How to Perform Customer Segmentation
Customer segmentation isn’t nearly as gruesome as it sounds. It’s all about how you understand your customers and their behavior. When it comes to Customer Experience (CX) one of the most powerful ways to segment your customer base is by preferred contact channel.
Before we go into detail on that, it’s worth noting that not every sector will have the same customer segments. If your service is purely remote, like many utilities companies, you’re not going to offer in-person interactions. If your service is delivered in person, for instance, retail, your in-person shop-floor interactions are going to be a lot more important. In the end, effective customer segmentation requires you to understand your business and market.
Beyond that, what strategies can we use to segment our customer base?
- A lot can be inferred from demographics. Younger customers, for instance, are much more likely to prefer self-service options. Older customers are more likely to want to speak to a human being, either remotely, or in person where possible.
- Inference can only take you so far; sometimes you just need to ask. Omni-channel customer surveys provide an easy mechanism for gathering information on customer’s preferred channels of communication. This is essential data that you can gather at the point of sale.
- However, surveys don’t always work; often customers will simply ignore them. To ensure your message gets through, leverage AI hyper-personalization. If your customers feel that a message is tailored and relevant to them, they’re much more likely to respond.
Once you’ve segmented your customer base by contact channel, you can start putting that data to work.
Making the Most of Customer Segmentation
Once you know which customers prefer which methods of contact, you can begin to tailor customer journeys to their needs. The key here is to think omni-channel. Interactions should be able to flow freely across different channels according to need, without delays or loss in service quality. To achieve this, you need advanced customer journey mapping.
- A customer who prefers to self-serve—younger customers, for instance—should be directed first to self-serve options. They’re probably relatively confident in their ability to resolve their problems; beginning with an AI-powered chatbot seems like the best course of action here. This ensures personalization without requiring agent support.
- A customer who prefers to interact with you remotely might be willing to give self-service a try, but will probably seek to escalate to an agent should the problem prove too challenging. You might begin with an online chatbot, before escalating to a webchat with a human agent, and then further, to a voice call, if the situation requires it. To track a single interaction requires multiple channels requires a powerful Customer Data Platform, that can unify interaction history and customer data to provide the agent with a complete picture of the customer.
- If you offer in-person service, your shop-floor advisors can usually offer that. If you don’t the next best thing is to offer a voice call. This is especially important for vulnerable customers; by routing them to a priority queue, you can ensure that they always get the quality of service they require.
Tailoring the customer journey to this level requires either in-depth technical knowledge or a powerful, easy-to-master interface. A service creation interface that doesn’t require an in-depth knowledge of code is a must-have, here. It should give your supervisors the ability to design appropriate customer journeys and make changes on the fly.
Omni-Channel AI for Customer Segmentation
As established, to design an outstanding customer journey, you need the best available tools. In the twenty-first century, that means AI.
Today, AI works at every level of the customer journey to create streamlined experiences personalized to individual customer needs. No matter the customer’s preferred channel, AI has something to add.
- For self-service customers, an AI-powered chatbot might be the only form of contact the customer has with your business. That makes it your only chance to leave an impression; generative AI and adaptive personas can create an experience that tailors itself to the individual customer, making them feel less like a number on a screen, and more like a human being.
- Guiding customers through a customer journey requires you to understand with their problems quickly, so you can begin resolving them. AI can help here: through voice recognition, AI can identify a customer’s needs before routing them to the best available outcome, all without the customer having to lift a finger or listen to a boring pre-recorded message.
- Meanwhile, biometric ID&V can identify a customer by their voice patterns, verifying authenticity before an interaction even begins.
- For those customers who require the highest level of human engagement, AI can support agents throughout an interaction. Through real-time sentiment analysis, next-best-action script suggestions, and post-call summarization, AI supercharges agents to deliver outstanding service to the most vulnerable customers.
AI works at every stage of the customer journey to streamline and perfect. No matter how you choose to segment your customer base, AI has a role to play in delivering outstanding service.
