As a marketing leader who considers what customer-market alignment will look like with Gen Z as they come online as employees, I believe business-to-business firms must adopt personalization to capture this next generation of buyers.
Born between 1997 and 2012, Gen Z represents 27% of the global workforce who are coming online as employees.
According to Twillo’s The State of Customer Engagement Report, 70% of Gen Z want to interact digitally with brands, and 58% want personalized interactions. That’s in line with Millennials, followed by Gen X and Baby Boomers.
While this is a business-to-consumer trend, the expectations will bleed into the business-to-business space, as we witnessed with Millennials.
What can business-to-business firms do to begin personalizing customer interactions:
🗂️ Build One View of Customers End-to-End: Consolidate your data into a single repository from the moment they express interest, purchase, and through to post-sale.
🤖 Leverage AI: Identify your customers’ patterns and behaviors during different phases to understand your customers, especially after the purchase, when they change from economic and technical buyers to end users.
👥 Update Your Personas: Don’t keep it a secret. Share the new buyer and user data and insights companywide so everyone has the latest information. It may make the difference in reducing churn and enabling your Customer Success teams to focus on selling and expanding your customer footprint.
🎨 Think About Your Customer Experience: Consider what aspects of content creation AI can automate to personalize the experience at scale. How can you reuse existing content with a Customer Success twist to address different pain points?
Leveraging AI for personalization is an opportunity to be creative, build a long-term relationship, and innovate because the next generation of digitally savvy employees and business purchasers is here. Firms that figure it out first will have the advantage.
Want to take your personas to the next level, schedule a Discovery Session.
