A Message from Infobip

Business leaders need to dig deeper digitally to personalize customer experience strategies

By Aida Durmić, Infobip Enterprise Team Lead

Improving and transforming the customer experience and personalization for businesses is a trending topic lately. Before embarking on a cloud communication journey, businesses need to ensure they have taken the time to map out the road ahead. Investing in personalization and the solutions that offer cloud communication is necessary, but it’s not completely challenge-free. Companies that have decided to make this shift need to take a closer look at some of the not-so-obvious issues. This will make it easier for them to decide which cloud communications service provider best suits their needs.

Quality of data is key

The primary objective of personalization is to identify the target audience, then to gather the data and proceed with analysis to optimize the customer journey. However, the first challenge in personalization is how technologies gather and analyze data. Many service providers will list their countless, wonderful data-analysis features, but how much of it is quality data? Data that’s weak in terms of scope and quality can actually disrupt personalization services. Quality data — and how the technology goes about analyzing and processing it — is what matters.

Is it actionable?

Another challenge in personalization lies in delivery. Many companies promise real results in real time, but do they actually follow through? Personalization is a frictionless, omnichannel journey for the customer in real time, and for that to happen it needs to be supported by technology that can collect, process, execute, and assess data efficiently, smoothly, easily, and in real time. Data needs to be actionable, to tell businesses how their customer wants to hear from them in the next event. Beyond that, it’s essential to look for technology that integrates seamlessly with current operations and is scalable.

Management adoption is everything

The last challenge is the need for management buy-in. Adopting personalization is a mindset shift; one that cannot be done alone. We continue to see resistance by management teams that fail to appreciate the long-term impact of personalization. Embracing a customer-centric approach also requires an investment in infrastructure, technology, and resources — all nightmarish words for decision makers who are not completely convinced and not ready to embrace the benefits of cloud-based solutions. To expedite this process, public-sector entities will need to play their role in the years to come to improve the regulations and frameworks for data transmission out of countries.

Nevertheless, trends are shifting, which is something decision makers need to take heed of. Customers are taking control over communication with brands and channel selection, timing, and ways of communication are becoming increasingly important — especially in competitive markets.

The way forward? Cloud communication

Personalized and smart communication is more important today than ever. To optimize costs, grow business, and become industry leaders, brands need to step away from ‘old-fashioned’ bulk communication and invest in preference-based, individual communication, creating experiences that are meaningful for the business and the consumer.

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