Embedding AI to reinvent relevance for B2C
September 28, 2018
September 28, 2018
Companies in industries like communications, media and retail are facing new, profound challenges. For incumbents, it is a time of existential crisis. Growth has stagnated. Margins are tighter. Categories are blurring. Digital natives are changing customer expectations both inside and outside of their industries. One thing is certain: Future growth will look different than it has in the past.
Liquid expectations are raising the bar
As digital brands proliferate, they are setting higher standards. Consumers expect rich, highly personalized experiences with no friction.
Digital disruptors are blurring industry lines
Niche players with agile operating models are creating new market opportunities across industries, and achieving unprecedented speed-to-scale.
Channels are merging and disappearing
The penetration of artificial intelligence (AI) powered digital assistants—in phones, cars and homes—is creating interactions without boundaries. Consumers can access content, products and services from a single point of contact, everywhere and at any time.
A digital “earthquake” in retail is imminent
Traditional retailers will continue to lose their grip on consumers, as digital disruptors, like Amazon, vie for dominance at the local level.
As a result, consumers are in a constant state of re-appraisal, demanding that businesses remain relevant in every micro-moment between sales and service. As market dynamics are increasingly shaped by digital players who are radically customer-centric, incumbents are losing their capacity to attract, engage and retain customers.
As market dynamics are increasingly shaped by digital players who are radically customer-centric, incumbents are losing their capacity to attract, engage and retain customers.
But pursuing a single growth formula isn’t a quick change for big companies. It will require them to completely rethink how they work within and across business functions.
They can no longer make decisions in silos, working against discrete business metrics as opposed to customer outcomes. Domain expertise will have to be augmented by data-driven insights, which reveal relationships across the silos leading to innovative growth strategies. In doing so, they will collapse product development, sales, marketing and service into a seamless continuum of value for the customer. And, they will establish a new foundation for sustainable growth.
Businesses need to rethink how they work within and across business functions.
The digital disruptors and new entrants that are defining the future are unifying around the customer.
That means they are pursuing a single growth formula where products, customers, channels and servicing are combined and tailored in a seamless way for each customer. They deliver end-to-end customer experiences that are agile, real-time and hyper-relevant to the individual.
AI will be central to enabling new growth. It will reveal integrated insights from data across products, customers, and channels to inform better decision-making across the enterprise.
It will empower employees, unleashing human ingenuity and fueling innovation. And most importantly, it will help businesses personalize and humanize every consumer touchpoint at speed and scale.
The integration of AI will help:
Unify across functions and improve performance
Discover new opportunities for growth
Increase efficiency while unlocking working capital
Create hyper-relevant experiences to increase engagement, reliability and loyalty
Using AI to unify around the consumer and reinvent relevance, companies will develop a powerful new capability to retain and expand their customer base, reduce costs, differentiate competitively and drive new growth. Furthermore, AI will help them set ever-increasing standards of performance by continuously optimizing interactions and transactions—creating a self-perpetuating path to growth.