Gartner: Virtuelle Generation zwingt CRM-fokussierte Unternehmen zum Umdenken

Gartner said that providers of third-party customer data, business intelligence and analytic tools will shift toward consumer applications and eventually arm companies with automated, artificial intelligence and self-learning "persona bots" to seek customers' needs and desires.

-          Focus on the persona, not the person: Collect persona data for product development, customer feedback, loyalty management, customer segmentation, campaign targeting and persona group customer satisfaction management. This wealth of data can be used for marketing and selling and will provide insight into how customers want to be treated.

-          Accept that traditional customer segmentation has changed: Move away from product-based segmentation toward wants-based segmentation. Virtual worlds, such as Second Life, already provide sandbox scenarios, where multiple personas can explore wants and desires that companies are attempting to fulfil.

-          Achieve customer loyalty through relevance: A company that develops a mutually beneficial relationship with its customer base through data collection and communication enables the valuable flow of information between the customer and the company.

-          Embrace and develop new skills: Focus on social sciences, anthropology and game design, skills that will attract, connect with, contribute to and gain insight from personas and virtual environments. Few companies currently employ people with these skills, but they will be vital to understand how personas interact, to draw insight from cultures, and to create engaging virtual environments in the future.

-          Sell to the persona bot — with a bot of your own: A persona bot is an automated, personality-infused, self-replicating, virtual representative that will be used as a tool to facilitate life events in an online environment. Gartner predicts that by 2017 the persona bot will be mass-adopted with more than 20 million active persona bots in the U.S. alone. To fully engage with Generation V, companies will have their own automated bots for critical relationship handling, such as sales, customer service and marketing. Key drivers, such as 24/7 presence and the capability to communicate domain expertise, will help customers navigate their way toward purchases.

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