Month: January 2021

5 trends of Artificial Intelligence in marketing that will mark 2021


by tanya

Without a doubt, last year was a watershed for the adoption of new technologies, as the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the implementation of tools based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for various business areas. In this sense, one of the most representative was marketing.

By 2021, if your company wants to be competitive, you should know that Artificial Intelligence is not a privilege or something taken from a futuristic story, but a key tool to generate effective communication with your audience.

AI will be the driving force for thousands of small, medium and large companies to send clear, simple and direct messages to their customers. The advantage of this technology is that it gives you a clear picture; that is, based on data, it generates statistical models that help your company make better decisions, while allowing you to better understand the market and your customers.

Knowing your consumers and offering them what they need will be of utmost importance for the businesses of the present and the future. The 2020 crisis made it clear that today more than ever customers are inclined towards those companies that are close to them and receptive to their demands.

The shopping experience will determine the decision of consumers. So if your company offers more and better personalized experiences, it will rank as one of the favorites. That is why it requires the impulse of Artificial Intelligence.

Thus, these 5 trends will be the key to success for any company in 2021:

Hyperpersonalization. 

Although personalization was key this year, by 2021 it is necessary to take the experience one step further and that your client always has the products and services they require at hand, quickly and easily.

Chatbots will continue to be effective tools to advise your customers throughout their purchase process, as they make each interaction a unique experience. In addition, they can offer additional products -based on their preferences and needs- to those they already have in the shopping cart.This increases the possibility that they will make a new purchase or that the average ticket will increase, since they have on hand what they I was looking for, suggests you based on sizes, styles, consumption habits, premises or based on your demographics. Chatbots, in an e-commerce environment, have to be indispensable for any successful e-commerce strategy.

This trend also involves getting your consumers the promotions and offers that match it. For example, if a customer has a preference for electronics, they may only pay attention to promotions and discounts where these items appear. It’s about getting the right message to the right person.

Identify unexploited consumption patterns. 

The use of tools such as big data and machine learning allow you to identify purchase micro-trends, which, although they seem very simple or not very relevant, have a great impact on sales.

The purpose is that you understand not only your market, but the behavior of your potential customers and consumers; In other words, if your company is a clothing company, you should be clear about what type of customers buy jeans more than corduroy ones, or which ones prefer jackets or sweaters.

This will give a more specific overview of what to communicate, in what way and to whom it is addressed. The analytical capabilities of Artificial Intelligence allow you to identify market correlations to launch more impactful and strategic campaigns.

Break the barrier between the traditional and the digital world. 

This sounds a bit ambitious, and it is. But as soon as your company is more clear about the importance of the digital world, it will focus its efforts on making its operations more efficient.

AI can help you synchronize the virtual world with the face-to-face; that is, to connect your inventories with your online catalogs, so that you always have availability of the best-selling products; or improve your logistics operations and communicate the shipping process with your customers. All this focused on improving the shopping experience.

Conversational commerce will be another of the tools that will help to bridge this gap, by offering your customers an improved and close experience, as well as having a personal shopping assistant who can know the interests of customers and is 100% available to them on the day and at the time required. You will no longer have to see what you want to buy on the sideboards, but you will enter virtual stores.

Targeted Marketing. 

As I mentioned before, marketing campaigns require more segmentation and planning to be truly impactful.

Consumers’ emotions impact the way they perceive ads, so the identification of these emotions thanks to AI will be key to getting them the right message at the right time.

Artificial emotional intelligence (AEI) is emerging as the next frontier for AI development, especially if your company has a more ambitious marketing goal. This technology is betting that in the coming years it will be able to influence the purchase decision of thousands of consumers to generate more efficient campaigns.

Omnichannel. 

Omnichannel will also be a trend next year, as channel approval has a positive impact on consumers. And in the digital world, the ability for your customer to be able, through different digital platforms, to continue with their shopping experience will be paramount.

Although the more communication channels your company has, the greater the chances that your customers will approach it, omnichannel allows this approach to be much more practical and simple for the user.

It should be noted that 2021 will be an interesting year for technology, and undoubtedly companies will bet heavily on the incorporation of new digital tools. It is enough to see what 2020 left us to know that what seemed very distant a few months ago, today is a reality.

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This article is written by Explica.coand originally published here

How AI Chatbots Can Boost Patient Engagement, Care Experience


by tanya

An artificial intelligence-powered chatbot is helping providers at UCHealth increase patient engagement and enhance the care experience.

The rise of artificial intelligence tools in healthcare has introduced new methods of care delivery, giving providers the ability to reach patients outside the four walls of the doctor’s office.

Chatbots and conversational AI are key examples of such tools. Organizations have implemented these devices to support patients and broaden access to care, wherever patients may be.

At UCHealth, an AI-powered tool called Livi has helped patients meaningfully engage in their own care.

“We first implemented the tool to be able to answer simple questions for our patients. When they come to our website, we want to help them make it easier to find a location or find a doctor,” Nicole Caputo, senior director of experience and innovation at UCHealth, said during a recent episode of Healthcare Strategies, an Xtelligent Healthcare Media podcast.

“But after we implemented her, we found out very quickly that patients wanted to know about their health. They were looking for information specific to them more than anything. We still have people looking for locations and providers in a specific specialty, but they also want to know where their test results are or message their doctor. That shifted our strategy towards integration with the EHR.”

In the context of COVID-19, tools like Livi are becoming all the more prevalent – and critical – in healthcare delivery.

“There are a lot of folks who are calling into clinics and talking to people about their healthcare more, so the idea of picking up the phone and calling somebody is a little bit more difficult when there’s a higher call volume. People are trying to do more online and interact with our digital tools in a way that they may not necessarily have done before,” said Matt Andazola, project manager for experience and innovation at UCHealth.

“They’re coming to Livi and they’re asking for help accomplishing different tasks: Reading a message from their doctor, composing a new one, or finding their test results. Conversational AI is a way to bridge that gap and bring people to the information they’re looking for and help them accomplish things faster, using tools that already exist.”

Going forward, chatbots will play a larger role in the overall patient experience.

“The future for conversational AI is bringing it more into the care process throughout the entire care journey, whether it’s helping more with the pre-work required for appointments or just helping you live your best life possible,” Caputo concluded.

“For us, it’s just greater personalization and greater integration with the healthcare journey, and we’re really excited about the future as we see the technology grow.”

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This article is written by Jessica Kent and originally published here

Conversational Marketing Trends: Chatbots Are Still Missing the Human Element of Conversation


by tanya

Latest Conversational Marketing Analytics Trends State that Customers’ Emotions Have Significant Influence on Their Satisfaction with a Service Chatbot

Strategy Analytics – The development of conversational agents or chatbots that can engage in empathetic conversation with ‘real people’ has long been a goal of artificial intelligence (AI). But the majority of current mainstream chatbots used to increase customer engagement and reduce costs, are inflexible, prescriptive and unable to work outside of their scope. The inability to express emotion, attitude, or opinion, especially if the chatbot cannot solve a customer’s problem, leads to user frustration and cessation of use.

Exploring key design implications for future chatbots by reviewing recent academic and industry research on conversational agents, a new report from the User Experience Strategies service at Strategy Analytics, “Conversational Agents: Update on Academic and Industry UX Research”, identifies a number of key areas for consideration in the design of future chatbots.

Commented Diane O’Neill, co-author and Director, UX Innovation Practice, “Research has shown that a customer’s emotions have a significant influence on their satisfaction with a service chatbot. Consumer reaction to error is significantly influenced by perceived competence and trust. By designing systems that are user-centric and content-driven, in addition to preventing recognized non-progress events from occurring, this will provide numerous benefits to the businesses using them.

Commented Kevin Nolan, VP, UX Innovation Practice, “But despite some successes in the development of empathetic chatbots, human-level intelligence is still not fully understood. Building intelligent social chatbots that can understand humans and their surrounding world requires further advances in AI particularly as their use diversifies into critical health-related services such as mental health support systems.”

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This article is written by Sudipto Ghosh and originally published here

Conversational marketing and chatbots 101: Understanding the buyers’ journey


by tanya

In a technologically advanced world that promotes fast-paced consumerism and instant gratification, 21st-century consumers have become that much more demanding.

The digital marketplace has largely eliminated the need for face-to-face interaction and, as a result, modern consumers crave personalised engagement and interaction from their service providers. They want a speedy response to queries or concerns, they want engagement on social media and they want to be treated like human beings, not metrics or dollar signs.

In response, marketers should be focused on putting the human element back into the sales process, and the best way to do so is to adopt a conversational marketing approach, which includes live messages and chatbots.

But first, what’s your ‘Why’?

Before you hop on the chatbot train, it’s important to determine why you’ve decided to host a bot on your website. What’s your goal? What do you hope to get out of it?

For most businesses, it’s about driving better engagement and, ultimately, revenue. This is achievable with a bot because bots see to web visitors’ demands immediately, removing as much friction from the buying process as possible.

However, each business is different, and conversational marketing success will look different to everyone. This is why it’s important to determine what you want out of a bot application.

Now, put yourself in the buyers’ shoes

Bots are about creating an engaging marketing, sales and support experience for the customer, and are therefore redundant if your buyers still have to jump through hoops to get what they want.

So put yourself in their shoes and go on that sales journey for yourself. Navigate your website as a potential customer without any conversational marketing intervention. This will help you understand where the points of friction are on your site, and where a bot can help alleviate that friction.

If, for example, the goal of the buyer is to request a demo, they need to be able to do so as soon as possible without having to first perform a number of actions (like finding and clicking on a call-to-action, or filling out a landing page form). With a strategically placed bot, your prospect will not only be able to request a demo, but can even book a time slot with the relevant salesperson without having to wait several hours or days for that salesperson to follow up via phone or email.

With a bot, the response is immediate. However, because different types of products or services will attract different types of buyers, you’ll first need to track your buyers’ journey to figure out where best to position that bot.

Remember, the goal is to shorten the sales process and provide optimum value as soon as a prospect enters your site. You want to give them less time to lose interest, second-guess their decision or, worse, move on to a competitor’s site.

Next, target your high-intent pages

Once you’ve tracked the buyers’ journey through your website and have identified potential points of friction, use your website metrics and analytics to gauge which pages leads typically visit before converting on a sale.

You might find, for instance, that users often visit the product catalogue pages before requesting a demo two to three days later. With this type of information on hand, you’ll know which pages are working, and which pages can be improved to better facilitate lead conversion.

Lastly, approach your customers before they approach you

Think about it: when you’re shopping for something specific in a store, a shop assistant will almost always ask if they can help you find what you are looking for. You don’t first browse around, go back to the shop a few days later, and ask to schedule an appointment to chat about the product before (maybe) buying it.

Conversational marketing values engagement above all else. Therefore, when your bot pops up in the corner of a page on your site, it should look and feel like human interaction.

You should always strive to make the buying experience as streamlined as possible for your prospects. This will increase the user’s likelihood of following through with a sale.

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This article is written by YVB and originally published here