By 2020, customer experience is going to be wiping the floor with price and product as the key brand differentiators. Customers are seeking personalized, human experiences — and ironically, artificial intelligence is the key to nailing that, and at scale. Catch up on this VB Live event for in-depth insight into what brands need to drive customer loyalty in 2017.

Access this VB Live event on demand right here.

“It’s very important for marketers to be extraordinarily cognizant of people as people, and to market to their needs directly,” says Robert Hoffer, founder of Smarter Child — the internet’s first, and wildly popular, chatbot. In our recent VB LIve evnet, Hoffer went on to explain: “We have more opportunity to do that because we’re literally right in every customer’s pocket. And that’s true whether you’re dealing with them online, whether they’re watching a television advertisement, or whether they’re walking around in a retail store.”

As marketers, we have an unprecedented opportunity to track customers and create profiles of who they are, said Stewart Rogers, director of marketing technology at VentureBeat. “By understanding those journeys, understanding the brands that they visit, we’re able to actually build personas around people,” he explained. “We understand what they like, what they enjoy, what they spend money on, and can therefore deliver personalized recommendations that don’t feel like advertisements any more. They feel a little bit like an assistant.”

Nick Edwards, CEO of Boomtrain, noted that artificial intelligence is the key. “AI at its core is really about observation, and using those observations to make human experiences just that — just more human,” he says. He calls it empathetic observation: moving beyond superficial, static snapshots of your customer. “Taking that story, taking those insights beyond just the superficial into something that’s deeper, much more empathetic, is where the stories really begin.”

And this ultimately is what artificial intelligence promises, he added. “It is the science of understanding and acting upon your customers’ stories,” he explained. “Extending this empathetic observation at internet scale is really what the promise of AI-powered customer experience is really all about.”

As AI and machine learning continue to play an essential role in enabling optimized customer experiences, Rogers said, customers seem to be responding — and their expectations are going up. “The DMA recently did a study, and almost half — 48 percent of the respondents — expressed an interest in artificial intelligence approaches to engagement,” Rogers says. “That increases dramatically for younger age groups,” he continues. In the 16-to-24 and 25-to-34 categories, 75 to 85 percent of people are interested in AI as a concept, and having their smartphones and other devices help them through the day based on the data they’re giving to these services and systems.

And it’s powerful stuff, Hoffers said. “Whether you’re presenting a conversational bot through a messaging interface or through one of the large popular Facebook or Slack messaging interfaces, or whether you’re presenting in mobile, you have a direct ability to influence what the customer is doing by understanding more about the intent of the user,” he explained.

So really it becomes something that is much more about showing people the vanilla experience versus the personalized one, Rogers said. “Getting their consent to give you the information — because once they do, you can do some really outstanding things. And those consumers want you to do those outstanding things for them right now.”

It’s clearly time to take AI one step further. Catch up now on this VB Live event to harness the power of hyperpersonalization that consumers are asking for. You’ll learn how to build and design the customer experience by using AI and machine learning, how successful companies are moving the needle toward optimized customer engagement, and how to get started today.

Don’t miss out!

Access this free VB Live event to:

  • Learn how to build a customer engagement strategy from the ground up using artificial intelligence.
  • Hear valuable tips on improving your customer engagement now
  • Get insight from top execs who have been down this road and have the best advice to design the customer experience.

Speakers:

  • Stewart Rogers, Dir. of Marketing Technology, VentureBeat
  • Robert Hoffer, founder, Smarter Child
  • Nick Edwards, CEO, Boomtrain

Moderator:

  • Wendy Schuchart, Moderator, VentureBeat