Picture your favorite coffee shop. Chances are you have a routine – maybe a latte and croissant on your morning commute or an iced coffee to recharge on summer afternoons. Now imagine how frustrating it would be if the baristas constantly got your order wrong or you had to reintroduce yourself every visit. You‘d likely take your business elsewhere pretty quickly.
This simple example illustrates the importance of understanding customer needs and nurturing relationships over time. While this comes naturally for a small business, it poses a huge challenge for large enterprises with millions of interactions across multiple channels every day. How can they deliver personalized, seamless customer experiences at scale?
The answer lies in customer engagement automation.
What is Customer Engagement Automation?
Customer engagement automation (CEA) refers to using technology like AI and automation to optimize and personalize customer journeys across every touchpoint. The overarching goals are to:
- Understand individual needs, preferences, and behaviors
- Deliver tailored messaging and offers
- Provide quick, consistent responses
- Build loyalty through highly relevant experiences
By integrating tools like chatbots, email marketing, and customer data platforms, brands can engage customers in a highly personalized way at scale.
The potential impact is substantial. According to Salesforce research, 76% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations.[1]
However, presently only 51% of customers feel like vendors generally understand their preferences and 39% receive inconsistent experiences across departments.[1]
This gap represents a huge area for improvement through automation. Companies innovating in this space have seen metrics like customer satisfaction, loyalty, and lifetime value dramatically increase.
The Building Blocks of Automated Engagement
There are two primary approaches to automated engagement:
1. Best-of-Breed Tools
With this model, brands select individual point solutions specializing in specific capabilities from leading vendors in each area.
For example:
- Chatbots: Manage conversational experiences across web, mobile and messaging apps. Top providers include Intercom, Drift, and Ada.
- Email marketing: Build and automate omnichannel campaigns. Common platforms are Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Klaviyo.
- CRM: Collect customer data and track relationships over time. Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, Zoho and Copper dominate this category.
Integrating these separate systems requires some technical work, but offers flexibility to leverage cutting-edge solutions.
2. Integrated Customer Engagement Platforms
This emerging approach combines capabilities like chat, email marketing, and analytics into a single platform designed specifically for coordinating omnichannel engagement.
Top providers in this market include Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Adobe Experience Cloud, Oracle CX Marketing, and SAP Customer Experience. Most focus primarily on midmarket and enterprise customers.
The unified data and workflows make this option simpler to manage, though the suites include some generic functionality relative to specialized tools.
Determine the right approach based on your technical capabilities, budget, and business requirements. An integrated platform reduces complexity for large brands, while composable solutions provide ultimate flexibility and customization.
Realizing the Potential of Automated Engagement
Leading companies have tapped automated engagement to drive transformative outcomes across key metrics:
1. Higher Efficiency
According to research from McKinsey, customer engagement automation solutions like conversational AI can reduce customer service costs by up to 30% while simultaneously improving consistency and accuracy.[2]
2. Increased Revenue
An IDC study found that businesses leveraging Adobe’s customer engagement tools experienced a 10.3% annual increase in revenue on average.[3]
3. Improved Customer Lifetime Value
SoftwareReviews data shows that integrated engagement platforms drive a 72% boost customer retention rates compared to generic CRM solutions.[4]
The numbers speak for themselves – automated engagement done right pays huge dividends.
Let‘s look at some illustrative use cases:
Case Study 1: Sephora’s AI-powered Beauty Advisor
Sephora immerses customers in an interactive, personalized shopping experience through their mobile app and in-store tech.
The AI-powered Beauty Advisor chatbot lets shoppers get tailored product recommendations by answering a few questions about their preferences. Users can also try on thousands of products virtually and receive prompts guiding them to best-matching items while browsing in stores.
Results:
- 30% increase in app users
- 16% rise in basket size
- 15 pt gain in customer satisfaction score
Case Study 2: 1-800 Flowers‘ Consistent Cross-channel Messaging
1-800 Flowers struggled with fragmented systems to manage engagement campaigns across channels. They adopted Adobe Experience Cloud to create unified customer profiles and coordinate messaging.
Now customers receive consistent, contextualized offers whether they’re on the website, mobile app, or contact center. The company also automated many customer service tasks to resolve common issues instantly.
Outcomes:
- 10% revenue growth YoY
- 680 bps rise in cross-sell/up-sell conversion rate
- 5x higher open rate for personalized emails
These examples demonstrate the ability for automation and personalization to create the "neighborhood coffee shop feel" even for enormous brands.
Best Practices for Implementation
While benefits can be substantial, successful automation initiatives require careful planning and execution. Here is a high-level checklist:
Get executive buy-in: Progress requires supporting infrastructure, governance and resources. Educate stakeholders early and get leadership mandated.
Take an outside-in approach: Deeply understand customer perspectives and pain points through research. Design automation around addressing identified needs.
Prioritize change management: Transitioning workflows and adopting new technologies causes disruption. Invest heavily in internal communications, training and support.
Integrate systems: Break down data and process silos to enable unified engagement across channels. Leverage customer data platforms (CDPs) and APIs.
Continuously optimize: Measure performance rigorously. Feed insights back into the system to further refine automated interactions.
The Future of Automated Engagement
Customers expect ever more personalized and contextualized experiences. Meeting rising expectations will require brands to continually expand their automation capabilities.
Upcoming innovations like predictive analytics, geofencing and expanded use of AR/VR present new opportunities to take engagement to the next level.
As technology continues advancing, automated solutions will increasingly become table stakes, rather than a competitive differentiator. Focus innovation efforts on truly understanding your customers and what makes your brand special. Layer cutting-edge tech on top of that foundation.
Brandscentered around meaningful customer relationships will continue driving long-term loyalty and growth.
[1] State of the Connected Customer. Salesforce Research. 2022.
[2] "Five priorities for customer service leaders." McKinsey. 2022.
[3] Adobe Customers Experience Company Growth at More than Twice the Rate of S&P 500. Adobe Press Release. 2022.
[4] 2021 SoftwareReviews Data Quadrant Report. SoftwareReviews. 2021.
I hope this overview clearly explains the value automated engagement can provide and offers helpful perspectives on how to implement it effectively within your organization. Please don‘t hesitate to reach out if you have any other questions!
