Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a powerful technology that can be used to improve customer satisfaction and market products, services and experiences. With the right strategies, it can be a great asset for businesses. 14 members of the Forbes Business Council discussed ways in which their organizations can use AI to increase customer satisfaction. We use AI to analyze customer behavior in e-commerce purchases.
This has increased our sales by 2.03% and has helped us understand why there are so many abandoned carts. AI is also a great help for customer service, especially during peak seasons, as it provides customers with self-help information robots to answer frequently asked questions, provide follow-up information, and much more. For example, I use AI to turn my characters into 3D molds for educators and schools to explore, teach, learn and grow. To make the most of AI, it is important to research innovative ideas to create new and fun experiences focused on your company's key products or services. Additionally, it is essential to ensure that privacy standards are established and programmed in your AI marketing platforms as needed to maintain consumer compliance and trust.
Tools based on artificial intelligence, such as Seventh Sense, Yesware or ToutApp, allow you to automate email activities such as sending and tracking responses. AI improves and automates processes such as customizing content for a specific target audience or selecting the most effective marketing activities. With AI tools such as Google Analytics and Mixpanel, it is possible to analyze data and obtain information on how consumers respond to marketing activities. This makes AI marketing tools very effective since they work in real time and respond quickly to business needs. Marketers must constantly look for new data sources such as internal transactions, third-party vendors, and even potential acquisitions as most AI applications, especially machine learning, require large amounts of high-quality data. AI can streamline the sales process by using extremely detailed data about people including real-time geolocation data to create highly personalized product or service offerings.
Other AI tools such as Adobe Target or Optimizely also enable personalized experiences increasing customer engagement and loyalty as well as the effectiveness of marketing initiatives. As with any marketing program, it is important that you set clear marketing objectives and analysis for your AI marketing program from the start. As machine learning and AI marketing programs consume more data they will learn to make accurate and effective decisions. Today many companies use AI to manage limited tasks such as placing digital advertisements (also known as “programmatic buying”) or helping with broad tasks such as improving the accuracy of predictions (think of sales forecasts). Increasing human efforts in structured tasks such as customer service is also possible with AI. Digital marketing teams must ensure that they use consumer data ethically and in compliance with regulations such as the GDPR when implementing an AI marketing strategy or they risk suffering severe sanctions and damaging their reputation.
Many companies adopt a “track and execute” approach starting with a standalone task automation application that is not customer-facing such as one that guides human services agents who interact with customers. While KPIs such as ROI and efficiency can be easily quantified showing how AI marketing has improved customer experience or brand reputation may be less obvious. To ensure these protections and maintain customer trust CMOs should establish ethical and privacy review boards with legal and marketing experts to review AI projects in particular those that include customer data or algorithms that may be prone to biases such as credit rating. In addition with AI tools processes such as product recommendations or email marketing campaigns can be automated and improved.
