Chatbots for relationship marketing – Back in 1999 Don Peppers and Martha Rogers wrote about the potential of one to one marketing, in the publication that launched Customer Relationship Management: “The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time”.
Today, artificial intelligence is a powerful tool for data-driven customer marketing aimed to build one to one relationships with final customers.
Artificial intelligence helps brands establishing long time relationships with customers and making the right offer at the right time of purchasing process.
Chatbots added value can be summarized in 24/7 service accessibility, multiple queries simultaneous management, repetitive tasks automation. Also chatbots support call center agents with anwers’ suggestion and help internal employees in retrieving information, simulating human-like conversations with natural language and through simple vocal commands.
In a relationship marketing strategy, chatbots provide data about customers’ behaviour and actual interests, going beyond the segmentation.
Segmentation is a technique that has been part of the customer marketing toolset since the onset of loyalty marketing over 20 years ago, but resulting segments are overgeneralizations and provide a static view of the customer.
Chatbots provide real-time answers and engage users in conversations, on the basis of their actions on website’s pages and provide insights that allow to present the right product, at the right person, in the right time, using the right channel.
This means also showing to customers that brands are actually listening to their needs and aim to offer what customers really want and not what the company wants to sell.
Relationship marketing strategies count on building long time realtionships, for a mutual benefit of both customers and companies.
AI and conversational insights, make it possible to create relationships on a large scale.
chatbots for relationship marketing: fidelity programs
Chatbots for relationship marketing – Fidelity programs are part of relationship marketing strategy, where AI may bring considerable benefits.
A recent research from Access reports that more than 70% of customers expect discounts and offers, while a 7% uptake in a customer loyalty program can boost lifetime profits per customer by as much as 85%!
These are few examples of what a fidelity program chatbot may do:
- provide answers about a fidelity program and list users privileges;
- support and guide the customer through the subscription procedure;
- pushing marketing offers to encourage registration;
- give suggestions for point accrual;
- collect data for Fidelity cards issuing, in compliance with privacy and GDPR rules;
- up-selling and cross-selling during conversations;
- showing customers eligible discounts and prizes;
- managing shipping/pick up information
Furthermore, chatbots allows to customize, manage and track conversations on multiple channels (web, mobile, social), using a single login point.
In conclusion, if conversation is the first step to build a relationship, conversational AI should be mandatory in a relationship and loyalty marketing strategy.
Sources:
https://blog.accessdevelopment.com/the-ultimate-collection-of-loyalty-statistics
https://hbr.org/1999/01/is-your-company-ready-for-one-to-one-marketing
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https://crafter.ai/it/2021/04/22/conversational-commerce-con-i-chatbot/
