Unlocking Customer Insights With Unified Records & Gen AI

Handling the modern customer comes with its own set of challenges, given the dynamic nature of today’s consumer expectations, technology landscape, and business environment.  At the CIO100 Symposium & Awards 2023, Charles Lalieu, Managing Director, Africa, Freshworks, delved into the strategic integration of customer data, emphasizing the role of Gen AI in deriving meaningful patterns and predictions.

According to Lalieu, the evolution of customer experience (CX), driven by technological innovations and evolving customer expectations, presents a challenge to most enterprises. The modern customer experience can be categorized into three phases: the multichannel customer experience, omni-channel experience, and real-time engagement experience, aided by emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and IoT.

To delight the modern customer, Lalieu recommended organizations use platforms that enable unified customer records and incorporate generative AI in decision-making. Unified customer records refer to a comprehensive and consolidated view of customer information and interactions across various touchpoints and channels. Creating a unified customer record involves aggregating data from multiple sources into a single, centralized repository, providing businesses with a holistic understanding of each customer.

“Provide oversight for employees and customers using technology. You require instant information to support internal and external customers. You need tools that support integration with your customer care platforms,” Lalieu said.

According to Lalieu, the goal for ensuring unified customer records is to create a 360-degree view of each customer, encompassing their purchase history, preferences, interactions, support requests, and any other relevant data. This comprehensive view enables businesses to understand customers on a deeper level.

Lalieu also recommended that organizations use generative AI to power the new era in customer experience, stating, “We believe that AI is not for Fortune 5 companies but for everyone. Gen AI is powering a new era in CX. It has enabled self-service to become real, aggregate information for a better understanding of customers, provide personalized responses to customers, and increase agent productivity.”

The future of customer experience is likely to be an integrated ecosystem where various technologies, including AI, machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), and augmented reality, work together seamlessly. Businesses should aim to create immersive, holistic customer experiences that go beyond traditional transactional interactions.