Is That a Robot in Your Pocket?

Depending on which study you read, the average consumer has anywhere between 4,000 and 10,000 ads placed in front of them each day. As a marketer, even I think that’s just plain crazy. So, how does a brand stand out? How do you connect with your customers on a one-to-one basis? How do you offer a level of service that is unmatched? 

The answer may be in the pocket of every customer you have. All you have to do is know how to tap into a device that is as important to people as an appendage. Seriously, our smartphones are getting smarter. And we all rely on them in ways that are so common we stop thinking about it. Updated versions of operating systems and the apps we interface with daily are constantly moving toward new levels of artificial intelligence. When are we going to stop calling a phone a phone and call it something that’s more in line with what we actually use the device for, like a “personal robotic device”?

My point in all of this is not getting more technology into our lives. It’s using the technology in our hands already for more human-to-human connections. That’s the real opportunity for brands. 

Today, you’ll see article after article about customer profiles, location data and push notifications. These are certainly important driving factors for personalization. However, most companies stop there and simply send a coupon to their customer’s phone. Our LighthousePE clients know that while that option is available to them, they can also use that same data to send the information to a company representative. In turn, that representative can walk right up to the customer and engage them on an authentically personal level. That kind of interaction exceeds customer service expectations and delivers the kind of experience that can turn a customer into a brand evangelist.  What’s that kind of lifetime value worth to your company?

The problem one might point out now is that a company can’t hire enough people to deliver that level of personal service and still be profitable. That’s where the robot in your pocket comes in. Each phone, armed with the right kind of machine learning, can be a company representative. In other words, instead of pushing the same deal to every customer, each customer receives a unique experience based on their individual behaviors and data points. The customer gets an unsurpassed level of service and the company gets a limitless number of virtual representatives to help manage every customer’s expectations.

Personally, I love the idea of my own personal pocket robot automatically making every marketing message or brand interaction I receive more relevant to me. And with our technology, that’s not science fiction—that’s possible right now.