Measure and analyse, always.

I guess we all have those moments from time to time where we don’t know exactly to what song to listen to and none of our old beloved songs sound fit to the moment. Well, I had one of those moments last weekend, while I was cooking lunch and listening to the Barilla Playlist on Spotify. Once my pasta was done, I stayed on Spotify and scrolled through my Discover Weekly selection – a personalised playlist with new music that Spotify offers to its users - hoping to find something new that matched my mood. Without doubt, Spotify met my needs eventually.

That got me into thinking, how does Spotify know what I need – especially when I am the first one to not know it?

Turns out, Spotify uses AI and machine learning to offer a better customer experience to its users. Spotify uses an algorithm called BART (bandits for recommendations as treatments) and its purpose is to keep users listening to music. More specifically, BART helps Spotify with understanding who we are and what we like listening to. In a nutshell, it considers previous history’s mood/genres/style, our skip rate (the genre of the songs we tend to skip), for how long we listen to some songs and playlist characteristics (private/official/popular).

What makes Spotify so popular between its users is not only the fact that it lets them stream music through the platform, but it’s the ability to create user habits by creating extremely personalised customer experiences.

If this topic seems too familiar to you, you are right to feel so. At MadeFor, we have developed 8 Customer Way principles that can help drive customer centricity in the organisation. We have covered this matter in principle number eight, namely “Measure and analyse, always”. This principle talks about how brands need to be constantly measuring and analysing to evolve their understanding of the world and of their customers.

Hence, once Spotify understands what we like, it doesn’t stop at showing us only music that we like. Instead, it keeps users engaged by constantly suggesting new music. By not knowing what is going to be the next song and whether I’ll like it or not, Spotify keeps me scrolling through the platform, since even when I end up not liking a recommended song, the chances are that the next one might be my new favourite jam.  

This uncertainty is what keeps us users curious to find out what’s next in line for us, resulting in spending more time listening to the playlist and staying on the platform.

‍

Hence, my question for you today for you would be: what are you doing to keep your users engaging with your product or service?

‍

By Rosa.

‍