The Future of Customer Experience in AI

KNOWLEDGESTREAM AT-A-GLANCE

ABSTRACT

The Future of Customer Experience. Best practices in using digital tools and technology to improve customer experience and streamline process. Applying AI Technologies further adds opportunities and challenges.

PARTICIPANTS

Joana Santos

Digital Marketing Consultant

Jack C Crawford

Managing Partner at Datalog.ai | AI Maven

Jay D

Himanshu Bharadwaj

Creative Director.

Donald Wedding

Data Scientist / Statistician

Carola van der Linden

Marketing Manager Alteryx

David Voelker

SVP, Transformation Office

Mike Wittenstein

Inspiring and articulate Strategic Storyteller and Experience Designer who helps service leaders make successful pivots.

Jason G

Bill Roth

Business Coach And Writer

Marc Wiznia

Head of Business Development & Growth

Jenna Louie

Corporate Strategy and Customer Experience at Hilton

Amitabh Bhattacharya

Safety Professional | HSE Consultant with 12 years of versatile experience managing Health, Safety, and Environment

Ricardo Santos

CEO at Heptasense | Investor | Europe's 100 Hottest Startups by Wired

Gijs Bos

AI voor online personalisatie ( CRO / SaaS )

Liisa Holma

Head of Customer Experience & Insights at Tieto

Fouad Bajwa

Successpreneur, works with really cool startups, public policy innovator, advisor

John Mullen

Hamna Asif

Volunteers- Chair Person at Tesol Kuwait

Keith Walker

Experienced Group Product Director and Digital Director

OBJECTIVES

1. : Determine the challenges, drivers, trends and frictions specific to the scope.

2. : Develop a thorough list of alternatives, their strengths and weaknesses, supported by examples.

3. : Define the key characteristics that would need to be true to make the desired impact.

4. : Define the recommended path(s) for a viable solution and identify the critical success factors in deployment.

100% Complete

Start Date: Jun 11, 2018
End Date: Oct 30, 2018

2064

CONTRIBUTIONS

ACTIVITY

141 Days

7 Themes

30 Contributors

1270 Posts

794 Comments

209 Followers

OUTPUTS

6 Slide Deck

5 Video

CALLS ATTENDED

• 2018-10-12 16:52:02 - A recording of the Theme Interview for Theme #6: "What are companies doing to promote or ensure that AI positively impacts the customer journey?" was uploaded

THEME #1

How has the innovations using AI to create voice command and visual search changed, improved, or harmed the customer experience today?

THEME SUMMARY

Both AI visual & voice search improve the customer experience for digital and physical commerce. While in the early stages of development, they will reshape how we interact with brands and retailers.

People are far better at talking rather than writing about things. An AI voice interface allows them to run searches at will. The search engine parses & couples product descriptions with best matches.
1 picture = 1000 words; allowing people to reason with similarities.
An AI recommendation engine uses customer behavior to establish if the customer is likely to like any of the best ranked matches (generated thru voice or visual search).
Digital services powered by AI will merge the disabled customers and non-disabled customers into just one group: customers.

Voice Command Innovations

Voice search is a real game changer, and the most surprising thing is that it is gaining favor with older populations at a very rapid rate.

Marc Wiznia Head of Business Development & Growth

Advancement in Voice Recognition is harming customer experience

Donald Wedding Data Scientist / Statistician

Visual Search Innovations

Target will be the first—and exclusive—U.S. retailer to bring Pinterest Lens directly into shoppers apps and experiences, which will create an incredibly rich and simple way for store guests to explore, discover and buy millions of products .

alex magid More than 30 years of business and IT experience

Macy’s continue to focus on mobile in its research and development to bring stores, technology, Internet capability and smartphone or tablet access together to attract shoppers and serve the needs of customers. Many of the features are available across both Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s stores.

alex magid More than 30 years of business and IT experience

Measuring the Success of an AI Innovation to Improve the Customer Experience

Markov decision processes, which is a discrete-time stochastic control process. It provides a mathematical framework for modeling decision making in situations where outcomes are partly random and partly under the control of a decision maker.

alex magid More than 30 years of business and IT experience

How visual search is helping ecommerce brands :Cross-selling and inspiration

alex magid More than 30 years of business and IT experience

Methods for Adopting AI Innovation's for an Improved Customer Experience

reinforcement learning in reinventing the customer experience

Max H

By putting in place test groups and applying learnings etc. to continously improve the best possible customer experience.

Carola van der Linden Marketing Manager Alteryx

THEME #2

How has the innovations using AI to "Leverage Big Data" changed, improved, or harmed the customer experience today?

THEME SUMMARY

AI gives entities in the public and private sectors the ability to utilize their big data to provide a satisfactory customer experience through personalization and customization..

Products and services are most often substantially improved to better meet the needs and expectations of the customer through the effective use and analysis of big data combined with AI.
AI + big data trained to personalize the customer experience without knowing the customer's personal details is preferred; distinguishing the customer experience to be "cool". rather than "creepy"..
Customer's fear that entities in the public and private sectors that use big data combined with AI may compromise the customer's privacy.
Customer's fear that their personal information which is gathered by entities in the public and private sectors in the form of big data combined with AI may not be secure.

Strengths of AI + Big Data

AI unlocks the potential of Big Data

Jason G

Big data drives personalization

Marc Wiznia Head of Business Development & Growth

Threats of AI + Big Data

Data privacy, especially in EU countries where European Union Law is relatively strict, capturing customer data will need to apply GDPR and other ruling.

Carola van der Linden Marketing Manager Alteryx

the risk of data breaches holds people back

Jenna Louie Corporate Strategy and Customer Experience at Hilton

Weaknesses of AI + Big Data

will chatbots and AI eliminate humans? Nope, at least not anytime soon..

Carola van der Linden Marketing Manager Alteryx

Obtaining customer data (optins), storing customer data and the subsequent usage of obtained data are examples that could cause data privacy challenges (EU law)

Carola van der Linden Marketing Manager Alteryx

Opportunities of AI + Big Data

Customer experience is best when it is fun. Games and AI can work together to engage customers more intimately

Jack C Crawford Managing Partner at Datalog.ai | AI Maven

Great commercial opportunity for businesses as prediction of cross sell/upsell can be much more specific and defined as before. Moving away from a generic 1 size fits all approach.

Carola van der Linden Marketing Manager Alteryx

THEME #3

How have the innovations to integrate AI in mobile strategies changed, improved, or harmed the customer experience today?

THEME SUMMARY

Creating all kinds of smart apps using AI on mobile devices is dramatically improving the customer experience by enhancing personalized convenience so they feel valued and are known.

Mobile capabilities, paired with a deep understanding of customer data and analytical power can offer a highly personalized, right time, right offer experience.
"Deep Linking" really comes down to the ability of brands to use customer data across multiple platforms, stages, of the customer journey, and needs..
AI + mobile unlocks information about the context behind people's behaviors. The continual connectivity means that companies can now get more information about their customers than ever before.
The downside is that it becomes exponentially harder to create loyal customers. All it takes is a minor slip up, and you've lost that customer; Adequate protection of privacy & security is critical.

Opportunities from integrating AI into mobile strategies

The theme I'd like to introduce via this example is to use AI FOR THE CUSTOMER not only for the business. Instead of coaxing customers to do the business's bidding, the business can adapt itself to the customer giving them more of what they want--and getting more for shareholders in return.

Mike Wittenstein Inspiring and articulate Strategic Storyteller and Experience Designer who helps service leaders make successful pivots.

The new topic will be "Deep Linking." This began to gain prominence back in 2016, and it now is being refined. By deep linking, we mean the ability to engage other services within a primary service.

Jack C Crawford Managing Partner at Datalog.ai | AI Maven

Strengths from integrating AI into mobile strategies

As in this example, AI has the power to decrease the time it takes for people to learn something new or to complete tasks where they don't necessarily have expertise. When you make that available to users anywhere they are via mobile integrations, the possibilities extend even further.

Jason G

So the best application in my opinion is when the customer is an active participant in the process. When we are looking for a specific place or product, then the mobile phone can help search and give better recommendations because the phone knows where we are.

Donald Wedding Data Scientist / Statistician

Threats from integrating AI into mobile strategies

Well, no amount of analysis we did could confirm that the treasure hunt games actually drove sales. People were going into stores to get the treasure hunt treasure. But they were not buying anything.

Donald Wedding Data Scientist / Statistician

The bot idea is quite good. Most bots and virtual assistants today are woefully inadequate in the delivery of value to users. The organizations that step up the level of system integration and that employ AI to personalize the experience will lead the pack in 2019.

Jack C Crawford Managing Partner at Datalog.ai | AI Maven

Weaknesses from integrating AI into mobile stategies

you have a solution that is composed of multiple algorithms and models, each doing something different and using its own specific data. Assuming that we rely on a data connection, then AI could make customer experience less enjoyable if the connection experiences significant latency or data loss.

Andrei Luchici Advisor & Trainer - Artificial Intelligence

We were strictly looking at some specific items that were not as subject to impulse purchases as was hoped. So, this was a classic example of "you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make the horse drink the water".

Donald Wedding Data Scientist / Statistician

THEME #4

How have "chatbots", that virtually initiate proactive chats with customers, changed, improved, or harmed the customer experience today?

THEME SUMMARY

Chat bots are advanced AI; clever computer programs. Bots are a first line of defense; not ready to be the only solution and are an inexpensive, efficient way to solve common, everyday challenges.

A chat bot has to exercise pro-activeness in order to initiate the right conversation with the right person, through the right channel and at the right moment.
Nowadays, chat bots are an indispensable support for digital communication.
Chat bots can be aimed at creating opportunities to serve humans that aren't always related to saving costs.
A proactive chat bot can assume the role of a true salesperson, capable of adapting to the user’s expectations.

Strengths of "chatbots" initiating proactive chats with customers.

a proactive chatbot assumes the role of a true salesperson, capable of adapting to the user’s expectations. To be effective, a conversational robot has to be configured based on relevant scenarios that are adapted to the actions performed by the users.

Joana Santos Digital Marketing Consultant

Proactive Chatbots & Personalization

Joana Santos Digital Marketing Consultant

Weaknesses from "chatbots" initiating proactive chats with customers.

While chatbots employ the most advanced AI available today, they are simply clever computer programs. To achieve success and avoid mishaps, corporate technology leaders should purposefully govern chatbot development and operations.

Jack C Crawford Managing Partner at Datalog.ai | AI Maven

Opportunities for "chatbots" initiating proactive chats with customers.

The question should be "SHOULD YOU USE A CHAT BOT EXCLUSIVELY?". Make certain that prior to changing over to a chat bot, you do a little customer research on what your customers want. A little A/B testing can go a long way to saving a company from high churn levels.

Donald Wedding Data Scientist / Statistician

Easy experiences are part of the winning formula for companies. AND, if the experience is more tedious or less helpful than other channels, these chatbots will not be used. Better design and performance (in understanding and responding) are critical to success.

Jack C Crawford Managing Partner at Datalog.ai | AI Maven

Threats from "chatbots" initiating proactive chats with customers.

There's no service in self service.

Mike Wittenstein Inspiring and articulate Strategic Storyteller and Experience Designer who helps service leaders make successful pivots.

THEME #5

How have "Virtual Assistants", acting as a personal concierge, changed, improved, or harmed the customer experience today?

THEME SUMMARY

Virtual and personal assistants driven by AI are everywhere; great for routine tasks because they are inexpensive and efficient. Alexa, Siri, Echo, and other such devices embody this technology..

The Google Assistant seems to be everyone’s favorite VA; useful for general knowledge, ordering food, making reservations, online shopping, …
Demographics plays a large role in foretelling the future of the VA space.
The underlying technology can monitor a lot more data sets; taking care of many activities without failing.
Users today are smart, do not appreciate being told what to do, but appreciate experiences that knows what the user will do next plus giving them choices.

SURVEYS

| 12

Which questions from the following list do you think will be the most interesting new theme topics (relating to "The Future of the Customer Experience and Applying AI" ) for us to answer and discuss?

What is an emerging, leading company in AI that will have a significant impact on the future of the customer experience? Please analyze and discuss the nature of the company; its AI; and why/how it will have a significant impact on the future of the custom

33.33% 4 votes

How are leading AI innovations creating value through improved engagement between brands and buyers?

50.00% 6 votes

What are the pros and cons of leading customer experience innovations that are employing AI for engagement and personalization?

25.00% 3 votes

How does AI benefit some customers more than others and which customers does AI stand to benefit the most?

16.67% 2 votes

Where in the curve of adoption are we with respect to applying AI to the customer experience?

33.33% 4 votes

How can we think about building inclusive AI systems and avoid building subconscious human biases from creeping into our systems to ensure a positive impact on the customer experience?

25.00% 3 votes

What are companies doing to promote or ensure that AI positively impacts the customer journey?

58.33% 7 votes

How are companies expanding the adoption of AI to successfully impact the customer journey?

25.00% 3 votes

How are companies reducing or removing pain or friction points for a smoother adoption and expansion of AI to positively impact the customer journey?

33.33% 4 votes

What are the best practices that companies are learning from early adopters in AI which may help them to better understand the customer’s requirements; think customer centric?

41.67% 5 votes

How is training and education using AI that is targeted at customers (e.g. language learners) or at employees (e.g. new company policy on quality control) going to change, improve, or harm the future of the customer experience?

33.33% 4 votes

The strengths of AI "Virtual Assistants", acting as a personal concierge,

Routine tasks are best handled by a virtual agent because it is inexpensive and efficient. The underlying technology can monitor a lot more data sets and can take care of many activities without failing.

Jay D

Others Ordering food, making reservations and online shopping are three other areas where virtual assistants can be very useful.

Joana Santos Digital Marketing Consultant

The weaknesses of AI "Virtual Assistants", acting as a personal concierge,

I think what you've mentioned around routine vs. complex tasks is an important lens, and I'd add to it an aspect of "what level of emotional support customers expect to receive during that interaction" as a second dimension.

Jenna Louie Corporate Strategy and Customer Experience at Hilton

For more complex tasks or to appreciate the relationship, nothing better than two human beings have a conversation.

Jay D

The threats from AI "Virtual Assistants", acting as a personal concierge,

Microsoft sees future versions of the personal digital assistant as the development of an 'alter ego' or really a second self... As a result companies will have to work with governments and academia to determine the ethical implications of using AI in our daily lives.

Carola van der Linden Marketing Manager Alteryx

Best "Virtual Assistant"?

I would say that Google will dominate this space. I also say this for another reason. Based on some of my work in the autonomous vehicles space and my understanding of how Google's search algorithm and Google Translation work,

Jay D

Alexa

Donald Wedding Data Scientist / Statistician

The opportunities for AI "Virtual Assistants", acting as a personal concierge,

there is a lot of research and investigation how smart devices can be incorporated to assist those with physical or cognitive impairments by automating crucial activities and services, such as opening and closing doors, or contacting medical professionals.

Rob Bickford COO, SVP, CIO and President

Smart Home

Joana Santos Digital Marketing Consultant

THEME #6

What are companies doing to promote or ensure that AI positively impacts the customer journey?

THEME SUMMARY

Today AI is successfully being used in many ways by a very broad range of companies and industry sectors to provide or ensure a positive B2B, B2C, or D2C customer experience.

AI with big data is being used in different ways for social media, transportation, retail, and many other industries.
AI is best suited for the more basic or routine type of customer service functions.
AI supplemented with human intervention or help can tackle just about any customer experience or service need.

Threats for companies using AI to promote or ensure a positive customer journey

..."there is a big divide between adopters and firms on the sidelines. This divide is due to lack of innovation, appreciation of value and the traditional business models that have been successful anyways for many decades; fear of changing; and the cost of build and deployment"...

Himanshu Bharadwaj Creative Director.

we certainly don't want only a few technology firms to predict our decisions and and have unbridled power to influence our behavior.

Jack C Crawford Managing Partner at Datalog.ai | AI Maven

Companies using AI to promote a positive customer journey

Amazon's massive database of over 150 million customers provides a deep pool of information and subsequently increases the total size of the order and a greater share of wallet; plus doing a very good job using ML and AI in it's customer service platform.

Rob Bickford COO, SVP, CIO and President

Last year Levi's announced that they were working with Mode.ai to deploy the Levi's Virtual Stylist - an AI powered chatbot that assists customers in selecting a pair of denim blue jeans.

David Voelker SVP, Transformation Office

Companies using AI to ensure a positive customer journey.

TrueFace.ai is operating at the other end of the biometric identity continuum to ensure that facial recognition can not offer a false positive signal when presented with a photograph, a problem that has plagued many of the early facial recognition entrants.

David Voelker SVP, Transformation Office

Northface launched a highly personalized instore experience online called XPS using IBM watson; combining Big data and AI to close the gap between in-store and online shopping for customers; acting as a expert advisor helping users navigate the website as if they are navigating their physical store.

Himanshu Bharadwaj Creative Director.

Products/services with AI promoting a positive customer journey.

Medallia is an example of a platform that uses AI to capture “voice of customer” feedback. Once it is analyzed, Medallia’s AI can spit out a suggested action and can tell you how much impact an action would have on business results.

Joana Santos Digital Marketing Consultant

IBM created WeatherFX using Watson AI to create personalized targeted automated campaigns. for advertisers. It uses weather data from the weather company with a cross channel marketing platform allowing marketers to have an AI powered consumer decision making.

Himanshu Bharadwaj Creative Director.

Opportunities for companies using AI to promote or ensure a positive customer journey.

My take-away is that this theme is the key to success for companies to maintaining their push for integration of AI and customer experience.

Rob Bickford COO, SVP, CIO and President

Search will shift to image or voice based; voice command or image recognition to login. Imagine pointing your phone to any landmark, road, or even magazine picture of it; instantly getting all the wikipedia like details + the map to it.. Facebook, Pinterest and instagram use computer vision AI.

Himanshu Bharadwaj Creative Director.

Products/services with AI ensuring a positive customer journey.

Overall the important key takeaway for a good AI customer journey is to reduce friction pain points for the user such as entering of data, presenting fewer choices, reduce number of clicks, reduce number of commands and imitating natural behavior .

Himanshu Bharadwaj Creative Director.

The call centers of most large financial institutions are employing AI powered voice recognition software through vendors scubas Nice to establish and confirm identity.

David Voelker SVP, Transformation Office

THEME #7

How is AI Implemented Across Different Industries and Sectors and How is Success Measured?

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