Large enterprises today face a new class of customer engagement challenges. Consumers have higher expectations to be authentically engaged by brands in ways that are relevant and meaningful to their personal needs and desires. Adding to this complexity is the sheer number of channels now available to customers to interact with a brand. Given these facts, there is a significant business need to create a consistent and exemplary experience across every customer touchpoint.
Over the years, businesses have implemented solutions to incrementally improve their ability to deliver personalized, cross-channel customer experiences. However, because much of their customer data and channels are still siloed, they continue to be hindered in their ability to correlate events, contextualize past and current customer interactions, and predict or influence future behaviors and react to this knowledge in an intelligent manner. Retrofitted technologies won’t solve these new age challenges. This is a data-driven endeavor that requires a new stack, a new generation of systems that harness the power of ML and AI to take real-time, personalized actions on customer insights in an automated and scalable manner.
According to Gartner’s July 2018 Hype Cycle for Analytics and Business Intelligence, 2018, “A new approach called ‘augmented analytics’ is emerging, in which machine learning automation will be critical to augmenting human intelligence and contextual awareness across the entire data and analytics workflow, from data to insight to action.”
This is exactly how ZineOne has positioned its Customer Engagement Hub for Real-Time Personalization, which is why we are excited to be included in the Hype Cycle for Analytics and Business Intelligence, 2018, as a Sample Vendor in the technology category of Continuous Intelligence. Gartner Hype Cycles provide a graphic representation of the maturity and adoption of technologies and applications, and how they are potentially relevant to solving real business problems and exploiting new opportunities.
Gartner defines Continuous Intelligence as a “style of work in which real-time analytics are integrated within a business operation, processing current and historical data to prescribe actions in response to business moments and other events. It provides decision automation or decision support. Continuous intelligence leverages multiple technologies such as augmented analytics, event stream processing, optimization, business rule management and machine learning.”
Additionally, ZineOne was also included in the May 2018 The Gartner CRM Vendor Guide, 2018 as a Sample Vendor for Contextual Insights. According to Gartner, “Contextual insights vendors use a combination of technology such as in memory computing, real- time decisioning, streaming analytics, integration, journey orchestration and event streaming capabilities. They support customer service and engagement use cases, and are often IoT-enabled.”
ZineOne is working with many customers in the retail, hospitality and financial services industries to help them accelerate their digital transformation journey seamlessly across all channels. Let us consider an example to understand the kind of continuous intelligence and contextual insights ZineOne provides to its customers to enable real-time personalization:
Let’s say Susan is browsing for boots on MyStore’s website. She looks at the product details of Tommy Hilfiger’s IONA boots, selects her size and puts the pair in her cart, but does not complete the purchase. A few days later, Susan is in the mall near the entrance to MyStore when she gets the above notification on her phone.
Such personalized interaction requires the system to:
- Correlate events on different channels (website, mobile, in-store)
- Complete look-ups in three different systems (online cart, store inventory, and pricing),
- Immediately deliver an action, or a message, that is relevant for Susan in her current context.
Now, let’s take a look at some of ZineOne’s capabilities that enable such influential intelligence to deliver smart, in-the-moment customer engagement:
Virtual Customer Data PlatformTM (vCDPTM) for 360° Customer View: Traditionally, CDPs pull data from all enterprise systems of record as well as external sources and from the engagement channels themselves—resulting in an inordinate amount of data that is difficult to store, cleanse, and continually update.
Unlike a traditional CDP, ZineOne does not copy or store this vast amount of data in order to leverage its insights. Instead, it performs real-time lookup using SDKs, pre-built connectors, tag management, and APIs to rapidly access profile and transaction data from disparate enterprise systems. It then correlates this data to the customer’s real-time activity on any channel.
Real Time and Event Driven: By creating and continuously updating a user profile for each customer across all channels, ZineOne enables enterprises act on customer intent in real-time. ZineOne’s platform enables these real-time interactions to take place, and even further supplements the customer’s user profile with external data, such as time and weather in their area, to enrich the enterprise’s understanding of that individual in that moment and in turn deliver the optimal experience for their situation.
ML and AI Powered: At the heart of the ZineOne platform is Machine Learning (ML), which enables it to continuously learn from and act on the customer data it ingests to effectively gauge affinity and intent with increasing precision. Using AI-powered tools, the platform can determine a “zone of influence” for the customer, or the situations in which the probability of an action or transaction is highest. Once the Influence ZoneTM has been determined, the most appropriate and relevant action is triggered.
Hub-and-Spoke Model for Real-Time Multi-Channel Interactions: The “hub” of ZineOne’s platform is its data analytics and AI decisioning layer, that initiate the delivery of personalized actions on the various channels (mobile apps, website, email, call center) on which the personalized actions are delivered.
Clearly, ZineOne’s all-in-one solution for real-time personalization at scale is the most intelligent Customer Engagement Hub for the new age of smart customer engagement. Click here to learn more about our platform and to see how we can help in your digital transformation.
Gartner Disclaimer
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
