As we progress through 2025, the banking industry is set for substantial transformation driven by several key trends. Digital transformation will remain a powerful force, with advancements in AI and machine learning enabling unparalleled operational efficiencies and hyper-personalized customer experiences. Banks will look to transform the way they do business by moving beyond their walls with the maturing of open banking and embedded finance.

To stay competitive, banks must adapt and embrace emerging industry trends. This will require being more inquisitive and innovative compared to previous years, as the adoption of AI and cloud technologies continues to expand.

Banking Trend #1: Hyper-Personalization for Customer Satisfaction

Customers increasingly demand personalized banking experiences tailored to their unique needs and preferences. Hyper-personalization transforms the traditional banking model into a customer-centric approach, significantly boosting satisfaction and retention rates. Banks can use advanced data analytics and AI to deliver highly personalized financial services, such as customized savings plans and tailored investment advice. By leveraging data, banks can anticipate customer needs and proactively offer solutions, like recommending mortgage products or providing financial wellness tools based on individual spending patterns. Delivering these tailored experiences will be a crucial differentiator for banks aiming to attract and retain customers.

Recommended Approach: Banks should leverage advanced data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to create highly individualized experiences. By understanding customer preferences, behaviors, and financial needs in real-time, banks can offer tailored products, services, and communication, leading to a more seamless and intuitive customer experience. This approach improves engagement and loyalty, increases revenue opportunities, and provides competitive differentiation.

See Also: Transforming Industries, Powering Innovation

Banking Trend #2: Adapting to Regulatory Shifts

As the banking landscape evolves, staying compliant with regulatory requirements becomes increasingly challenging, especially with the rise of open banking, AI, and data privacy concerns. In 2025, banks will face a more complex regulatory environment, with new rules focused on data privacy, cybersecurity, and sustainability. The rise of digital banking, cryptocurrency, blockchain, and AI adoption across banking operations will prompt regulatory bodies to implement clearer frameworks and guidelines to ensure stability and consumer protection.

Recommended Approach: Navigating constant changes in risk and regulatory environments is crucial for banks in 2025. By ensuring compliance with regulations, banks mitigate risks and maintain trust with customers and regulatory authorities. To stay ahead, banks should adopt compliance technologies that automate regulatory reporting and help them stay agile in a rapidly changing landscape. Investing in advanced technologies like AI and machine learning can help identify potential risks and streamline compliance efforts. By adopting these strategies, banks can better manage the dynamic risk and regulatory environment, ensuring compliance while maintaining competitiveness and customer trust.

Related: Strategies + Solutions to Ensure Regulatory and Compliance Excellence

Banking Trend #3: Embedded Finance Enables Industry Crossover

Embedded finance integrates financial services into non-financial platforms, allowing users to access banking services within applications they already use. By embedding payment, lending, and insurance services into apps and websites, non-financial companies are able to offer financial products directly to their customers. For example, ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft offer in-app payment options, and e-commerce platforms provide financing options at checkout. By integrating financial services into non-financial platforms, banks can tap into new markets and customer bases, generating additional revenue.

Recommended Approach: Banks looking to start or deepen their embedded finance solutions should take several key steps. These steps include identifying strategic partnerships and collaborating with fintech companies and non-financial platforms that align with their goals. These partnerships provide the necessary technology and customer reach to implement embedded finance solutions effectively. Next, invest in technology by upgrading IT infrastructure to support embedded finance, including adopting cloud-based solutions and modern technologies that offer the agility and scalability needed for seamless integration. Create robust APIs that allow third-party platforms to integrate your financial services. Ensure these APIs are secure, reliable, and easy to use. Leverage advanced data analytics to understand customer behavior and preferences, helping you offer personalized financial services that meet the specific needs of your customers.

You May Enjoy: 6 Digital Payment Trends Set to Transform 2025

Banking Trend #4: Leveraging AI for Insights and Automation

AI and automation have evolved from buzzwords to essential components of banking operations. In 2025, AI will play a pivotal role in customer service, fraud detection, risk management, and personalized financial advice. AI-powered chatbots will handle routine customer inquiries, freeing human agents to tackle more complex issues. Additionally, AI-driven algorithms will enhance banks’ ability to detect emerging fraud patterns and mitigate risks more effectively. Automation will streamline internal processes, leading to cost reductions and improved operational efficiency.

Recommended Approach: To fully utilize AI, banks need to prioritize improving their data strategy, recognizing that high-quality, reliable, and trustworthy data is essential for AI to deliver significant outcomes. They need to align AI initiatives with the bank’s overall business goals. Then identify areas where AI can add the most value, such as customer service, fraud detection, and risk management and focus on value-driven AI use cases. They also need to invest in modern technology and infrastructure for agility and scalability.

Read More: Transform Your Business With Cutting-Edge AI and Automation Solutions

Banking Trend #5: Responsive Resilience

Responsive Resilience continues to be a key banking trend in 2025, emphasizing the ability of financial institutions to adapt swiftly and effectively to changing conditions. Banks must be prepared to respond to economic fluctuations, market changes, and unexpected events. This requires robust risk management frameworks and the ability to pivot strategies quickly. A compounding factor, the shift to digital has caused increased exposure to financial fraud and cyber threats.

Recommended Approach: Invest in advanced technologies such as AI, machine learning, and cloud computing to enhance operational efficiency and adaptability. These technologies can automate processes, improve decision-making, and provide real-time insights. Utilize data analytics to gain deeper insights into customer behavior, market trends, and potential risks. This data-driven approach allows banks to make informed decisions and respond swiftly to changes in the banking landscape.

Explore More: Reimagine Business for the Digital Age

Banking Trend #6: Embracing Open Banking and Connected Ecosystems

Although many institutions have deprioritized open banking in recent years, establishing an open banking strategy now offers significant benefits. Open banking continues to revolutionize the financial industry by enabling secure data sharing between banks and third-party providers through APIs. It unlocks a wealth of third-party financial data, enabling banks to better-tailor products and services, enhance customer loyalty, improve operational efficiencies, and open new revenue streams. This trend will change how banks engage with third-party financial service providers, fostering the development of innovative financial products and services. Open banking will drive greater competition, promote collaboration, and empower consumers with more choices and personalized banking experiences. Examples include budgeting apps that aggregate data from multiple bank accounts, personalized financial advice based on spending patterns and streamlined loan application processes by accessing a customer’s financial data to provide a more accurate and personalized credit score.

Recommended Approach: Banks must establish a clear vision for open banking that aligns with their overall business goals. They should determine specific objectives, such as driving innovation, improving customer experience, or expanding market reach. Additionally, banks need to update their IT infrastructure to support open banking. This includes developing secure and reliable APIs for data sharing and ensuring systems are resilient and scalable.

See Also: 1033 Open Banking Mandate Blueprint for Success

Unlocking New Opportunities in 2025

Our end-to-end digital solutions drive business outcomes, enhance experiences, and ensure robust risk and compliance management to improve operational efficiency and business resilience.

• Business Transformation: Align the business with an actionable roadmap to optimize operations, improve service, and enhance profitability.
• Modernization: Advance technologies to enhance digital capabilities and customer engagement.
• Data + Analytics: Proactively leverage integrated data and AI to refine banking product portfolios and mitigate risks.
• Risk + Compliance: Strengthen risk management frameworks, ensure adherence to banking regulations, and enhance operational stability.
• Consumer Experience: Improve customer satisfaction with hyper-personalized banking services and intuitive digital experiences.

Discover why we have been trusted by 18 of the 20 largest commercial banks. Explore our financial services expertise and contact us to learn more.

Fueled by technological advancements including 5G, generative AI, and cloud computing, the communications, media, and technology (CMT) industry is poised for significant growth and disruption in 2024. Challenges like rapidly changing customer preferences and frequent M&A put CMT companies in a difficult spot – only the most agile and innovative will thrive.

Our extensive experience within the CMT Industry gives us a keen eye for disruptors and trends as well as insights into how companies should navigate them. Here are some key trends and disruptors that are shaping 2024:

Open Ecosystems and the Rise of “ORAN”

The advent of 5G unlocks possibilities beyond conventional telecommunication networks. “ORAN or OpenRAN,” with its decoupling of infrastructure from the service layer, fosters a new era of open ecosystems. This translates to wider vendor choice, diversified revenue streams, and increased agility for players within the network value chain.

The Internet of Things (IoT) and Connected Devices

Interconnected devices, from smartphones to smart homes to industrial machinery to mobility are creating vast opportunities and with AI driving intelligence in many processes and decision-making, we are expecting to see an unprecedented surge.

Redefining the Customer Experience with Immersive Technologies

In a fiercely competitive landscape, delivering exceptional customer experience (CX) becomes a key differentiator. Leveraging immersive technologies like AR and VR, brands can cultivate engaging and frictionless experiences, fostering deeper connections and reducing churn. Data-driven personalization extends beyond the basics, offering truly tailored interactions that resonate with individuals.

5G Maturity Paves the Way for Innovation

As 5G matures, its near-limitless connectivity serves as a springboard for groundbreaking services and applications. To unlock this potential, telecommunication companies (Telcos) must focus on increasing network capacity, optimizing data throughput and spectrum utilization, and minimizing latency and energy consumption.

The Cloud Evolution

Edge computing, green computing, AI, data, enterprise cloud, and the necessity to evolve infrastructure stacks to be more open. Cloud will have a significant impact, expanding to a highly distributed fabric, spanning 5G, fueling telco to techno transformation, unlocking new revenue streams, and enabling a new era of innovation.

Artificial Intelligence: Feeding Automation Needs

CMT companies have long utilized automation systems to streamline subscriber interactions and manage churn. However, AI and machine learning (ML) elevate these efforts to a whole new level. Personalized recommendations, proactive service outreach, and data-driven insights empower CMT companies to deliver superior customer service and optimize network operations.

Generative AI Revolutionizing Businesses

Generative AI (GenAI) warrants its own call-out given the quick reaction and adoption of this emerging technology as a true disruptor to business operations. GenAI can offer customers hyper-personalized content, customized offers, and proactive service based on their unique needs and preferences. Generative AI makes this vision a reality, shaping the future of customer engagement and exceeding expectations in ways never thought possible.

Beyond Connectivity: Transitioning Business Models from Telco to Techno

A shift in the traditional Telco business approach, evolving from pure network providers to end-to-end technology solution providers. This transition unlocks substantial benefits, including new revenue streams, diversification of offerings, and sustainable business growth in the vibrant technology environment.

These are just some of the many trends and disruptors that we see set to shape the CMT landscape in 2024. Perficient is committed to navigating this dynamic ecosystem alongside our clients, helping them capitalize on emerging opportunities and overcome challenges. Partnering with us means leveraging our expertise to see around the corner and chart a successful course in this rapidly evolving Industry.

Tap into Perficient’s communications, media, and technology (CMT) industry expertise to navigate the next wave of change.

The lines are blurring among communications, media, and technology (CMT) companies, and consumers are demanding exceptional experiences across the board. Products and services must be hyper-personalized, digital-first, and accessible in any place and at any time. With expectations so high, the pressure is even higher for these companies to effortlessly tackle frequent mergers and acquisitions as well as changing business models without allowing quality to suffer. 

Fortunately, advancements in tools like generative AI present new opportunities for these CMT companies to scale efficiently while improving customer experiences. Implementing these automation tools and other innovative strategies in collaboration with an industry-focused digital consultancy would make the difference for these companies struggling to drive loyalty, reduce costs, streamline operations, and more. 

Embracing Digital Transformation 

Delivering content, entertainment, and communications capabilities to each time zone and continent requires a robust strategy coupled with flawless execution. It includes embracing the newest technologies and fully optimizing legacy ones. CMT companies must take full advantage of maturing 5G connectivity, automations, self-service and contact center capabilities, cloud transformation, and intelligent supply chain management. 

We are proud to announce that Perficient has been recognized by a leading global technology research and advisory firm’s report highlighting notable telecommunications, media, and entertainment industry consultancies in North America. We are committed to helping CMT companies tackle these challenges with our award-winning solutions and the depth and breadth of our capabilities and expertise.  

We believe our inclusion is a testament to our approach with every partnership in which we work to holistically understand the business and implement strategies that accomplish and exceed our clients’ goals. We use our understanding of the latest trends and long-term disruptors for the CMT industry as our guide to build relevant and useful strategic end-to-end capabilities for clients in the space.  

Connect, Inspire, and Innovate with Perficient 

Looking forward, Perficient is excited to continue building out our industry expertise and help CMT companies tackle the newest challenges in the industry like hyper-personalization, 5G content monetization, emerging technology product development, and rising churn rates.  

Thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape with Perficient’s communications, media, and technology industry expertise. 

The conference season has been in full swing across all industries over the past few months. I would like to highlight some key takeaways from one of the biggest and most important conferences in the communications, media, and technology (CMT) industry: the Mobile World Congress (MWC).

MWC, held in both Las Vegas and Barcelona this year, showcases the “Power Of Mobility” every year. This year was a great event that brought together various technology, communications, wireless, and mobile leaders and experts to discuss the latest trends and innovations in the industry.

As you can imagine, there are countless innovations going on right now in this space. Without creating an unruly twenty-page blog, I wanted to boil it down to a manageable number of highlights that are arguably the most impactful now and for 2024. Here are some of the key takeaways at a glance from the event:

Customer Experience:

CX leaders emphasized the importance of providing personalized experiences for end-users to maintain competitiveness in the industry. “Telcos” and “technos” need to prioritize CX to reinvent their business models and stay relevant in a quickly evolving industry.

Immersive Tech and Experiences:

Immersive technology was a massive trend this year at MWC23, with widespread interest in AR/VR gaming, the metaverse, and more. As advanced technologies enable new touchpoints on the customer journey and business models begin to adapt, an immersive experience in an extended reality offers enterprises quite literally another realm in which to interact with their customers.

Artificial Intelligence:

Major chip companies, telecommunication operators, and more are showing off technologies related to “generative AI.” According to a survey conducted by AWS, half of telcos reported that they plan to integrate generative AI in the next two years if they haven’t already, moving at an unprecedented pace in the telco industry.

5G:

The era of 5G makes it possible for telecom operators to use different suppliers for different parts of the network, opening immense new possibilities, especially in B2B. A key theme was to see how 5G is emerging as a viable alternative to fixed connectivity in many instances.

Cloud Technology:

Discussions and innovations associated with cloud technology focused on edge computing, green computing, AI, data, enterprise cloud, and the necessity for carriers to evolve their infrastructure stacks to more open and flexible models. It was evident that cloud technology will have a significant impact on the industry in the future.

Ecosystem / “Open”:

Telcos are looking to deepen the enterprise market by partnering with hyperscalers and building industry ecosystems. This creates more choices in the ecosystem with the potential to unlock new revenue streams.

Sustainability:

Aware” companies are becoming conscious of their usage of resources and the efficiency of their business processes and are only now starting to use technology to alter the process flow to achieve greater efficiency.

Valuable Insights into Latest Trends and Innovations

As you can gather from the above, MWC 2023 provided valuable insights into the latest trends and innovations in the CMT industry. The event highlighted the importance of customer experience, immersive technology, artificial intelligence, 5G, ecosystem, cloud, and sustainability. These are all areas where Perficient has experience and strength.

I am thrilled about the future of the communications, media, and technology industry. At Perficient, we collaborate with our clients daily to carve out the most efficient and successful path forward and implement industry solutions through our team of subject matter experts and technologists.

If you’re interested in diving deeper into the above takeaways from MWC 2023 or would like to understand how our CMT industry expertise can benefit your business, contact us today.  Let’s work together to strengthen your position in the market.

Not only personalization, but individualization, is the future of media. Consumers of connectivity and content are demanding that media providers read their minds and instantly present exactly what they’re looking for, even if they don’t personally know what they want. Every platform from social media sites to popular online retailers is constantly improving the way it consumes, organizes, and utilizes customer data to advertise products and services perfectly aligned to individuals’ demands.

With social media platforms becoming more like personalized television channels and online retail acting like personal shopping assistants, media companies are experiencing competition like never before. To overcome this challenge, media providers must find a new way to entice customers and keep their attention. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is finally providing the solution.

Leveling Up Content Production

Media is the specialty of generative AI. This industry is connecting people around the globe and building communities with powerful content – content made even more powerful when it is AI-sourced. With the help of customer data and access to limitless sources of research, generative AI can shift content production into lightspeed. Production companies can use generative AI as a tool to come up with new ideas for content, build concepts and stories, and even produce music and voiceovers. The same can be done for digital marketing campaigns that use personalized ads, videos, and other content.

Creating Immersive Experiences

Many consumers are familiar with “deep fakes,” which are digitally altered images and videos so realistic that they have effectively spread false information in the past. Deep fake technology combined with generative AI can create content that fits a consumer’s desires exactly, even personalizing it as if the content was produced only for them – and it might have been. Imagine becoming a character within your favorite TV show where the other characters address you by name and interact with you. Further, imagine typing in a prompt for a movie and having that exact movie produced for you in minutes with generative AI. In the Gaming segment, video games could feature anyone you’d like or present any challenge of your interest in any environment you request.

The Art of Recommendations

If nothing else, generative AI can create highly personalized recommendations for audiences using complex inputs that go well beyond genre, cast member, or star rating. Media companies have been experimenting with recommendations for years using machine learning to make recommendations based on categories and past user behavior. Generative AI can go beyond this capability by continually getting to know a user and generating recommendations that don’t necessarily need to follow certain categories, labels, or templates.

For example, imagine that you could ask your streaming platform to create a special playlist of movies or show episodes for you that only feature holiday themes. In theory, generative AI integration on a platform could allow users to completely customize the offerings rather than choosing from preselected and curated content.

Give the Audience What They Want

Media companies that put customer data to good use perform very well on the market, but companies that combine the importance of data with the power of generative AI will become the new leaders. Overall, immersive hyper-personalized experiences will keep the consumer engaged. Media companies must tap into these desires to compete with a vast landscape of user-generated content fueled by algorithms to not only grow but retain their customer base

Get a standing ovation by partnering with Perficient’s media industry experts.

What is Generative AI?

Generative Artificial Intelligence, or generative AI, is a categorical or descriptive term ascribed to algorithms using machine learning to create or “generate” new content.

Generative AI ingests data and understands guidelines incredibly well. Therefore, businesses across industries are optimistic about the many ways it can help save them money and create elevated, uber-personalized customer experiences. Highly regulated industries, such as the financial services industry, are especially interested in exploring how generative AI can support ever-transient regulatory and data governance demands.

Financial Services Business Use Cases for Generative AI

Where a marketing director for an insurance company might encourage their designers to use generative AI to spice up its newest Instagram ad, a chief technology officer at a bank could use generative AI to analyze enormous sets of financial data and generate new outlooks that can be leveraged to improve fraud detection and risk management.

Here are other ways the financial services industry can employ generative AI to improve business efficiency and enhance customer experiences:

Superior Visibility into Financial and Customer Insights 

Given the financial services industry’s seemingly infinite pools of data, generative AI’s ability to use data to train large language models (LLM) works very much in the industry’s favor. An institution can use data to tailor LLM and maintain a business-critical pulse on where it stands in the market against competitors.

Risk Management, Anti-Money Laundering, & Fraud Protection

Financial institutions invest heavily in security and risk management, but prevention and recovery progress are delayed by manual reporting and disparate systems. With generative AI, reports can be autogenerated and organized, and natural language processing (NLP) can be used to catch the “red flags” that signal crime, fraud, and reputation-threatening errors. For example, using generative AI image analysis, one can determine if an image has been altered, which helps control insurance fraud and identity theft. Using generative AI for such purposes gives human resources more bandwidth to thoroughly investigate suspicious incidents.

Smart Personalization

Financial institutions can use generative AI to perform in-depth analyses of customer spending behaviors, providing the insights needed to create tailored recommendations and customized products. It can also be used to improve accessibility and “mirror” the tone and conversation style of a customer in communication channels, leading to increased customer satisfaction.

***

Our financial services and data experts are here to help. If you want to learn how generative AI can be leveraged for your company, consider our CX AI jumpstart.

The answer is yes, of course there are.  I presented on this topic, along with my colleague Scott Albahary – Chief Strategist for Financial Services here at Perficient and Jim Marous – Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand, to approximately 500 financial services industry folks.

As the financial services industry continues to go through its digital transformation, executives are craving new strategies and tactics to help position them against their competitors. Especially since Digital levels the playing field across small, large and localized institutions they need to find ways to best connect with, service and grow their customer base.

There are always stories and lessons that are taught inside the FI space about best practices.  At Perficient, we like to take a bit of a different take and look across Industries to learn the art of the possible.  Based on the great response rate to our webinar, it seems like FI execs are craving outside Industry perspectives as well.

The Situation

We wanted to present around a challenge that is progressive and top of mind to many of the Financial Industry executives we talk to.  So what did we choose?  Well one of the biggest challenges right now is humanizing the digital experience.  This is a challenge that execs across industries are focused on but also one that financial is really struggling with.

Of course, Covid-19 has exposed digital weaknesses and accelerated digital transformation for all industries. The former being one that is less talking about outside company walls.  Companies like to focus on accelerating digital transformation to be the ‘leaders of Industry’.  It’s a bit sexier to spin it that way.  However, one of the main drivers is their weaknesses are exposed now more than ever with folks driven online with Covid-19 and expecting the same level of service they typically get at say their local bank.

That said, many lessons can be learned by looking across various industries for best practices around understanding the customer journey, engaging brand experiences, and Millennial and Gen Z customer acquisition and servicing.

Financial institutions that best leverage digital strategies and technologies in innovative ways will create new value for consumers and businesses.

The Approach

When Scott and I started to put together the presentation it was a challenge to try to hit on the hot trends in humanizing the digital experience while keeping it to an hour presentation.  The approach we took, and you’ll see in the presentation, are real-world examples of digital trends. First, we tee up the challenge and opportunity. Then we present an outside industry (automotive, retail, etc.) case study that Perficient worked with a client on, followed by ways the trend and case could be applied to the financial services space.

Some of the examples we presented include – virtual agents (chatbots, AI), connected bankers, conversational marketing and conversational banking.

The net is that many lessons can be learned by not only looking at competitors but also expanding your lens to best practices in other industries.

You can view the webinar on-demand by going to The Financial Brand site at this location. You can also learn more about how Perficient can help companies with their digital transformation on our site.

Perficient: Digital Strategy Experts

I recently enjoyed hosting a virtual roundtable with a couple dozen senior executives from Global 2000 B2B manufacturing companies.  The topic was, “How Have You Accelerated Your Digital Transformation Strategy as a Result of COVID-19?”

As many know, Digital Transformation has been a hot topic in manufacturing for years. Most manufacturers had it in their ‘near-term’ plan, but COVID-19 has accelerated companies to prioritize it now.  Areas affected and needed to be addressed immediately include; supply chain, ecommerce, data integrity, sales channel conflicts, and customer experience.

COVID-19 also has greatly expedited customer (B2B, B2C, B2B2C) behaviors and expectations. When your consumers find a more effective digital way to interact, they doubt changing back to their ‘old ways’ (pre-COVID).

Forbes’ Senior Contributor Anna-Katrina Shedletsky indicated manufacturing will experience five years of innovation in the next 18 months because of COVID-19.

Is COVID-19 a wake-up call to ignite change in slower adoption companies? Is it a way smaller, more nimble players can expedite how they compete and gain market share? Is it a threat to large companies who depended on ‘offline’ relationship-based business deals via field sales, for example, to stay on top? Or a way to differentiate those that were quick adopters to digital transformation? Spoiler-alert: all of the above.

The Vibe

When I sat down with the roundtable attendees, we were already in the middle of COVID-19.  So it was less about how you are reacting vs. how you are dealing.  The initial punch to the gut reacting period had passed, mostly. We wanted to talk about what areas are impacted now, how are you dealing with it, what lessons have you learned, and how are you positioning yourself to come out of it stronger.

About five minutes into the meat of the discussion, you could quickly feel the vibe in the ‘room.’  It was almost a sense of unity and ‘hey, we’re ALL dealing with this.’  The group was very open to discussing what they are dealing with and offering advice and lessons learned across the board.  This didn’t feel like some roundtables where folks are less likely to speak and only there to listen.  They were asking questions of one another and giving insights.  Again, we are ALL dealing with this, and we ALL need help navigating through it.  Everyone is impacted, globally, and looking to talk about it.

The roundtable was slated for an hour, but that flew by, and folks wanted to keep chatting.  Remember, these were senior executives at multi-billion dollar companies whose time is precious.  After we went extra time, we, unfortunately, had to stop the roundtable with folks wanting to keep the discussions going. They were sharing stories, commiserating, and learning from each other.

The Hot Buttons

As mentioned, this was a very conversational roundtable.  However, some certain key hot buttons and takeaways resonated through the group.  I’ve outlined below some of the key items discussed in no particular order:

• COVID exposed that driving customers online does not mean the company knows the customer. Offline and online data are not synced, so customers don’t always get the right ‘treatment’ or even discounts they are entitled to and expect.
  • Omnichannel experiences – data sync between internal systems to understand the customer via all touchpoints is vital, and the customer expects it.
• It’s important to sync the entire ecosystem and supply chain – from manufacturer to dealer/distributor and ultimately end customer.
  • From a data consistency and customer experience point of view
• Customers are looking for answers and information that directly affect them.
  • Organizations need personalization to direct a message/offer/product directly to an individual.
• Touchless order processing in a historically salesperson driven world has been a big challenge.
  • Manufacturers are not typically set up to handle orders without human contact or manual processes.
• Organizations need to get end-customer data to better understand end-customer needs.
  • One positive was selling and servicing more directly to the end customer; manufacturers gained direct insights into customer needs, wants, and complaints. Previously, insights were provided by the dealer/distributor and may have had a ‘filter’ on it.
  • End customer surveys (sound simple) have been surprisingly valuable in getting direct customer feedback and insight. During COVID, responses are way up and very candid.
  • Net Promoter Score was discussed by many as important to monitor during this time
• B2B does NOT have to mean Boring to Boring
  • The playing field has leveled on digital experience expectations regardless of B2B or B2C
  • COVID has forced the hand to accelerate improving the customer experience
• eCommerce – most attendees had a semblance of it, but most weren’t ready for the uptick in traffic and demand as a result of COVID. More traffic to a website is good. The inability to handle it is bad.
  • Customer service struggles with online orders, not a scalable model in place.
  • Most companies have a manual ‘behind the scene’ processes to fulfill orders.
  • Many are seeing it as a lead generation facility.
  • Site Search enhancements were a roadmap item accelerated by a few to help quickly navigate the user to information.
• There is a strong need to drive customers to self-service via the website to deflect calls to the call center.
  • Content and FAQs need to be easily accessible and digestible on the site.
• B2B portals have played an important role in messaging and are an information ‘beacon.’
  • More focus will be put on these going forward.
• Marketplaces were a pretty big trend spoken about by a few of the group’s folks.
  • This is a “big shift” as marketplaces help with many facets of exposure, sales, and inventory.

The Bottom Line

As you can see from the list above, there was a flurry of conversation had in the limited time between this senior leader group.  I’m sure if we had another hour, the list above would double in size.  There are several points I’d like to convey after talking with this group:

• All companies are dealing with this global enemy and are looking for any insights to help combat it.
• No company was truly ready for a disruption of this magnitude.
• You need to learn from it and proactively get ready for the next disruption to your business.
  • Yes, there is always a ‘next one.’
• Those companies who started their Digital Transformation process years ago are coming out much stronger and, in some cases excelling in some areas and taking more market share than before COVID-19.
• There are no ‘well things will go back to the way they were eventually.’
  • This is a pivot forcing companies to do business in a new way.
• If you are ‘waiting it out’ then you are standing still and watching your competitors pass you by

I’m not sure there can be a bigger (and more unwelcome) wake-up call than COVID-19 to accelerate your digital transformation plans.  No matter what stage those plans are in. Even if you have gone through a digital transformation phase, there is still a digital evolution to be had.

Why Is Everyone Talking about Conversational Marketing?

Conversational Marketing, a term originally coined by the company Drift, has taken on many forms and definitions over the past few years. If you ask five professional marketers the definition and what ‘makes up’ conversational marketing, you may get five different understandings. Is it a variation of personalization? Is it just another term for AI? Is it the use of automated bots, live chat function, actual live conversations (go figure), etc…?

It’s actually all of the above, leveraged properly together to create great user experiences and garner consumer insights, thus enhancing lead generation activity and customer loyalty. Conversational marketing is typically done with the goal of shortening the sales cycle, but there’s a lot more to it.

As mentioned, most marketers immediately think of AI and technology tools including live chat, chatbots, and social monitoring. Yes, those tools are great at enabling conversational marketing to help foster interactions between companies and consumers that mimic human dialogue and do so at scale. However, conversational marketing isn’t just about new technology and the use of that technology alone to nurture genuine conversations. It is the return to businesses communicating organically in 1:1, personalized conversations with consumers. It’s crossing (and in some cases blurring) the lines between technology and human interaction. It’s an Old School concept that meets New School technology.

An example of a conversational marketing flow is utilizing technology, such as live chat, to first engage the consumer on the website via an event trigger, then utilize bots for initial conversations to learn more about the consumer and understand need/intent (qualifying them as a lead in real-time), then use the bots’ intelligent routing to shift the ‘conversation’ to a representative for human interactions. Thus allowing the rep to focus on getting the consumer to the next step and spend their time selling, not qualifying.

Through a better informed personalized conversation, you’re able to establish a deeper connection with consumers. When someone lands on your site, it is an opportunity for you to engage with them and begin those consumer relationships. Utilizing technology to engage and learn more about the visitor allows the human representative to make more informed recommendations to the visitor, creating a more personalized and better user experience.

The goal of conversational marketing should always revolve around enhancing your user’s experience while minimizing friction.

An effective conversational marketing strategy can:

• Create a more authentic human experience with your brand
• Deepen consumer engagement, confidence, and loyalty
• Quantify the impact of marketing and sales campaigns
• Inform you about your customers’ intentions and interactions
• Improve user satisfaction via a more personalized experience
• Shorten your sales cycle

How to Get the Conversation Started

Conversational marketing is the most successful when you can make an experience more delightful for the end user, not threatening or intrusive. Conversations should happen naturally and organically, and not feel forced. Ease into it and add to what you are already doing by augmenting your marketing strategy, not replacing it. Steps you can take now include:

• Map the current customer journey and audit the experience.
• Identify the communication silos across marketing, sales, and support.
• Look for interactions in your business that are popular, predictable, and impactful.
• Create a dialog map and role-play the interactions and trigger questions to create user stories in a conversational manner.
• Identify conversation flows that can be automated. Again, conversation role-play and testing are critical to uncovering repeatable obstacles in a dialog.
• Uncover event triggers and create branches of the conversation for hand-off from automated interaction to human interactions to continue the human-centric experience.

Remember, personalization is key in conversational marketing. A personalized solution takes user data into account when drafting responses to questions your users may have about your brand. These interactions can help strengthen the consumer’s relationship to your brand by fostering a one-on-one connection.

One of the best times to leverage conversational interactions is when consumers are researching products to purchase and would like help deciding which item to buy. Allowing the customer to initiate a conversation or allowing an employee to assist the prospective customer with their pre-sales research process will dramatically increase the probability of conversion.

Conversational marketing has matured greatly with the evolution of AI technology and is ready for prime consideration in your company’s marketing strategy. Done correctly, the authentic, personalized, human-centric experience will create better user experiences with your brand while creating a stronger lead generation program to shorten your sales-cycles.