The 4 P’s of Customer Engagement

“The 4 P’s of Customer Engagement” is a concept I coined a couple years ago that summarizes what companies need to prioritize to create experiences that matter. For a customer interaction to embody the 4 P’s, it must be personal, predictive, proactive, and pervasive. Here’s what I mean by this:

1. Personal: We all know the more personal you can make an experience, the better. Personalized product suggestions, real-time notifications of sales and special offers, and personalized rewards programs are just a few ways companies can tailor experiences to the individual consumer based on their preferences and expectations. When you’re browsing Netflix and see a title with a 95% recommendation rate based on past shows watched or when you’re comparing product recommendations Amazon serves up…these are personalized experiences that go beyond just completing a transaction or meeting a basic need. This kind of personalization is now the expected norm. 
2. Predictive: Once you know someone more personally as a customer, you can start to anticipate things about their experience to make it less frictionless and more effortless. Imagine you’re driving on the freeway and get a push notification from your insurance provider that your car needs an A/C filter change soon. Not only this, but you’re provided with a list of nearby stores based on the real-time location of your device. Or, you get an email from a company telling you that their data shows it’s almost time to restock on your favorite product. These are examples of predictive service at its finest. 
3. Proactive: A proactive experience is one that gives the customer something they weren’t even thinking about or didn’t know they wanted/needed. Consider financial services. You call your bank for an auto loan and your customer profile shows that you have twins aged 17. Based on this data, the service representative you speak with gets a real-time notification on their desktop to inquire about student loans. Proactive service also helps companies get ahead of customer service issues. Let’s say you call your cable provider about a problem you’re having. Seeing that you have younger children, the service rep can offer you one free month of a Disney+ subscription to make up for it. This isn’t something you were thinking about, but it will make your experience a whole lot better. 
4. Pervasive: A huge part of the customer experience is being able to interact with a company in the way you want to be interacted with (i.e., chat, mobile, Web page, voice). This experience should be pervasive across all channels and devices as the customer travels along their service journey. If you start an interaction via web chat then move to SMS and then follow up the next day via phone, the experience should remain the same in terms of personalization and quality of service. This requires organizations to have one streamlined view of the customer across all devices and modes of interaction they use, including in-store.

What does all this look like when combined? I’ll give a real-life example. The other day, I received an automated SMS text message that read, “Our records indicate it has been XX days since your last Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. You are now eligible for your booster shot. Learn more at [website] or consult your healthcare provider.” Personal, predictive, proactive, and pervasive – all in one. 

The 4 P’s Made Simple

The Four P’s seems like a lot to handle, but it’s not a behemoth undertaking. Advancements in technology have made it so that data is now much more easily accessible and usable to deliver personal, predictive, proactive, and pervasive experiences. Tools like CPaaS, for example, allow you to take simple data and act on it to start creating more personal experiences in a matter of hours. It’s best to start small by creating digestible, yet differentiated, experiences. 

Here’s how our customers are accomplishing this using Avaya OneCloud CPaaS:

• Harris County, TX used Avaya OneCloud CPaaS to create a cloud-based notification solution as part of their Case Investigation and Contact Tracing program. The county’s public health department was able to improve its investigations by 25% with the ability to contact citizens quickly over their preferred channels (i.e., voice, SMS) so they could quarantine appropriately. With this success, the county decided to also use Avaya OneCloud CPaaS for automated outbound notifications to increase voter registration in the 2020 presidential election. The solution allowed them to proactively engage with residents about their registration status, where to vote, and how to register.
• Texas-based Round Rock School District used Avaya OneCloud CPaaS to create a mass notification system specifically for active shooter and weather-related threats. The school district can now proactively notify it’s nearly 57,000 students and staff about active shooter or other critical threats via several methods including message boards, desktop phones, users’ personal devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops), SMS/text message, email, social media, and more.

Start succeeding with the Four P’s of customer engagement. See how Avaya can help.