“All progress takes place outside the comfort zone.”
– Michael John Bobak
If I knew everything you ever posted… if I knew every piece of content you ever consumed… would I know you?
Humans are fascinating creatures; we have belief systems and values that manifest differently in various contexts. When presented with similar problems, how you react and respond on behalf of your family might be very different than with a co-worker. Take that a step further – the context around you plays a role as well, for example; are you alone? Is it late at night? Are you not feeling well? Is this interaction being recorded?
Predicting human behavior or the response to a variety of situations is still exceedingly difficult because of the number of variables that need to be considered. Humans can do this math exceedingly well – I am sure you remember the Sherlock Holmes stories, where he notices the smallest details to help solve crimes. You’ll observe that someone is in a bad mood before you make an ask or start a difficult conversation, and based upon that, you might decide to strike up the conversation at a later date or time. We evaluate and attenuate our interactions with people as a natural part of our humanity.
In the world of digital marketing, we’d like to replicate human-to-human interaction. As I’ve always said, “we want to deliver a Nordstrom-like customer experience, online”. Marketers and Computer Scientists have been overwhelmed by this complexity of managing all the possible variables and contexts. In addition to solving for the behavioral ambiguities, we also must address the format of the device, the context, and the immediacy around the task that needs to be accomplished or the information requested. Taking all this into account, it is no wonder that most companies chose to ignore the complexity of delivering personalized experiences.
Almost all the digital/CX agencies are still pitching A/B Multivariate testing, which is best described as a better strategy for guessing. Not only does it not inform personalization efforts, but it also feeds the tyranny of the majority, because 51% percent of the traffic responded favorably to the blue button, the other 49% are force-fed the blue button, despite a different expectation or preference or additional colors.
At Tahzoo, we’ve figured out how to solve this problem. The work that we’ve performed over the last few years has provided us tools to better understand customers, context, and content – and then leverage Algorithmic-based solutions and Artificial Intelligence to achieve better results. Over the course of the next few months, we will be aggressively investing in our data science capability to bring the Tahzoo approach to the market. We do a lot of things well at Tahzoo, however, this might be a point of leverage that sets us apart from everyone else in the world. Not only can we build sophisticated systems, but we can also provide the data services and methodologies to take advantage of the software we implement.
I am working on a whitepaper that I will publish in the next month on the Tahzoo position on how to best leverage Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Algorithmic-based personalization technologies. The preview is that it takes what we do well; you have to know your customer, your content, and have the context to provide a Nordstrom-like personalized experience in a digital world.
Let’s go be great!
Brad