Generative AI is poised to transform the efficiency, quality, and scale of what marketing organizations produce. But can it also be used to enhance the insights used to build your customer strategy itself? Explore four key questions every marketing organization should consider when crafting an AI-ready customer strategy.
Generative AI (GenAI) has been reshaping the connections between buyers and brands, leading to more personalized experiences, enhanced customer and employee engagement, efficient operations, and more.
Is your customer strategy ready for the transformative power of GenAI?
Here are four questions to consider first:
Question 1
How can I use GenAI to inform, validate, and shape my company’s customer strategy?
GenAI can allow businesses to analyze vast amounts of data to better understand customer behaviors, preferences, and trends. With a deeper understanding of their customers' needs, leaders can then use AI tools to map new spaces and customer segments and create innovative business models tailor-made to meet those emerging customer needs.
Instead of just looking to maximize the efficiency of current operational processes, consider these ways to leverage Generative AI tools to surface the foundational insights that can help drive the next wave of transformation for your customer strategy.
Develop more nuanced personas for your target audiences.
Example: Use AI to analyze customer data and create detailed customer profiles.
Ideate new product or delivery models.
Example: Leverage AI to analyze how your digital products are used and suggest new ideas to improve the user experience.
Identify new and untapped market segments.
Example: Use AI to analyze existing customer demographics and use patterns to identify new customer segments or use cases.
Leverage your customer data to create a truly differentiated customer experience.
Example: Use AI to personalize the customer experience by analyzing behavioral data collected across all customer touchpoints.
Radically redefine your customer agenda and identify new business opportunities.
Example: Use AI to analyze external market trends and identify new opportunities for differentiation and growth.
Question 2
How can I identify which GenAI use cases will generate the most impact and value for my business?
Some use cases may provide near-term benefits but not create long-term efficiencies. Others may be exciting but difficult to scale. Before major investment in a Generative AI project, it is crucial to identify use cases that have the highest potential impact on your business, while also being feasible and viable.
Impact: Evaluate each use case in terms of its potential impact on revenue, operational efficiency, brand perception, and the quality of customer and employee interactions.
Feasibility: Map the possibility space to understand which GenAI investments are likely to generate the most impactful outcomes for your organization over the long term. Consider any potential challenges, stakeholder sensitivities, and practical limitations.
Viability: Align your plan for implementing GenAI with broader business goals, and evaluate its impact on your organization’s operating model, talent strategy, governance structures, and risk and regulatory requirements.
Question 3
What processes can I implement to mitigate risks?
Risk mitigation is an integral part of any business strategy, but even more so with the implementation of GenAI. This involves identifying potential issues your Generative AI project could cause, such as legal risks, data breaches, ethical issues, or inaccurate outputs or “hallucinations.”
Below are a few examples of processes and protocols that likely already exist in your organization, but will be put to the test when incorporating GenAI to help ensure effective risk mitigation:
Robust data management and security protocols to mitigate the risk of data breaches
Regular GenAI system audits to mitigate the risk of inaccurate outputs, or “hallucinations”
Governance procedures to ensure compliance with relevant regulations and mitigate legal risks
An operating model that keeps humans in the loop to review content outputs and mitigate the risk of potentially biased, inaccurate, inappropriate, or discriminatory content
Question 4
How can prioritizing trust and ethics in my GenAI implementation enhance my customer strategy?
Implementing GenAI in a trustworthy and ethical manner is crucial to maintaining customer trust. This involves ensuring data privacy, addressing biases in GenAI algorithms, and being transparent about how GenAI is used.
Ethics Framework. Consider establishing a GenAI ethics framework or committee, or consulting with external experts specialists to ensure your practices align with ethical standards.
.Governance Framework. Establish a governance framework for ethical GenAI use within your organization with thoroughly defined guidelines, policies, processes, controls, and regular internal reviews of ethical use. Our Trustworthy AI™ framework helps ensure AI's ethical use, promoting transparency, accountability, and fairness while minimizing bias and protecting user data, resulting in increased customer trust and confidence in AI-powered systems and solutions.
Data & Security Protocols. Implement robust data management and security protocols to protect customer data from breaches or misuse. Leaders should conduct regular GenAI system audits to detect and correct any biases or inaccuracies in the GenAI algorithms or outputs.
Customer & Employee Experience. In addition to risk mitigation, organizations should consider impacts to employee and customer trust. Communicate clearly and honestly with your customers about how your organization is using GenAI, what benefits or risks this entails, and how they can opt-out or provide feedback. Leaders should also monitor and evaluate the impact of GenAI on customer satisfaction, trust, and loyalty.
As we navigate through the dynamic digital landscape, being AI-ready is not just an advantage but an essential element for businesses to thrive. The journey to AI readiness is ongoing, involving continual learning and adaptation. By harnessing GenAI to shape your customer strategy, you can unlock unprecedented opportunities to better connect with, understand, and meet your customer needs.
How ready is your marketing organization for generative AI?
Get started on your AI-ready customer strategy
Here are a few considerations for what to invest in now, experiment with soon, and aspire to in the future.
Use Generative AI to research and develop detailed persona profiles for target customers in a new market or line of business you wish to expand into.
Collaborate with Generative AI to help ideate new potential products, market segments, or customer engagement strategies based on identified customer pain points. Use external research to validate the most viable rapid prototyping and implementation approaches.
Build predictive analytics dashboards that use Generative AI to help you optimize when, where, and how you go to market based on intent signals gathered from both your internal customer data and external market signals.
Read our AI for CRM report to explore more high-impact use cases to implement in your customer strategy.
About the author
Simon McLain is the chief strategy and AI officer for Deloitte Digital US. He is responsible for leading the AI / Generative AI agenda for Deloitte Digital, building the capabilities, talent, and offerings required to win in this new era of customer experience transformation.
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