What are the main ways AI/machine learning will impact marketers and their work in the next year or two?
With dwindling differentiation among competitors in many industries, a growing number of marketers have realized they need to refine their strategy to transform their businesses into real-time and predictive enterprises by using AI/machine learning technologies to deliver consistent experiences across all customer touchpoints.
Marketers will more closely align with the CIO and IT department in order to ensure the company’s IT architecture can capture digital footprints. This will allow for the study of customer behavior patterns and other current events (like weather) in real-time time in order to fuel smart recommendation engines.
In summary, what will be the long-term impact of AI/machine learning on marketing?
Data-driven decision making in real-time will take over “gut feel” decisions in marketing. Earlier business was driven by accounting, finance and operations leaders. In the imminent future, businesses will be driven by CMOs who are empowered by digital data, historic data and a business reflex to drive business processes depending on real-time events and customer interactions.
How is AI/machine learning incorporated in the work you’re doing?
Xavient’s clients – primarily telecommunications firms, cable operators, banks and retailers – are seeking outside assistance to improve how they engage with their customers across all channels. In most cases, this involves implementing solutions in our clients’ call centers, where most customer relationships are truly tested. Xavient developed an AI-powered voice-to-text analytics platform called AMPLIFY to provide real-time reports of customer issues and full visibility of customer sentiment analytics. AMPLIFY enables the call center agent to show empathy and upsell a customer to buy, increase the transaction size or persuade a dissatisfied customer to stay.
In your experience, is AI/machine learning already affecting what brands do, or are awareness and adoption still very limited?
AI/machine learning is rapidly being embraced by enterprises as a part of their digital transformation strategy, but the market is still in its infancy. Most direct marketers have contact centers which receive millions of calls in a year, but only record 10% of their customer calls and perform QA on a fraction of them. This does not provide a real-time, full visibility of their customer disposition. Most realize that delivering superlative customer experience is a round-the-clock business, but now need to put budget behind that belief.
