Personalize everything in the customer journey with composable architecture

Personalization aims to create a more relevant and enjoyable experience for the customer, which can lead to increased satisfaction, loyalty, and sales. Personalization is used in many industries, such as retail, e-commerce, finance, and healthcare. Personalization is also used on different channels, such as websites, mobile apps, chatbots, and customer service interactions. Providing a consistent message is a challenge with the variety of media and increased touchpoints.

The following data is required to be collected for personalization to be effective.

1. Personal data: This includes information such as name, email, phone number, and address. Customers are ready to share this information when they trust the brand and are confident that it will benefit them to batter this for a better experience. Otherwise, the customers will remain anonymous.
2. Demographic data: This includes information such as age, gender, location, and income level. It also consists of contextual information like weather information. This data can be purchased from data providers, and it is costly. If the customer is known and is a first-party already, then it is advantageous.  
3. Behavioral data: This information is vital to understand the current intent of the customer. Behavioral data includes browsing history, purchase history, and website interactions.
4. Transactional data: Transactional data includes purchase history, order history, and billing information and comes from internal systems like CRM. This data is essential to understand customers' spending habits and creating personalized experiences based on their purchase history.
5. Feedback data: This includes information such as customer reviews, ratings, and comments. Similar to Transactional data, this data is used to understand customer preferences and improve products or services based on their feedback. Tools like Bazaarvoice, Yotpo, Trustpilot, PowerReviews, etc. help collect this data.
6. Social data: In today's world, Social media interactions, likes, shares, and followers have become vital. Tools like Hootsuite Insights, Sprout Social, Brand24, Mention, and BuzzSumo, etc. are some tools that can provide this information.
7. Contextual data: To understand how customers interact with a company's products or services and create personalized experiences based on that context, information such as time of day, location, and device type are helpful and can be easily identifiable from the request headers.

Once the data is collected from various sources actively, then Personalized AI-powered software, such as IBM Watson or Google Cloud AI, can help companies create personalized customer experiences and recommendations based on their behavior and preferences. Personalized NLP-powered software, such as GPT-3,5 or Hugging Face, can help companies develop personalized responses and recommendations based on customers' natural language inputs.

1. Awareness: When customers become aware of a problem or need, they start exploring the market for available options. Hootsuite Insights or Brand24 can help companies gain insights into customer needs and preferences.
2. Research: The customer researches to find solutions to their problem or need. Personalized search and recommendation engines, such as Cludo or RichRelevance, can help customers find products or services that match their needs.
3. Evaluation: The customer evaluates different options and brands to determine the best fit for their needs. The brand should provide product comparisons, ratings, and reviews to help customers better understand the product.
4. Purchase: The customer makes a purchase decision and completes a transaction. Personalized checkout and payment systems, such as Shopify or Salesforce Commerce Cloud, can make it easier for customers to complete transactions and save their preferences for future purchases.
5. Delivery: The customer receives the product or service they purchased. Personalized shipping and tracking systems, such as Shipstation or AfterShip, can help customers track their deliveries and receive real-time updates.
6. Use: The customer uses the product or service and experiences its benefits or drawbacks. During this time, his feedback to the brands is important, and brands should be available on all possible channels to collect feedback on their experience with the product or service.
7. Support: The customer receives support and assistance from the company if they have any issues or questions. Personalized customer services and support systems, such as Zendesk or Salesforce Service Cloud, can help companies provide tailored customer assistance.
8. Retention: During retention, the customer continues to use the product or service and potentially becomes a repeat customer. Brands need to keep customers engaged and coming back for more. Personalized loyalty and rewards programs like Belly or FiveStars help the brands.
9. Advocacy: The customer recommends the product or service to others and advocates for the brand. Personalized referral and word-of-mouth marketing tools, such as ReferralCandy or Ambassador, can help companies turn satisfied customers into advocates for their brand.
10. Upselling/Cross-selling: At this time, the company attempts to sell additional or related products and services to the customer. Personalized product recommendation software, such as Cludo or RichRelevance, can help companies recommend associated products or services to customers.
11. Retargeting: The company uses targeted advertising to attempt to bring back customers who last made a purchase a while ago. Personalized retargeting and remarketing software, such as Adroll or Perfect Audience, can help companies target customers with customized ads based on their browsing or purchase history.

Personalized communication is delivered through various channels, like,

1. Chatbot: Personalized chatbot software, such as DigitalGenius or Verloop, can help companies provide 24/7 personalized customer service and assistance through chat and messaging platforms.
2. SMS: Personalized SMS marketing software, such as Twilio or EZ Texting, can help companies send targeted text messages and updates to customers.
3. Voice: Personalized voice-enabled software, such as Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, can help companies provide personalized assistance and information to customers through voice commands.
4. Virtual reality: Personalized virtual reality software, such as Oculus or HTC Vive, can help companies create immersive and personalized experiences for customers.
5. Augmented reality: Personalized augmented reality software, such as Vuforia or ARKit, can help companies create interactive and personalized customer experiences.

Personalized interactions can make customers feel more valued and understood, leading to higher customer satisfaction. Personalized interactions can be more engaging and exciting for customers, leading to more extended and frequent conversations. Personalization provides efficient customer service and supports retention by understanding a customer's specific needs and providing tailored responses.

Overall, Personalizing customer experience can make the customer experience more satisfying and efficient, leading to increased engagement, revenue, and retention. Identifying the right tool to collect the data, the algorithm to process the data, and creating the personalized message specific to the channel are all essential elements in a composable CX architecture.