Trends

Three Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2019

As you take aim at your 2019 strategy, incorporating data analytics, personalization and artificial intelligence should help you hit your targets.

By Matt Nyren, Ubiquity CEO

Three Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2019

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As you take aim at your 2019 strategy, incorporating data analytics, personalization and artificial intelligence should help you hit your targets. The New Year is a time of celebration, reflection and preparation for the opportunities and challenges ahead. When I think about the goals for our business in 2019 and those of our partners across the spectrum of financial services, fintech, healthcare and retail industries, three trends keep coming to the fore: data analytics, personalization and artificial intelligence.
Data Analytics: Digging into Data

You don’t see or hear nearly as much about big data as you did even one or two years ago. Perhaps it’s because we have so much data—2.5 quintillion bytes produced every day—and because everyone has rightly realized that the sheer amount of data isn’t nearly as important as what you can do with it. More to the point, it’s what you can decide with it that’s crucial.

Actionable business intelligence will continue to separate the businesses that thrive from those that merely survive (or worse).

As such, companies are making major investments in data usage practices to improve their decision-making, competitiveness and growth. The healthcare industry alone will spend nearly $9 billion on business intelligence tools by 2023, Research and Markets estimates.

Robust data analytics can help with everything from developing new products and services and increasing operational efficiency to improving the customer experience, according to PwC’s 2018 Global Data and Analytics Survey.

Optimizing the customer experience is something our partners rely on us to do every day. And data from our one-on-one interactions with customers is critical to achieving that aim.

Getting Personal

Another important aspect of enhancing the customer experience is making those experiences more personal. And although personalization is not exactly a new concept, it’s getting ever more granular. In fact, “Serving the Segment of One,” is the No. 1 innovation trend that will define banking in 2019, according to thought leader and co-publisher of The Financial Brand Jim Marous.

It’s true for retailers, as well. “Personalization is the new omnichannel,” reported RetailTouchPoints after the 2018 NRF Big Show. “What that means is retailers and solution providers are at the same turning point in personalization strategies that they were in omnichannel strategies a few years ago: They know a focus on personalization will deliver results, and now they need to figure out how to strategically realize that goal,” wrote Editor-in-Chief Debbie Hauss.

AI Will Lead the Way

One of the technologies businesses are turning to for creating personalized experiences and unlocking the potential of data analytics is artificial intelligence (AI).

At the end of 2017, 80 percent of companies reported they were already investing in AI, and 30 percent were planning to increase those investments to stay competitive. The survey, commissioned by data analytics firm Teradata, also revealed that customer experience (62 percent), product innovation (59 percent) and operational excellence (55 percent) were the key areas of AI investment.

AI continued to garner headlines in 2018 and took center stage at the major payments conferences. As our Chief Innovation Officer Corey Besaw discussed in a Money2020 interview with Medici Studios, “Artificial intelligence is going be a significant contributor to our business.”

For us, it’s not about replacing live agents but rather using the technology to help personnel to be more efficient, compliant and customer-centric.

As we look to the future we’re building with our partners, Ubiquity will continue invest in technologies such as AI that can harness data to improve performance and provide customers with truly personal experiences.

Contact us to learn more about putting our people and our technology to work for your customers.

Matt Nyren is the president and CEO of Ubiquity Global Services, a multinational business process and call center outsourcing organization that helps partners improve customer satisfaction while reducing operating costs. Matt has been at the forefront of delivering next-generation customer service solutions for more than 25 years. He co-founded Ubiquity in 2012 with a single goal in mind: to make outsourcing better.

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