Have you seen The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook?

This comprehensive and practical guide to the latest ideas in customer-focused marketing hands you over 200 packed pages of strategy, best practices, do's and don'ts, practical know-how, facts and figures, and ideas to optimise your marketing strategy, boost sales, market share, increase ROI and profit.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)

Consumers will reward companies deploying good AI

Embracing the human-like side of ai technologies

The report, "The Secret to Winning Customers' Hearts with Artificial Intelligence: Add Human Intelligence" reveals that 55% of consumers prefer interactions enabled by a mix of AI and humans, and 64% want AI to be more human-like. These human-like qualities can generate significant goodwill and drive a greater propensity to spend for nearly half (48%) of consumers. However, many organizations are failing to take consumer pain points and preferences into account when applying AI technology to their customer experience (CX), focusing more on traditional metrics such as the cost of implementation and expected return on investment (ROI).

The report, which surveyed 10,000 consumers and more than 500 companies across 10 countries, found that 63% of AI-aware consumers like AI because of its 24/7 availability and how it provides greater control over their interactions. Consumers are also opening up to the possibility of digital alter egos - 48% say the opportunity to be able to delegate tasks to an electronic personal assistant is exciting, with another 46% believing it will enhance their quality of life.

Consumers want human-like, not human-looking AI
Consumers' growing comfort in using AI is also increasing their reassurance in AI having human-like attributes. More than three in five consumers (62%) are comfortable with human-like intellect. Nearly half (49%) say they would have a higher affiliation to a company if their interactions enabled by AI were more human-like. Surprisingly, this preference transcends the generations. Across all age groups between 18 and 55+ years, consumers prefer interactions to be enabled by a mixture of human and AI.

However, customers want their AI to be heard, and experienced, but not seen. While they are keen for AI to have a human-like voice (62%) and the ability to understand human emotions (57%), physical features are deemed "reepy." More than half (52%) of customers are not comfortable when AI is set up to look like a person. The report also finds that two-thirds of consumers (66%) would like to be made aware when companies are enabling interactions via AI.

Prioritise CX when implementing AI
Despite consumer appetite for AI-powered customer experiences, businesses are prioritizing traditional metrics over customer preferences. The report found that 62% of organizations are prioritizing cost and 59% of organizations are prioritizing ROI as the most important factors when implementing AI technology. Just seven percent of organizations rank solving known consumer pain points, and 10% rank impact on customer experience as important factors in implementing AI-enabled use cases.

That is a clear oversight, says the report, given that consumers are willing to spend more when the experience is positive. The report found that 38% of shoppers have purchased more following a good AI-enabled experience, with a quarter increasing their spend by up to 10%. In addition, AI-enabled interactions also foster more loyalty to and higher trust in the company.

Mark Taylor, Chief Experience Officer, Digital Customer Experience Practice, at Capgemini said, "It is somewhat ironic that natural language processing and machine learning provides organizations with the opportunity to build deeper, more human relationships with their customers. By focusing their AI implementations to reimagine, streamline and simplify customer interactions, organizations can boost customer spend and loyalty. To see the biggest bottom-line boost, firms need to make both artificial intelligence and customer experience a strategic priority."

Have you seen The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook?

This comprehensive and practical guide to the latest ideas in customer-focused marketing hands you over 200 packed pages of strategy, best practices, do's and don'ts, practical know-how, facts and figures, and ideas to optimise your marketing strategy, boost sales, market share, increase ROI and profit.

Learn the insider's tricks and techniques to turn every customers into a 'super spreader' for your brand. It's better than free advertising. Once you start this ball rolling, your brand can grow rapidly through word-of-mouth, advocacy, influencers, and customer loyalty. Super-charge your company's marketing strategy, build up your market share, and make more sales through repeat business and customer loyalty.

Find out what works - and what doesn't - and who's succeeded, and how they did it. See how the world's top brands keep their competitive edge against all odds.

The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook walks you step-by-step through the techniques, metrics, reporting, analysis, marketing models, technologies, tools and innovations for successful marketing strategies - both traditional and emerging - with expert guidance from thought leaders in every major market. Find out the best ways to gather, analyse, and act on customer data to increase profitability, build your brand, empower your customers, beat the competition, reduce churn, and increase customer profitability. This is a marketing book you simply can't afford to be without.

This book aims to hand you all the facts, figures and research data you need for the best decisions for a more profitable, more engaging marketing strategy. It also highlights all the facts, forecasts and trends identified by our experts from the global Marketing Factbook's vast database of market data, news, studies, research and articles, and presents you with an invaluable library of ideas and practical support you can call upon at will.

With The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook at your side, you'll have instant access to a true goldmine of easily adaptable and up-to-date strategies, walk-throughs, trends, research and market data, plus all the supporting arguments you need to build a solid, profitable marketing strategy.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)