In a world where customers expect instant, personalized experiences at every turn, businesses are racing to keep up. From the products we buy to the services we rely on, disruptive technologies such as AI, and product approaches such as Experience Engineering (EE) are paving a new path to the future.
Continue reading “Application of AI and Experience Engineering Across Industries”
Experience Engineering is more than a practice, it’s a mindset that prioritizes solving complex business problems while keeping the end-user experience at the forefront, leveraging the latest cutting-edge technology.
Continue reading “Experience Engineering: What It Is and Why It Matters”
Generative AI is fast gaining traction in businesses all over the world, and there are countless use cases emerging where GenAI has transformed efficiency, productivity, cost-effectiveness and customer service.
Continue reading “Top 10 GenAI Trends to Watch in Technology in 2025 and Beyond”
It’s clear that cloud is asserting a dominant position in the business IT landscape. According to Gartner, more than half of enterprise IT spending in key market segments will have shifted into the cloud by 2025. With so much investment going into cloud, maximizing cost-effectiveness and cost efficiency, and avoiding cloud overspending, becomes even more important – and that’s where FinOps comes in.
In this blog, we’ll explore why FinOps is so important in optimizing the cost of cloud in the modern landscape. We’ll cover the core principles behind FinOps, best practice around its implementation, and how to navigate some of the key challenges that can arise along the way.
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Nearshore software development is becoming an increasingly popular option for businesses that want to add skills and expertise to their software projects, with the worldwide market for nearshore outsourcing expected to grow at a rate of 11% year-on–year between 2023 and 2028.
Ciklum’s 9th Annual Client Conference kicked off on September 9-10, 2024, at the historic Art Nouveau Obecní dům (Municipal House) in Prague. The event brought together industry leaders, clients, and experts for two days of lively discussions, hands-on workshops, and fresh insights into the technologies shaping the future.
Continue reading “Unleashing Innovation: Key Takeaways from Ciklum’s Client Conference 2024”
As the global marketplace has become larger, more accessible and more competitive, the role of AI transformation in retail has become more and more important. In particular, generative AI in retail is proving to be a game-changer in supporting better customer experiences, greater personalization, and more intuitive and automated marketing strategies.
Generative AI models use large amounts of data to produce any type of content – text, audio, video or still images – based on the prompts and commands given by the user. The ability to produce high-quality content at scale, and far faster than humans would be able to, can therefore yield some major business efficiencies that can be instrumental in driving competitive advantage.
We’ve already explored the 12 practical steps to getting started with GenAI in more general terms. So in this blog, we’ll explore the five key ways in which it can support transformation in the retail industry specifically.
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Conversational AI is transforming business operations and customer service all over the world. The combination of Natural Language Processing, Automatic Speech Recognition, Machine Learning and data mining mean that computers can now understand and respond to human speech and written input better than ever before.
Continue reading “Discover the Power of Conversational AI Solutions for Business Success”
In practically every walk of life, consumers are increasingly expecting greater levels of personalization. Taken to its greatest extent, hyper-personalization is helping brands target customers on an individual level, to encourage loyalty and specific actions during the sales journey and beyond.
In the travel and hospitality industry, the potential of hyper-personalization has been widely recognized, but remains relatively unfulfilled compared to other consumer-facing industries. This blog explores how personalized marketing in hospitality can work in practice, and just how beneficial it can be in a competitive landscape.
Hyper-personalization refers to the creation of the most customized, targeted, data-driven guest experiences, aimed at engaging individual users and consumers. It’s achieved through the combination of data, automation, analytical tools and automation, and the integrated use of these delivers the best results. Whereas standard personalization creates experiences based on previous customer interactions and data, hyper-personalization leverages real-time data to shape experiences as the customer interacts.
Before even considering hyper-personalization, businesses in the travel and hospitality sector are lagging behind with even standard personalization practices. According to Forrester, less than 40% of consumers rate companies in the sector highly for personalization.
This means moving towards hyper-personalization can deliver huge steps forward in a range of different areas, such as:
When these benefits are realized, the importance of hyper-personalization can then be felt throughout the business as a whole, and enable:
Explore our blog post on: The importance of hyper-personalized user experience in eCommerce
There is so much that travel and hospitality firms can do with hyper-personalization, in no small part because of the huge volumes of data at their disposal. In many cases, it’s a lack of up-to-date and integrated solutions that have held them back, but with the right technology, areas that can be transformed include:
Personalized pricing and offers:Examples include United Airlines, who use machine learning to create personalized offers for seat upgrades, priority boarding and other services; and Hyatt Hotels, who boosted revenue by $40 million in six months by matching hotel suggestions and service offers to guest preferences and behavior.
Pre-arrival surveysEncouraging hotel guests to complete a survey before they arrive provides vital information on their preferences. This allows staff to make hyper-personalized preparations to the customer’s liking, such as room type, room temperature and even the firmness of the pillows.
Customized guest services and amenitiesThe first two points can come together enabling hotels to provide hyper-personalization, such as for services and amenities during a guest’s stay that they are most likely to be interested in.
AI-based Virtual ConciergeApplications on hardware within rooms or on guests’ mobile devices can connect them to personalized recommendations across dining, attractions, activities and other services. Furthermore, it delivers a high quality service far cheaper and at a far greater scale than a human concierge could manage.
Geotargeted notificationsPersonalized notifications and information can be sent to guests’ mobile devices when they approach the hotel or other points of interest, including relevant discounts and offers.
Surveys and feedback loopsObtaining feedback and data from customers after their stay or trip serves two purposes – understanding the success of current hyper-personalization measures, and gaining insight on individual preferences that can be used the next time the customer books.
Disruption managementUsing intuitive insights and real-time data streams to flag up problems as early as possible, and take decisive and personalized action to resolve any disruption or delays that customers face.
It’s clear that hyper-personalization will be an increasingly important part of the future for almost every travel and hospitality business. Firms who aren’t getting it right will be left further and further behind by their competitors who are.
The key is to identify and work towards customers’ “Zone of Tolerance”, where they feel familiar and content with experiences that work seamlessly and are intuitive to their needs. From this foundation, firms can work towards the “Zone of Delight”, and develop experiences that stand-out from the crowd and live long in the memory.
On a practical level, three things are needed to make this possible:
Continue reading “Enhancing Travel Experiences: The Role of Hyper-Personalization in Hospitality”
Key takeaways:
When it comes to user activity online, digital experience design makes a bigger difference than ever before. When users are able to shop around easily, whether it’s purchasing from a different brand or choosing one app over another, making a lasting positive impact is absolutely vital.
Linearity research has found that as many as 88% of consumers are less likely to return to a website if they’ve had a bad experience with it. And when you consider that 94% of first impressions on a website are design-related, it’s clear that digital experience design has a huge influence on the success or failure of any online presence.
In this blog, we’ll explore digital experience design in detail, including how it works, the foundations behind it, and how best to apply it in practice within your organization.
Digital experience design refers to the creation of experiences across an entire digital footprint that are considered, coordinated, and that enhance interactions with the organization across every touchpoint. Good digital experience design will generally bring together three interconnected factors:
User Interface (UI)The points of interaction between a user and the brand, taking into account all visual design aspects, including content, typography, fonts, images, videos, graphics and more.
User Experience (UX)The ways in which digital footprints are optimized, with the aim of maximizing user satisfaction. This means addressing usability, accessibility and enjoyability, and removing any barriers to users getting the fast, stress-free and intuitive experiences they want.
Customer Experience (CX)Customer experience combines UI and UX, but ultimately takes a more overarching view around how customers use a website or app. In particular, it focuses on the whole journey towards the intended outcome, whether that’s a purchase, completing a sign-up form, or accessing a target web page.
Digital experience design has a crucial role to play in enticing users to engage with digital content, for them to do so for extended periods of time, and to come back and do so again in the future. According to SharpSheets, 73% of mobile app users churn within 90 days, so trying to retain and attract users should be a constant effort.
When digital experience design is done right, it can support:
Stronger user engagement and retention: when users enjoy the experience, they are far more likely to explore the website or app further, and build an emotional connection.
Deeper brand loyalty and customer satisfaction: connected to the first point, that connection makes it more likely that a user will come back to the brand in the future instead of opting for a competitor.
Increased conversion rates: more engagement and more loyalty means greater conversions, which support a stronger bottom line in the long term.
Behind the three key concepts that drive digital experience designs are a range of principles that encourage best practice and drive the best possible result. These include:
Human-centered design: ensuring that designs, planning and decision-making is always focused around the expectations, desires and pain points of the user, rather than business objectives or the bottom line.
Information architecture: ensuring that content is structured and organized properly, so that it is easy and clear for users to navigate their way through a website or app, and reach the intended objective.
Continuous user research: working to understand user sentiment and preferences through interviews, surveys, usability testing and other methods – especially as these preferences constantly evolve. This allows the right design decisions to be made, based on hard evidence rather than assumptions.
Fast iterative approach: implementing rapid prototyping and agile methodologies to quickly test ideas, gather feedback, and refine designs in short cycles. This allows for greater flexibility, responsiveness to changing requirements, and faster time-to-market for new features or improvements.
Avoiding ‘dark patterns’: these tactics that manipulate users into the intended actions, even when they didn’t plan to do so, can be extremely powerful in driving business success. However, they are widely disliked by users, who want to feel in control of their own online activity, so avoiding them is vital for fostering trust, and by extension, brand loyalty.
Continue reading “Why Digital Experience Design Matters: Key Strategies and Best Practices”
