How generative AI will disrupt customer experience in every industry

Once upon a time, in the early 2000s, customers used to have limited experiences and expectations with technology. They used desktops and laptops to communicate via email, browse the internet, and order products, but the experience was usually quite clunky and time consuming. Most folks preferred going to the store to purchase goods and chose to interact with sales reps and customer service via phone or in person.

Then smartphones were introduced to the world. With a device that gave them unlimited access to digital tools and the internet in their pockets, customers began to expect more: the ability to order anything for same-day or overnight delivery from anywhere; the convenience of mobile banking; and instant availability of sales teams and customer service through text messaging, apps, and chat bots. It was a revolutionary shift in customer expectations and experiences.

Generative AI will be just as revolutionary for customer experiences. As AI gets smarter and more powerful, it’ll be able to tailor unique, individualized customer experiences. AI will be able to understand customer preferences, offer personalized recommendations, automate processes, and more in ways that earlier permutations couldn’t. In the same way that smartphones have changed customer expectations and experiences, generative AI will disrupt the customer experience in every industry.

Summarized by Writer

• As AI gets smarter and more powerful, it will be able to tailor unique, individualized customer experiences.
• Consumers will expect their virtual encounters with brands to be more conversational and personalized than ever before.
• Generative AI will also raise the bar when it comes to customer service as more and more companies invest in the technology to power live and virtual agent interactions and help center content.
• For CMOs, it means brand guidelines and compliance will be crucial to delivering a consistent, signature experience to every consumer interaction.
• To keep up with ‌competitors, it’s worth taking a look at how you can implement this technology as well.
• It’s crucial that you consider how generative AI can help you better leverage your unique industry and customer data to support customers in achieving the outcomes they seek.

Individualized, conversation-driven consumer experiences

If you’re an exec at a consumer brand or public-facing organization, consider how day-to-day life will change now that generative AI is a part of it.

While we’ve made much ado about the business benefits of generative AI outputs like faster content production, most everyday consumers are excited and fascinated by the ability to “talk” to generative AI chatbots in more sophisticated ways than they do with Siri or Alexa — and get novel, personalized responses.

Adding generative AI capabilities to existing “smart” products means natural conversations and original content creation will happen between consumers and their toys, video games, appliances, and cars.

It also means consumers will expect their virtual encounters with brands to be more conversation-driven and personalized than ever before.

Imagine that, instead of using buttons and links on a website to find information and interact with content, you talk (via text or voice) to a brand app or website powered by generative AI. The website can answer questions, give personalized recommendations, deliver existing content, and even produce brand-specific content on demand. It may even have a virtual, talking avatar (the return of Clippy?!? We hope not).

For CXOs at consumer product companies and beyond, it means brand guidelines and compliance will be crucial to delivering a consistent, signature experience to every consumer interaction.

Generative AI will also raise the bar for customer service as more companies invest in the technology to power live and virtual agent interactions and help center content. To keep up with any competitors, it’s worth taking a look at how you can implement this technology as well.

Industry-specific, AI-assisted experiences for enterprise and professional services customers

In addition to better customer service, enterprise and professional services customers will want to see generative AI solutions for industry- and company-specific challenges.

“In the AI-driven future, each company’s own data could be its most valuable asset,” notes Ron Miller in a recent Tech Crunch article on enterprise AI. “If you’re an insurance company, you have a completely different lexicon than a hospital, automotive company or a law firm, and when you combine that with your customer data and the full body of content across the organization, you have a language model.”

As a leader of an enterprise or professional services organization, it’s crucial that you consider how generative AI can help you better leverage your unique industry and customer data to support customers in achieving the outcomes they seek.

Making financial services more compliant, accessible, inclusive, and understandable

In financial services, companies will use large language models to replace first-gen AI models for things like claims processing or customer communication. Generative AI will also help with enforcing compliance, surfacing insights from reports, and improving internal knowledge management.

For example, when user experience research revealed that some words in their credit card program were confusing customers, Neo Financial’s content team trained their generative AI writing platform, Writer, to flag and discourage the use of terms like “bundle” when anyone in the company wrote it, and to suggest alternatives like “perks.”

As a result, Neo developed a clearer, more unified vocabulary that resonates with their customers — leading to more sign-ups. This unified vocabulary helped Neo Financial to adhere better to legal and compliance requirements while also creating a consistent voice across their teams.

The outcomes that generative AI can provide to financial services companies — compliant, clear messaging delivered at scale — will be instrumental as they compete for market share and customer loyalty. The winners will be those who continue to innovate ways to employ generative AI in making financial services more educational, inclusive, and accessible.

Helping healthcare and life science companies streamline, personalize, and prioritize care

One of the biggest challenges facing healthcare and life sciences organizations today is how to create personalized and engaging customer and patient experiences at scale. Generative AI is changing the way healthcare and life sciences organizations approach this challenge.

By automating repetitive tasks, healthcare providers can save time and money, while increasing the quality of care. With AI-generated personalized communications and plans for every patient based on individual needs, providers and care coordinators can dramatically improve patient outcomes.

Health insurance providers can use generative AI to make explanations of benefits even more transparent and understandable.

According to Forbes, a top five payor “is using Writer’s HIPAA-compliant models to examine the fine print in health insurance plans and then write blogs or emails to explain those plans to health providers and patients.”

Generative AI will also help providers automate administrative tasks that impact patient experiences with medical systems.

“On the clinician side, generative AI has the potential to reduce ‌administrative burden on clinicians,” notes Healthcare IT news. “…by automating tasks such as writing referral letters, clinical coding, and the summarization of clinical consultations.”

Finally, generative AI can be used to identify and prioritize opportunities for improvement from cross-channel patient and provider insights.

For example, AI startup Babylon has developed and deployed proprietary generative AI models to understand the evolving risk profiles of members/patients to ensure that clinical teams can prioritize the highest-need members.

Generative AI can improve patient/member experiences greatly, but healthcare organizations need to choose the platforms they work with carefully. Only work with AI platforms that are secure, trusted, customizable, and help you comply with HIPAA and the industry regulations that are relevant to your business.

Tailoring retail and eCommerce experiences to customer needs

Generative AI for the retail and eCommerce industry is quickly becoming a powerful tool for creating better customer experiences. With generative AI, businesses can generate on-brand product descriptions, ad variations, notifications, emails, landing pages, help content, and FAQs at speeds far faster than was ever possible. This means that businesses can create more personalized experiences for their customers that are of the highest quality and tailored to their specific needs.

Take lingerie brand Adore Me. The company’s customers value sustainability and environmental/social/governance (ESG) compliance. They also appreciate accessible language that doesn’t talk down to them but still communicates the benefits of sustainable materials, fibers, and processes.

To focus on producing content that meets their customers’ standards, Adore Me’s team has embedded transformational AI into their workflows, allowing them to boost their content production process and automate away repetitive writing tasks. This frees up resources so team members can work on more high-impact customer outreach projects and align with their ESG compliance.

Adore Me uses Writer, which cross-checks their content against their voice and style guide. They also used Writer to create a sustainability style guide, which gives them the confidence to communicate their sustainability initiatives to customers. These AI-driven processes have helped Adore Me increase digital engagement, drive shopper loyalty, and improve ROI.

With generative AI, you can automatically repurpose and analyze data to create tailored experiences and content that resonate with customers. This allows businesses to create on-brand content quickly and effectively that works, from first touch to sale.

Transform customer experiences with generative AI

If you’re looking to stay ahead of the competition while making sure your customers have the best experience possible, it’s time to act:

• Evaluate your current customer experience processes and find out where you need to make improvements. 
• Discover how generative AI can help you create hyper-personalized and tailored customer experiences. 
• Select the best AI platform for your unique industry and business goals, then develop a plan on how to make the most of AI to level up customer experiences. 
• Follow up with implementation and ongoing monitoring of the results. 
• Educate your team on how to keep those improvements rolling by using AI to keep customer satisfaction high. 
• Check in on customer sentiment and use their feedback to guide future AI-driven strategies.

Put these steps into play and make sure your customers have the best possible experience with your brand.