How AI and data can transform the customer journey

Tech­nol­o­gy pow­ered by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) is enabling organ­i­sa­tions to improve their cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and boost loy­al­ty and rev­enues.

The role of cus­tomer data has nev­er been more cru­cial. A recent expert round­table dis­cussed the impor­tance of per­son­al­i­sa­tion and how data dri­ves smart deci­sion mak­ing. It out­lined why employ­ees need the right skills and should feel empow­ered to take action on the insights being gen­er­at­ed every day.

Excel­lent data man­age­ment, pow­ered by AI-enabled plat­forms, can result in improved cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, engage­ment and loy­al­ty.

Building a stronger customer experience

Kate Mul­li­gan-Brown, vice-pres­i­dent small busi­ness at account­ing soft­ware com­pa­ny Sage, explained how the com­pa­ny part­nered with Dig­i­tal Britain to sur­vey 5,000 SME cus­tomers. The ‘Dig­i­tal Britain: How small busi­ness­es are turn­ing the tide on tech’ report con­firmed that busi­ness­es see invest­ing in tech­nol­o­gy as fun­da­men­tal to sur­vival, resilience and growth.

“When it comes to cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, we must think of this as a human-to-human inter­ac­tion and not busi­ness-to-busi­ness,” says Mul­li­gan-Brown. “Tech­nol­o­gy must treat peo­ple as they expect to be treat­ed and give them a per­son­alised human expe­ri­ence. You need data to help you lis­ten to your cus­tomers.”

AI tech­nol­o­gy and data improves per­son­al­i­sa­tion, how­ev­er large the organ­i­sa­tion. “But per­son­al­i­sa­tion needs to be fine­ly tuned. It all comes back to treat­ing peo­ple as human beings as opposed to just a num­ber of clicks on your web­site,” Dun & Bradstreet’s cus­tomer suc­cess direc­tor Patrice Ben­don says. “When we look at busi­ness-to-busi­ness (B2B), with the right audi­ence data, soft­ware from com­pa­nies such as Cov­eo can sup­port per­son­alised con­tent so that indi­vid­u­als are reached at the right point in their buy­er jour­ney.”

Dun & Bradstreet’s ‘The Future of Data Report’ reveals that qual­i­ty data will become more cru­cial to dri­ve eas­i­er trans­ac­tions, improve cus­tomer sup­port and per­son­alised offers and to iden­ti­fy which ser­vices would encour­age cus­tomer loy­al­ty.

When it comes to cus­tomer data, organ­i­sa­tions can wor­ry about not hav­ing enough or hav­ing too much. Ide­al­ly, the insight gen­er­at­ed should enable lead­ers to make smarter busi­ness deci­sions.

But to do so, machine learn­ing tech­nol­o­gy needs to be in place to sup­port deci­sion-mak­ers. Coveo’s enter­prise sales direc­tor Ben Wild says machine learn­ing is so valu­able because it enables organ­i­sa­tions to inter­pret small or large amounts of data and do some­thing use­ful with it. The key is to per­son­alise an expe­ri­ence in a sub­tle and refined way rather than being too obvi­ous.

When it comes to cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, we must think of this as a human-to-human inter­ac­tion and not busi­ness-to-busi­ness. Tech­nol­o­gy must treat peo­ple as they expect to be treat­ed and give them a per­son­alised human expe­ri­ence. You need data to help you lis­ten to your cus­tomers

Indeed, Bri­an Hol­l­i­day, man­ag­ing direc­tor at Siemens Dig­i­tal Indus­tries, cites a recent exam­ple in which the com­pa­ny attract­ed 3,000 busi­ness reg­is­trants to a tech­nol­o­gy con­fer­ence in Man­ches­ter by serv­ing cus­tomers with dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed con­tent on the invi­ta­tions. This num­ber was up from 1,000 atten­dees in 2019 when the event was pro­mot­ed using a more gener­ic approach.

Lis­ten­ing to cus­tomers and using data to improve their expe­ri­ence is some­thing intel­li­gent automa­tion soft­ware com­pa­ny SS&C Blue Prism is already doing with its voice of the cus­tomer pro­gramme. Cus­tomer pro­grammes man­ag­er Gabriel­la Blake says tech­nol­o­gy should enable peo­ple to eas­i­ly reach the right places with­in any organ­i­sa­tion to get the answers they need.

Using technology to enhance customer relationships

Cus­tomers want, and increas­ing­ly expect organ­i­sa­tions to act intu­itive­ly and for their expe­ri­ences to be seam­less. This means hav­ing mech­a­nisms in place to report whether the soft­ware being used is influ­enc­ing the cus­tomer in the right way. Sales­force senior direc­tor, cus­tomer trans­for­ma­tion Dipi­ka Sawh­ney says tech­nol­o­gy should be help­ing the organ­i­sa­tion to lis­ten to the cus­tomer and make smarter deci­sions.

One com­pa­ny which has moved to being more intu­itive is low-code CRM tech­nol­o­gy provider Pegasytems. “We have to be switched on before the cus­tomer arrives,” says Fari Pirouz, direc­tor cus­tomer suc­cess. “Cus­tomers are not going to upsell and cross-sell if some­one has had a prob­lem with you. They want com­pa­nies to lis­ten. Hav­ing a more inti­mate rela­tion­ship will mean more effec­tive cus­tomer life­cy­cle man­age­ment.”

Pirouz added that this com­mit­ment to long-term rela­tion­ships extends to hav­ing empa­thy with cus­tomers when eco­nom­ic or social events hap­pen that affect their own lives and busi­ness­es, such as the Covid-19 glob­al pan­dem­ic. Rather than sell­ing to them, AI can be used in a pos­i­tive way to help a cus­tomer in a rel­e­vant and real-time way.

There is still some dis­trust and a lack of under­stand­ing around the ben­e­fits of using AI-pow­ered plat­forms to improve cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. One solu­tion is to appoint cham­pi­ons with­in dif­fer­ent func­tions to help spread the word.

Edu­cat­ing and build­ing trust must be a pri­or­i­ty because the organ­i­sa­tions yet to start their AI or data trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney could be behind their com­peti­tors by at least three years, accord­ing to Salesforce’s region­al vice-pres­i­dent Lucy Mills. Those com­pa­nies are los­ing ground when it comes to per­son­al­i­sa­tion at scale, mak­ing the right data-based deci­sions to tar­get effec­tive­ly and cre­at­ing more pos­i­tive cus­tomer expe­ri­ences.

Organ­i­sa­tions and busi­ness­es need to appre­ci­ate the sci­ence of data and see clear­ly how AI can link huge vol­umes of data to pro­duce bet­ter out­comes.

Iris Soft­ware Group’s chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer Alan Hartwell works across pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors and says there is no room for error in this envi­ron­ment. A school for exam­ple, must be able to trust the tech­nol­o­gy and know it will deliv­er on its own cus­tomers’ expe­ri­ence, whether they are employ­ees or stu­dents.

“Your cus­tomers will judge tech­nol­o­gy based on what they think your prod­ucts can do for them and whether it can deliv­er,” says Hartwell. “They won’t trust your tech with their cus­tomers if they don’t think it will be effec­tive.”

Focusing on trust and culture

Organ­i­sa­tions need an inter­nal cul­ture where every­one, what­ev­er their role, appre­ci­ates why it is impor­tant to use data and tech­nol­o­gy to lis­ten to cus­tomers.

Mul­li­gan-Brown says that there is a mas­sive oblig­a­tion for tech com­pa­nies to build trust and for organ­i­sa­tions to under­stand the val­ue exchange when data is cap­tured through prod­uct usage. “If you take the government’s Mak­ing Tax Dig­i­tal ini­tia­tive there may be appre­hen­sion and uncer­tain­ty among small busi­ness­es, so we need to share our knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence and keep that human touch,” she says.

Hol­l­i­day adds that some­times tan­gi­ble actions are need­ed to build the cor­rect cul­ture. Dur­ing inter­nal meet­ings at Siemens Dig­i­tal Indus­tries one per­son is nom­i­nat­ed to play the role of a cus­tomer and asked to hold up a red or green card when ideas are dis­cussed based on whether the top­ic would be some­thing they would pay for.

Your cus­tomers will judge tech­nol­o­gy based on what they think your prod­ucts can do for them and whether it can deliv­er. They won’t trust your tech with their cus­tomers if they don’t think it will be effec­tive

“We are all sub­ject­ed to a fire hose of infor­ma­tion today in every aspect of our lives,” says Hol­l­i­day. “Being incor­rect­ly tar­get­ed is a neg­a­tive cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, like in-per­son ser­vice, which is bina­ry – a pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive – nev­er neu­tral.”

But a data-led and cus­tomer-first cul­ture will only evolve if organ­i­sa­tions under­stand the impor­tance of avoid­ing data silos, and employ­ees in dif­fer­ent func­tions are encour­aged to share the cus­tomer data they hold. If data is linked, every­one will have a holis­tic view of the cus­tomer.

Crafting a cohesive data strategy

But com­pa­nies still need to deter­mine whether they need an actu­al data strat­e­gy or not.

Experts agree that a data strat­e­gy is cru­cial if a com­pa­ny has so many inter­nal projects that it has cre­at­ed a num­ber of data silos. But hav­ing a data strat­e­gy in place is always impor­tant in order to ensure dif­fer­ent func­tions are work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly.

Matt Dunn, CTO, Europe at AI cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firm Dark­trace, says busi­ness­es need to ask them­selves why they might need a data strat­e­gy. “You must estab­lish this before putting all your data in one cen­tral pot where it is con­nect­ed and acces­si­ble to every­one in the organ­i­sa­tion,” he says. “If it is dis­con­nect­ed and not mon­i­tored in real time by secu­ri­ty tech­nol­o­gy it is like hav­ing a jig­saw with some of the pieces miss­ing.”

Dunn warns that there are cyber­se­cu­ri­ty risks when it comes to the cen­tral­i­sa­tion of data and these must be tak­en seri­ous­ly. “If you make infor­ma­tion more acces­si­ble to employ­ees, it is also more acces­si­ble to the bad guys. There is a sig­nif­i­cant amount of data leak­age and the more you cen­tralise data, the more dan­ger­ous it can become,” he says.

Employ­ees cer­tain­ly need to be aware of the cyber risks, and this should be part of any process to empow­er them. They need the right skills as well as the con­fi­dence to make the most of an AI pow­ered CRM plat­form.

Hol­l­i­day says his com­pa­ny has adapt­ed its bonus scheme for account man­agers to ensure they utilise the company’s CRM sys­tem effec­tive­ly in terms of inputting data.

Ben­don adds that it can be dif­fi­cult to find the right tal­ent to analyse data and apply the insights that enable smarter busi­ness deci­sion mak­ing. Dun & Bradstreet’s research dis­cov­ered that 27% of organ­i­sa­tions are look­ing to improve their data lit­er­a­cy.

She says: “This lack of tal­ent and knowl­edge is being felt else­where across busi­ness. New reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments are anoth­er con­cern for any­one that depends on insight­ful cus­tomer and sup­pli­er data. Half of busi­ness­es are wor­ried about main­tain­ing data pri­va­cy (50%), while a quar­ter point to data reg­u­la­tion and legal pro­ce­dures as a source of risk (25%).”

Engaging employees around data

When a com­pa­ny does find the right tal­ent it can make a mas­sive dif­fer­ence to cul­ture and results.

Hartwell says his data sci­en­tist is arguably the hap­pi­est per­son at Iris because of what AI soft­ware tools can do in terms of deliv­er­ing for cus­tomers. When employ­ees under­stand how it can improve their own job, it boosts their mood and ulti­mate­ly improves staff reten­tion.

Pirouz agrees that employ­ees want to be involved in using new tech­nol­o­gy and data to improve cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and their own work. “With­in every busi­ness there is a secret sauce and we need to empow­er peo­ple with these new tools and tech­niques and not leave them behind,” he says. “Employ­ees need to be impas­sioned about AI and what it is pos­si­ble to achieve in terms of improv­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and grow­ing the busi­ness.”

Look­ing to the future, com­pa­nies may see more automa­tion of less mean­ing­ful tasks so employ­ees can spend extra time on the jobs they val­ue, which should improve cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. AI may become more acces­si­ble and democ­ra­tised with indi­vid­u­als choos­ing their own per­son­al­i­sa­tion rather than brands act­ing as cura­tors.

Some more com­pa­nies say they will cre­ate com­mu­ni­ties with peer net­work­ing and learn­ing around AI and data. This will encour­age col­lab­o­ra­tion and improve cus­tomer expe­ri­ence because there will be more data on con­sumer pref­er­ences, allow­ing them to gen­er­ate action­able insights and improve cus­tomer jour­neys. If func­tions are work­ing clos­er togeth­er, there will be more data on con­sumers’ pref­er­ences and inter­ests.

How­ev­er, AI still needs to mature fur­ther to be more proof than promise in dis­play­ing real ben­e­fits to people’s lives. Hol­l­i­day cites work Siemens is suc­cess­ful­ly doing with York­shire Water to help pre­dict nine out of 10 flood inci­dents through AI. “We have to get to the point where there are so many clear use cas­es that it becomes a no-brain­er to switch to AI,” he says.

A min­i­mal­ly intru­sive, effi­cient and easy-to-under­stand tech­nol­o­gy and data plat­form will enable employ­ees to spend more time focus­ing on cus­tomers. That effort will pay off in the form of greater loy­al­ty and stronger rela­tion­ships between com­pa­nies and their cus­tomers. Sim­i­lar­ly, the speed of deci­sion-mak­ing will be improved, as will com­pa­nies’ abil­i­ties to achieve more per­son­alised cus­tomer jour­neys.

Con­sid­er­ing the government’s July pro-inno­va­tion approach to reg­u­lat­ing AI, the land­scape for data man­age­ment, cus­tomer tech­nol­o­gy and AI has unde­ni­ably changed how busi­ness­es inter­act with and gain insights from their cus­tomers.

How businesses will use AI and data technologies in the future

Gabriel­la Blake, cus­tomer pro­grammes man­ag­er, SS&C Blue Prism: “We’ve found that inte­grat­ing all our sys­tems to give us a more holis­tic view of our cus­tomers’ data makes a huge dif­fer­ence. Our sur­vey data, for instance, inte­grates with Sales­force and this has helped to break down data silos. More per­son­al­i­sa­tion has also improved our cus­tomer expe­ri­ence index because we are clos­er to our cus­tomers.”

Bri­an Hol­l­i­day, man­ag­ing direc­tor, Siemens Dig­i­tal Indus­tries: “There is some­thing about recog­nis­ing the cus­tomer in every­thing you do. This also means con­sis­tent­ly mea­sur­ing cus­tomers’ expe­ri­ences to ensure they choose to come back time and again.”

Alan Hartwell, chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer, Iris Soft­ware Group: “We retain our employ­ees because they want to progress and break new ground using tech­nol­o­gy. If you give them the abil­i­ty to try new things, they will stay with you. They just need to know what tools to use.”

Kate Mul­li­gan-Brown, vice-pres­i­dent small busi­ness, Sage: “When AI helps you to spend more time with your fam­i­ly or makes your life eas­i­er or helps with strate­gic think­ing at work, then that promise will be deliv­ered and there will be more trust in the tech­nol­o­gy.”

Fari Pirouz, direc­tor cus­tomer suc­cess, Pegasys­tems: “AI uses a lot more pro­cess­ing and ener­gy, so busi­ness­es need to be smarter and use AI in the right areas.”

Matt Dunn, CTO, Europe, Dark­trace: “Soci­ety has yet to resolve the bal­ance between end user pri­va­cy con­cerns and the poten­tial ben­e­fits of cen­tral­ly col­lat­ed per­son­al infor­ma­tion.”

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