Examine every step of your customer journey to assess how you can use AI to enhance the customer experience. But there’s a right and wrong way to do it – so be sure you combine human intelligence with the power of AI.
Are you using AI to enhance your customer experience?
I’m running a workshop soon for a group of tourism operators in Western Australia, and we’re talking about using AI to enhance their marketing and customer experience.
This is one of the most powerful uses of AI: Examine every touchpoint with your customer on their journey with you and then determine how you can use AI to create a better experience at that touchpoint.
As with any use of AI, there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it.
A recent example of it going wrong was the story of an entertainment organiser in Glasgow in the United Kingdom, who promoted a Willy Wonka Chocolate Experience for families.
They used AI to generate the advertising material, which is not a bad idea in itself. But the AI generated beautiful images describing what the kids would experience, which looked nothing like the real experience. When families turned up, it was at an almost empty warehouse which looked nothing like the advertising. That led to tears, furious parents, and even calls to the police. The event was shut down after the first day, and the organisers have promised to refund all tickets.
So, what went wrong here?
There’s nothing wrong with using AI to generate your marketing material, but it has to match the real experience. In fact, it was even worse, because some of the AI-generated images had glaring typos in the text, proviing the organisers hadn’t even looked at it before including it in their glossy brochures and their online marketing.
This is not a failure of AI. It’s a failure of the process of humans working with AI.
Use AI as an assistant, not an expert, and make sure you have human intelligence carefully reviewing whatever AI generates for you. You can ask artificial intelligence to do the heavy lifting, but use human intelligence as well.
This applies at every step of your customer journey. AI is a powerful tool for enhancing your customer experience, but treat it as a tool, not as the ultimate expert.
For more about applying AI to the customer experience, download my worksheet with 20 ideas to share and discuss with your team. For each, discuss both the opportunity it presents and how you need to be careful and cautious when you use it.
