital transformation. The emergence of digital platforms and the modern marketplace offers an endless choice of products and services: Spotify, Deezer, or Netflix provide a wide range of audiovisual content; YouTube offers an infinite supply of videos; Airbnb or Booking offer hundreds of thousands of rooms worldwide, and so on. This has transformed purchasing and consumption practices.
The internet has given consumers a new power: the ability to easily find information about products, brands, and companies, to express their own views, and to consult the opinions of others. Customers should no longer be seen as mere consumers of a product, but as true partners. This growing importance of customer relationships has led to two new roles:
-
Crowdfunding (a source of funding): Consumers take part in fundraising campaigns to support concrete projects.
-
Crowdsourcing (a source of ideas): Consumers are integrated into the company’s creative process. This involves requesting contributions via online platforms for communication projects or R&D efforts.
Reducing the customer’s role to a simple purchase is therefore a risky approach. In the digital age, limiting the customer relationship to a transaction overlooks the customer’s potential contributions to your company’s success. This evolution also represents a new challenge, encouraging companies to adapt to these new forms of engagement. This adaptation requires changing listening mechanisms in order to capture, analyze, and respond to customers’ needs.
