ERA of Artificial Intelligence

In today’s business world, the customer’s behavior towards a brand is regarded the most in the market. Your behavior towards a product or a company gives “business” to a business. It is often said that a happy customer experience makes a customer stay loyal to a brand and the more pleasing it is, the more are the chances to retain a customer as well as contribute largely to growth.

In modernity, the introduction of Artificial Intelligence has upgraded customer experience through swift and efficient calculation and resolution. Accelerated growth in technology has been a powerful tool to provide ease on a daily basis. From recognizing voice & speech to understanding human emotions and the ability to predict the likeness has largely helped to upgrade customer experience. This is also leveraging the company to deliver personalized recommendations.

Did you know?  By 2025, AI is expected to control 95% of customer interaction. 😲😲

This number brings happiness as well as concern, all at the same time. Knowing AI will take care of all the things so that human could focus on important work; but understanding AI assistants are on the streak to colonize homes exposes to fear of personal data being shared with a speaking bot.

Many big brands have already launched their AI assistant.

Brand Name	Name of AI	Integrated with
Amazon	Alexa	Echo Smart Speaker (25 Million sold)
Apple	Siri	Homepod
Google	Google Assistant	Google home cylinders and Pixel phones (400 million devices)
Samsung	Bixby	Samsung mobile devices
Microsoft	Cortana	Windows platform
Tencent	Xiaowei	Add-in

It is reckoned that much of the resources of these firms would be invested to bring the preferred consumer AI platform over the forthcoming years.

The substantial growth of AI is highly recommended because:

• It will render unprecedented convenience, minimize costs and risks for consumers.
  
• It will ensure that routine purchases and errands, of households, stay uninterrupted.
  
• Providing a better recommendation by learning the shopping and purchasing behavior and optimizing the best suiting of the consumer.

AI holds the capacity to conduct minute computations which consumers are most likely to ignore in regular life. Therefore, consumers would be at convenience in making even a minute change with the help of artificial intelligence. For E.g.: AI can understand that you are not happy with white bread in your breakfast thus, would recommend changing your taste by asking you to allow it to order brown bread from a store that is known to sell fresh products. If you like it, it will ensure to replace white bread with brown bread in routine purchases. AI is undoubtedly a portal to an infinite collection of goods and services. With longer usage of the platform, a greater understanding of habits and preferences would be learned to increase the satisfaction level.

As consumers purchasing is shifting to AI, would it bring a threat to brick-and-mortar stores?

The answer to this would be “whatever contributes to convenience at a larger frame wins the game”. For a foreseeable future, consumers will continue to shop offline with influential brands. But with the incoming changes, an improved AI’s efficient recommendation may pull many consumers away from a brand and help find a cost and time-efficient, as well as much suitable, alternative to the requirement that exists in the market. The shift from a trusted brand to trusted AI would a common phenomenon in the future. 

This, in a way, should not be counted as a negative impact for the brick-and-mortar stores as they would also be able to use the AI to fetch data to target marketing to the more-sorted-desired customer base, acquiring customers easily.
Fetching data is possible by performing a search on Google or Social Media, but it's really difficult to make sense of it, by looking at it sparingly. It would be efficient to pay AI platforms to get precise information and list self on the platform in the same way that they pay for flyers marketing.

To run with customer’s trust

AI will succeed only by winning consumers' faith. Trust is a devalued currency when it comes to technology involving personal data. DATA IS A NEW OIL – intelligence of others having personal data involving tracking time (the regular time when any product is searched on AI and purchase decision is made), delivery address, card details, nicknames of family members, future plans can be too much to trust knowing these data can be used to manipulate. If people sense that an assistant is pushing a paying brand that is not aligned with their needs, the trust would be undermined. Today, Cybersecurity is still an issue, and data selling on the dark web is increasing with time.

AI should be programmed in such a way that it gives equal weightage for paid and unpaid recommendations. AI companies not only need to invest in better engineering but also in building trust relationships with customers. A brand once quoted, “Building trust will be the most important thing we do.”

Product placement and recommendation on the AI platform would be a major source of revenue in the future. However, it could be earned by earning the consumer’s confidence. This could be achieved by focusing on the following:
 

Accuracy	Continuous learning of individual inputs and requirements to render an accurate and likable recommendation.
Alignment	Ensuring the recommendations are aligned with customer’s needs & likings, not with paying brands.
Privacy	Ensuring privacy by employing quality data encryption techniques and involving less human intervention in handling consumers’ data.

No doubt AI would evolve rapidly to offer speed, quality, costs, and response. It is only a matter of a few years for the consumer base to transitioning to it. A large portion of AI companies’ economy is being invested already in this and the future is different from what we see today.

This blog is written by Kumar Kritanshu, a student of MBA at the Asian Institute of Management, Philippines.