If you haven’t heard of Caitlin Clark or ChatGPT in the last year, one is the ubiquitous face of women’s basketball, while the other is the enigmatic wonder of Generative AI (GenAI) applications.
ChatGPT is like a gateway drug for the masses—accessible, tangible, and a perfect showcase of AI’s prowess. In a way, it’s akin to Caitlin Clark’s meteoric rise in the WNBA, breathing new life into a league with a rich history. CC22 aside (yes, I’m a fan), the Forrester CX Summit hammered home three critical points:
- Gen AI will radically change the way humans interact with brands and each other (and it will happen soon)
- Customer Obsession is the goal—measuring and acting on customer satisfaction scores will help brands keep pace with changes and effectively demonstrate ROI
- Active management of the customer journey is improved by with AI-infused technologies
GenAI (Generative AI, artificial intelligence that generates new content based on prompts and learned patterns) took center stage at this year’s Forrester CX Summit in Nashville, like a rockstar on tour. AI isn’t new—think of it as your friendly neighborhood tech that’s been evolving quietly in the background. I may not grasp the technology behind its inner workings, but in my line of work, I understand how machine learning gets smarter and capable of delivering more contextual, nuanced and sophisticated results over time as usage increases.
Initially, I mistakenly conflated GenAI with ChatGPT, rather than one being a type of artificial intelligence and other a clever and addicting tool based on GenAI developed by OpenAI. However, it became clear at CX Summit that GenAI is considered the ultimate disruptor, poised to revolutionize how customers interact with digital experiences forever and how we as digital strategists need to pay attention more than ever.
One concept that fired up my imagination was that of the “digital double”, introduced by Forrester back in 2018. I tend to think of AI assistants as kind of helpful, nice to have but unremarkable. However, the digital double concept—essentially you-by-digital-proxy—is something I can get on board with. Imagine a clone that handles the mundane tasks I’d rather avoid, like tracking down which pharmacies have my child’s medication in stock. The digital double is your property, uses AI to learn your preferences and context, and you release it to the digital ecosystem and allow it to interact with brands as you see fit with respect to your privacy and personal boundaries. Though there are no in-market examples (aside from brand-owned preference centers) Steph Liu from Forrester predicts that digital doubles are just 2-4 years away from becoming a reality.
I found the advancements in Customer Feedback platforms particularly fascinating as they relate to measuring customer satisfaction. Being engaged in discussions about Solr versus AI-driven tools such as Coveo or Constructor.io for onsite search, I attended one session that highlighted the merits of a call center customer sentiment platform. Forrester refers to these natural language AI platforms as Conversational Intelligence and provides a twist on the NPS (net promoter score) in that it can be used to pinpoint and measure user intent (much like AI-based search platforms do) and provide scoring to better assess call center employees. [Specifically, I am referring to CallMiner.]
More broadly, several speakers spoke about using NPS to elevate the need to make customer obsession a part of their culture. With a concrete measure to baseline and evaluate progress as a starting point, leaders were able to more directly impact and codify internal behaviors that drove positive engagements. They repeatedly noted that while AI-infused technologies enhanced customer interactions at scale, those technologies could only be used effectively after a human touch point acted as a strategic guide.
Tools supporting journey orchestration also found their way into the conversation. I’ve been in discussions about Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) with my clients, and with a unified view of customer behavior and context, user journeys become more insightful and actionable. Journey orchestration tools like TheyDo and Journey Track promise innovative ways to coordinate, map, and enhance journeys at scale.
The Forrester CX Summit 2024 left no doubt: GenAI is here to stay, reshaping customer experiences in ways we’re only beginning to fathom. As we navigate this AI-driven future at Smith, we’re excited to harness these insights to create smarter, more meaningful interactions with our customers.
P.S. I wrote a draft of this blog post, then ran it through ChatGPT to give me suggestions on making it stronger.