Gen AI powered hyper-personalization

 

By: Ganeshkumar.K.R, Director of Products & User Experience, Catalog Management Dept

 

I am currently training for an upcoming marathon race and upgrading my clothing and shoes for it. I visit the three websites where I typically shop: one is an aggregator site, and the other two are brands. In a hurry, I feed them all the same search phrase: "men's light shirts for marathon race."

 

Here is what the search listing looked like across the three sites:

 

Aggregator site: A few polo shirts, cotton shirts, tons of shoes, socks, caps, and bottles.

Brand 1 site: Football jerseys, a couple of Dri-Fit shirts followed by tons of shoes.

Brand 2 site: A few polo shirts, cotton shirts, tons of shoes, socks, caps, and bottles.

 

I am logged in to all the websites, and they have access to my purchase and search histories. Yet, the search listings that claim to "personalize" results, including pricing and ads, are not making my purchase journey any easier than before. I wish that when I log in, everything I see on the site is built just for me (too greedy, I reckon, but at least for folks like me).

 

While this desire has faced challenges over time and effort, the advent of Generative AI (GenAI) offers a whole new leverage.

 

Product Content Creation: Versatility with Velocity

 

A certain streaming app displayed different movie thumbnails for different people, but it was from a fixed pool. They've now moved to specific clips or snapshots from the movie based on your history and preferences—this is for any title across their catalog.

 

For example, I am searching for a winter jacket on a website, and so is my friend in another country who will join me on the trip. While the product is the same, the background image in the product listing is different and regional, viewed at the same time! These advancements are made possible by GenAI, which replaces the massive human workforce that previously managed content generation manually, taking a plethora of time. GenAI brings the advantage of real-time personalization that is contextually accurate.

 

Conversations, Not Just Communication

 

From emails to text messages, the content is often boring, templated, or obviously robotic. GenAI can not only create highly customized messages for each customer quickly but also refresh the content of broadcasts rapidly to bring personalization and turn communication into conversations. The ripple effects? A higher chance of customers writing genuine reviews, responding with suggestions, repeating orders, or making new purchases. All of this is fresh data for the GenAI to update its approach over time.

 

Cohort Characteristics

 

Knowing your prospects, targets, and customers well is essential to serve them best. There's always something unknown that we struggle with regarding customer segmentation. Time and money are spent gathering and diving deep into past data and research. With GenAI, you can not only get an enhanced and detailed list of cohort characteristics but also discover many new ones unknown to you. This will help you expand the customer base in your current regions and many more regions, thereby achieving accurate targeting.

 

Ease of Experimentation

 

A/B testing has been a staple for deciding user experience and offerings, but it involves considerable effort to create catalog variants. GenAI adoption in this area will provide an arsenal of variants for A/B testing and the ability to change the catalog at speeds previously impossible, with all the additional information that will substantiate and justify the tests.

 

Leverages are aplenty, but it is imperative that you strategize rolling out the changes and transition into newer ways of personalization with the newly found catalyst, GenAI, which brings dynamism like never before. From data considerations to taxonomy priorities, from pre- and post-purchase journeys to creating and cross-using customers into newer offerings that can increase the current top line while creating new ones, and revamping KPIs and related cadences, hyper-personalization is here to keep you busy and challenged in new and interesting ways. The realm of extreme experimentation will help you and your customers figure out the sweet spots for each other's goals. When customer loyalty is no longer sticky, GenAI enables you to surprise and delight your customers in ways never imagined before. May the GenAI be with you!