Chief marketing officers for some of the world’s biggest companies are beginning to think beyond data and more about how they can be more assertive in taking ownership of the relationship with their customers to establish long-term engagement.
“Consumers just want to go to you direct, right from their mind to your brand. All the tools exist to do that now, whether it’s Alexa in the home or through a messaging app on the iPhone,” Manlio Carrelli, the executive vice president of enterprise business at LivePerson, told AList. “I think the best marketers are getting very deep in their consumer experience.”
Carrelli, who started at LivePerson as CMO, says that the best marketers are essentially technologists who can marry the customer experience with data and tech platforms to create new experiences. Experiential activations, for example, are usually transitory, point-in-time events, but there can be experiences that persist over time with consumers, using AI and automation to work at scale. Marketers who figure out how to do this will get ahead by removing friction from the consumer experience.
For those interested in incorporating AI into their marketing, Carrelli advises that brands be intentional with their use of bots by considering all aspects of the experience and how the bot impacts both consumers and employees.
“A lot of the mistakes that I think we made with the way we work with social platforms is that we rushed to adopt them without being intentional about the impact they have on our lives and privacy,” said Carrelli. “We don’t want to make the same mistake with artificial intelligence.”
Cadence is a key aspect, and Carrelli emphasized that these services are not software projects that operate at monthly or quarterly sprints. They operate on a daily loop, and brands will often using human customer support agents to manage over bots, intervening when they fail, and improving them to perform better next time. This approach is the fastest way to give brands experiences that engage consumers and provides higher lifetime value.
“AI is not just about the software, it’s about the operations and the interplay with humans,” Carrelli explained. “If you really want to train the AI well, train it by people who have skin in the game.”
