In The Age Of Engagement, Interaction Is Needed Between Brands And Customers In The Age Of Engagement, Interaction Is Needed Between Brands And Customers

Last month, McDonald’s announced its $300m achievement of artificial intelligence organization Dynamic Yield, a specialist of machine learning founded seven years ago, in quite a rare move for the organization. For years the burger giant has avoided all the achievements.
The technology will generally allow McDonald’s to completely customize its menu displays that are based on variables such as the time of day and the weather — milkshakes in the summer or McMuffins before the time of 11 am.

The technology of dynamic Yield will also assess McDonald’s customer footfall to suggest food that is very much faster to prepare when the kitchen is quite busy or a lot more elaborate items in stretches that are quieter. The burger chain, which serves customers about 68m each and every day from almost outlets at a number of 38,000, plans to roll out the technology at its locations of a drive-through in the US this particular year – before expanding it overseas. Moreover, McDonald’s also plans to properly introduce it inside restaurants and on all the mobile phones.
The purchase is also significant quite strategically as McDonald’s turns towards big data to gain an edge over all the rivals in the highly competitive fast business of food. If digital retailers can drag personalization technology to power a lot more recommendations, why should not McDonald’s use it to influence and simplify customer choices at the checkout?

Individualization vs Personalisation

Personalization is generally based on the segmentation method of age-old – organizations putting their clients into buckets based on static and presumed personas.

However, there is an issue with personalization – it does not generally speak to the individual.

In the age of engagement, brands require to interact with all of their customers in real time. These conversations have to be contextually-relevant, personal and build both trust and value. For this we require to go beyond personalization, raising our entire game to achieve individualization.

They may sound quite similar, but individuation and personalization are fundamentally two completely different concepts. How so? Most importantly, individualization needs a fundamental shift in thinking. With a mindset of personalization, brands see all the customers as targets, to be aimed and identified with the best precision that is available.

With a mindset of individualization, brands generally understand that customers are at the center of their entire business, and see each and every customer as a unique individual, and quite an equal partner in a trusted process of value-creation with the brand. That is a very different way of thinking, but it is basically the key to understanding the dynamics of the economy that is digital.

Individualization is basically the natural successor to personalization, in the data and information age and is highly in demand. The approach of one-size-fits-all simply does not wash with digitally connected consumer today.

To get on-board with an approach of individualization, companies require to nail the prerequisites. Individualization does need capabilities of personalization, but we require to go very much deeper to turn it into something of a lot more value. Step up relevance and context. In the context of McDonald’s company, if personalization is offering the discounted coffee, individualization is remembering the fact that last time the fries were quite cold, and making up for it with free ones.