From AI to ROI: What It Means to Navigate the ‘Prove-It Era’ of Customer Engagement
Customer experience is at a turning point. Expectations are rising, budgets are tightening, and brands must prove the value of every interaction. It’s now the “Prove-It Era” of customer engagement and experience—where businesses can’t just assume that they’ll improve CX by just prioritizing it. Leaders can’t assume, either, that CX improvements are generating value for the business—like revenue growth or opex reduction.
CX programs need to show measurable impact, clear ROI and strategies that directly drive business outcomes.
In a recent webinar, “The Prove-It Era of Customer Engagement: Trends, Truths, and What’s Next,” a panel discussed current CX trends and how to navigate them. Covering everything from AI to ROI, the panel featured these experts:
Mila D’Antonio , Principal Analyst, Customer Engagement, Omdia
Adrian Swinscoe , CX Author and Advisor
Dan Hartman , Director of Product Management, CSG
Discussion topics included:
Going beyond segmentation: Why unified, personalized CX is still so hard to get right, and what it will take to do it
Using AI wisely: A realistic look at how AI is being used today—and what organizations should avoid as they prepare for the future
Making the case for CX investments: How to show the value of CX initiatives and connect them to business goals
You can watch the full conversation or read on to see some of the major takeaways.
Personalizing With—Not at—Customers
More brands are prioritizing personalization as a core component of their CX strategy. A recent Deloitte study found that brands expect to increase their annual personalization budgets by 29% compared to the previous year. Yet that study also found that consumers only recognized 43% of their brand experiences as personalized, whereas brands said they personalize 61% of experiences on average. The panelists dug into this disconnect between the personalization that brand leaders believe they provide and the personalization consumers expect. Adrian Swinscoe used his phone as an example: As he’s had the same phone number for more than 25 years, it’s as unique an identifier for him as any other piece of data, he said. “But if I call up a brand that I'm a customer of, then wouldn’t it be great if they can take that and go, ‘Hi, is this Adrian? How can I help you?’ But tell me a brand that actually does that straight off the bat.” He added that brands can confirm identity with security questions afterward, but “but first impressions matter because it shows that you're listening and you're leaning into it.” Dan Hartman pointed out that most organizations have yet to break through segmentation to 1:1 personalization. “I think if you look at how the average brand interacts with consumers, it's definitely still at the segment level,” Dan said. He added that personalizing by segment is fine for a broad acquisition campaign, where connecting with a very small percentage of a brand’s audience is considered a success. But when the audience is an existing base that the brand has a relationship with, the engagement level should be much higher, and segmentation no longer cuts it, Dan said. “ You have to treat a person like a person, or else it's not personalized,” he added. Customer interactions should not only be personalized on the individual level, but also in real time to keep pace with how quickly customers’ situations change, Dan said. He noted that personalizing interactions in real time, and at scale, is difficult to do without the right technology. Mila D’Antonio said scaling personalization requires even more than that. “The challenge isn't just scaling the technology, it's scaling the listening, the responsiveness, the choice—really ” The difference is doing more than offering predictive engagement and offers—but also engaging customers in a way that is relevant and meaningful to them. “We have to look at personalization as being a whole lifecycle strategy,” Adrian said. “It can't just be the domain of just sales and/or marketing, because we have to think about what customers preferences are across the lifecycle. We have to respect them.”
