Even if you have invested in good customer service and worked on building a smooth customer experience, there’s a new layer you can’t ignore: customer intention. AI lets you predict what your customers might want – even before they tell you – based on their behaviour, habits, and even the behaviour of other customers like them. Using this data to improve your customer experience makes you more relevant and boosts loyalty. If you’re not exploring this now, your competitors probably are, so you risk losing your customers to somebody else who did something smarter.
Many years ago, long before the recent boom in AI awareness and adoption, Target – the USA retail chain – made news about the way it used AI.
An angry man turned up at his local Target store, and demanded to speak to the manager because Target had sent his teenage daughter a catalogue full of baby products for new parents. The man yelled at the manager, “Are you trying to get my daughter pregnant?”
It turned out she WAS pregnant – but she hadn’t told her parents yet!
Target’s internal systems had guessed, based on changes to her buying habits, that she might be pregnant, and therefore a good candidate for baby product marketing. It wasn’t because she was buying nappies or baby clothes. Rather, changes in her eating habits triggered the algorithm. These were subtle clues that, when taken as a whole, created a likely profile.
This was an early – and very public – example of AI in retail. Even in a much simpler form than we have now, the AI was able to predict a customer’s future behaviour based on changes to her past behaviour and habits.
That power is now available to all businesses – at a much larger and more sophisticated scale – with today’s AI.
The customer experience has changed.
For decades, the gold standard was superior customer service: what happened in every customer touchpoint.
Then we broadened our view to look at the customer experience, taking account of every stage of the buying process, and how customers feel and interact with a brand over time.
Now, thanks to the predictive power of AI and data analytics, we’re moving into the era of customer intention. The key question becomes: What are our customers likely to want in the future? And how can we tailor our marketing, messaging, and services for them?
This matters because it cuts through the clutter. It makes life easier for your customers when you’re showing them only what matters to them. And it’s better for your business because you’re putting all your effort into those things that do matter to them.
Do YOU know what your customers will want?
And if you don’t know, how are you planning to find out?
Make no mistake; your competitors are already using these tools. If you don’t act now, your customers could easily become their customers.
If you would like to explore this further, I’m running an online presentation soon. It’s free and open to everyone. We will look at this whole journey – from customer service to customer experience, and now to customer intention. Feel free to register, and invite others in your team or network. I’m sure you’ll find it valuable.
I’ll see you in the future.
