How Recommender Software Boosts Digital Customer Experience
Technology is busy reshaping every aspect of our lives—and online purchasing is no exception. Recommender software helps people shop for vehicles and other products more efficiently. For example, its data-driven identification of models likely to sell provides a significantly better digital customer experience. Most people watch YouTube or Netflix videos on the basis of software recommendations, and the same applies to other areas of online retail.
An improved eCommerce experience is good not only for customers but also for vendors. Although recommender software can help you move more inventory, there are challenges in developing an effective recommender solution. By working with an integrative system like AutoIntel, you can resolve these difficulties while boosting customer engagement.
Personalization appeals to customers’ specific needs. And when people feel that their interests are understood, they’re more likely to complete a purchase. Intelligent software uses available data sources to make accurate determinations of prospective customer tastes.
A recommendation engine like AutoIntel has been carefully designed to address the shortcomings of build-it-yourself approaches. Businesses can use this Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to enhance customer engagement online. Moreover, its innate understanding of automotive products frees up your resources to focus on core business competencies.
AutoIntel can assist companies with vehicle configuration options as well as car accessories and upgrades—for example, configurations that include buyer preferences and budget, among other factors. The accessories and upgrades are suggested based on the customer’s vehicle model selection, geographic data, and historical configurations.
A powerful combination of customer data and inventory databases allows the software to recommend the most desirable vehicle options. Considerations include exterior looks, interior comfort, and performance technologies to customize recommendations for the individual driver.
Integrative recommender software uses its broad data input to support car-related products and provide an ideal digital customer experience. This software enhances the automotive journey, from vehicle acquisition through maintenance and related services.
Leveraging Customer Data for Powerful Recommendations: Unleashing the Potential of Personalization Software
Customer data brings key insights to personalized product recommendations. Today, personalization and product recommendations are essential to convert buyers. Why? Premium car buyers expect customization and personalization.
The goal of automotive OEMs is to give prospects what they want. Excessive choice causes decision fatigue, which can cut conversion rates by an order of magnitude. The solution is to highlight the truly valuable options and reorder the previous choices. An intelligently curated collection of appropriate vehicles that fits a customer’s needs—and are in stock now—creates an entirely different and pleasing digital customer experience. These offerings must appeal to consumers and connect with inventory. Anything less will lead to disappointment.
Appropriate software such as AutoIntel uses the available customer data to drive engagement and loyalty—as well as conversion rates. Their superior digital customer experience is easy to use, and the resultant data analytics generate accurate and relevant product recommendations.
BMW’s Build-Your-Own Configurator by S44 provides an excellent example. The system uses data from the famous automaker’s main repositories to showcase available vehicles. This makes it easy for customers to select just what they want from multiple options and create a custom match for their individual needs. Even better, the solution runs on highly efficient cloud infrastructure.
As good as this might sound, be aware that it would be exceedingly complex to build a solution like this on one’s own. Taking all the data sources and condensing them into a user-friendly interface requires rare skills and experience. It’s far more efficient to use a ready-built solution like AutoIntel.
Saving Time and Resources: Harnessing the Power of Integrative Tools for Personalization Software
In their efforts to deliver the ultimate digital customer experience, some businesses try their luck at building personalization software in-house. This approach can, however, be error-prone and often results in issues with data integration, algorithm development, and scalability. Although recommender software might look easy to use, that’s not the same as being able to produce it.
Personalization software should integrate with several systems—like customer relationship management (CRM) and content management systems (CMS). These can be challenging to integrate, especially when you’re dealing with unstructured data. Further, many businesses don’t have the technical know how to address this need.
Developing personalization software is often complex and time-consuming. There’s a vast amount of data and it’s not obvious how to make it usable, much less how to build a good digital customer experience out of it. Achieving this requires significant expertise in data science and software development.
As far as scalability goes, the growing data volumes and user traffic can be difficult to accommodate. Even if in-house software seems to work at first, it’s likely to run into trouble as needs grow.
Cost is another barrier. In-house development becomes expensive, especially when businesses need to build the necessary resources and knowledge. And hiring a team of professionals with diverse skills isn’t cheap!
As an alternative to in-house development, you could use off-the-shelf software. However, the software may produce poor recommendations, particularly in the automotive sector, due to poor integration with configurated data. Additionally, these packages tend to be very limited and won’t provide the level of customization you need. In essence, they lack the required domain-specific functionality, personalization, and integration.
Fortunately, there’s an easier way than DIY or off-the-shelf software to achieve a more resource-efficient solution. recommender software allows you to leverage the integrative technology that experts have already built. Here, a company like S44 can apply their years of experience with machine learning to deliver extremely functional software that’s specific to the industry.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for Digital Customer Experience
The optimal solution for automotive OEMs offering personalization is called Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). This entails renting the most effective technology—but only paying for what you use. It’s thus more cost-effective than the extensive development, infrastructure, and maintenance of in-house software.
SaaS isn’t only less expensive, it’s also faster. While it takes a lot of time to produce a personalization solution internally, time-to-market for SaaS is rapid. Automotive OEMs can thus deploy before the competition.
Seasoned SaaS developers such as S44 have already established specialized teams. Their knowledge and best practices are the perfect combination to produce a robust platform. The result is flexible personalization that adapts to your evolving needs.
Having these solutions at hand brings continued improvements as the provider updates their software in response to a changing market. Furthermore, they’re also able to provide data insights, connect personalization software to your other business systems, and offer support and maintenance. The data insights give OEMs a chance to unofficially survey their customers and leverage their results. Overall, it’s a winning choice for streamlining eCommerce without the hassle—and optimizing your digital customer experience.
Enhance the Digital Customer Experience with S44
Integrative recommender software is the next innovation to transform the digital customer experience. It analyzes customer data to make accurate predictions and show relevant products on top of other available inventory. Third-party integrative partners like S44 have a wealth of experience using this technology to improve automotive revenues.
Schedule a call with us and find out how we can help you deliver an optimized digital experience through custom software.