The Gist
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Generative AI reshapes content creation. Generative AI is transforming content creation in marketing by producing high-quality, personalized content at scale.
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Personalization reaches new heights. With generative AI, hyper-personalization is now a reality. Brands are using AI to analyze customer data and deliver tailored experiences.
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AI enhances visual marketing. Brands use generative AI to create immersive visuals, such as videos and infographics, which elevate customer experience and drive marketing performance.
Generative AI entered the scene when ChatGPT was first launched in November 2022. It's been over two years now, which is a relatively short time frame, but generative AI has already changed the way the world works.
In a Salesforce survey, 76% of marketers said that they were using generative AI for basic content creation, while 63% were using artificial intelligence tech to analyze marketing data. But it's not just marketing that has seen an impact. Two years after its public release, generative AI has started to reshape customer experience delivery as well.
Table of Contents
- How Generative AI Works
- Generative AI Transforms Customer Experience
- The Risks of Generative AI in Customer Experience
- Core Questions Around Generative AI for Marketing
How Generative AI Works
Let's start by brushing up on our understanding of generative AI for marketing and how it’s different from the very popular conversational AI.
Generative AI generates content using machine learning and the underlying data sets that it has access to.
Conversational AI, on the other hand, carries out human-like conversations using pre-existing responses. It doesn't create content like generative AI does, and this is what makes all the difference.
Related Article: Breakthrough Generative AI Marketing Use Cases You Should Know
Generative AI Transforms Customer Experience
For a spoiled-for-choice modern customer, the experience a brand delivers is only below price and product quality when it comes to decision-making. AI was already playing a remarkable role in helping brands improve their customer experience, with technologies like conversational AI empowering customer service chatbots and sentiment analysis helping brands gauge customer emotion.
Now, generative AI for marketing has allowed brands to take it to the next level by introducing unmatched, data-driven automation at scale.
Here are a few areas of customer experience that have seen the most impact with generative AI.
Chatbots
Chatbots have been around for years, and they allow humans to share some of their customer service workload with bots. However, the usual chatbots have relied on conversational AI, and their responses are based on pre-existing data. Generative AI for marketing has changed that.
Unlike conversational AI bots, generative AI chatbots can generate new responses that are more relevant to the customer. This enhances the functionality of chatbots and allows them to have a more meaningful conversation with the user and deliver a better experience.
Generative AI chatbots can also generate and deliver multilingual and multi-modal responses. Multilingual responses help brands break down language barriers while multi-modal responses allow them to interact with the customers in a format they prefer. If a digital platform’s Spanish-speaking user asks for instructions to perform a certain task and would prefer visual instructions, generative AI chatbots can comply and deliver exactly what the user needs.
All of this comes together to enhance the customer support experience, improve issue resolution and increase customer satisfaction.
Generative AI chatbots have come quite far in just two years. And as time goes on, we can expect more efficient and effective issue resolution that leads to enhanced customer experience.
In one of its reports, Gartner found that by 2027, 40% of all customer service issues will be resolved by generative AI-powered tools. Meanwhile, 90% of businesses already report faster complaint resolution with chatbots. We can expect generative AI to take it up a notch with more efficient issue resolution and even better experience.
Hyper-personalization
The era of personalization is almost gone. We are now living in times of hyper-personalization. Hyper-personalization goes beyond simply using first names in emails and segmenting customers to tailor content for a wider audience. It makes this more granular by delivering an experience that is personalized to the individual and not just a group of potential customers.
For example, a children's clothing brand can personalize by reaching all parents having small children. Hyper-personalization, however, would allow them to distinguish each individual from this segment of parents and allow them to deliver a hyper-personalized experience where girls' parents would see content for girls' clothing and boys’ parents would see content for boys’ clothes.
Generative AI makes such granular hyper-personalization possible. With 76% of customers getting frustrated when a brand does not deliver personalized interactions, generative AI for marketing helps brands deliver an experience beyond the customers’ expectations. It can create hyper-personalized content, product recommendations and experiences by identifying patterns and preferences and using vast volumes of historical data like demographics, past purchases and browsing history. It automates all phases of customer experience, from profiling to delivery, to help brands deliver hyper-personalized experiences at scale.
Enhanced Visuals
One recent study found that people find it easier to follow directions when the instructions are delivered using text and illustrations. Visual content is an important element of your customer experience. It drives first impressions and sets the tone for the entire experience that someone can expect from your brand throughout their customer journey.
Generative AI is now gradually taking control of the wheel. Besides helping brands develop and deliver personalized customer experiences, it’s also helping brands create content in various formats across the board.
Toys R Us is among one of the first beneficiaries of the remarkable generative technology. The brand made its comeback with an immersive and engaging video. The catch? This video was created entirely using generative AI using text-to-video technology. The video includes realistic scenes and exceptional filmmaking.
Yes, it required meticulous prompt writing, but it gave us a sneak peek into what the future may look like for brands looking to enhance their experience with captivating videos.
While still new, text-to-video technology is already redefining visual experience delivery and helping brands deliver an immersive experience without investing in videography. But video is just one part of the customer experience. Graphs, images and infographics are all important aspects of a broader customer experience.
Generative AI is already enhancing customer experience by helping brands create infographics that simplify information and graphics that increase social media engagement. It also assists in generating charts and reports that make presentations more impactful.
Virtual Try-on
The inability to try on something is the biggest pain point in the customer's online shopping experience. Two years after its launch, generative AI is already working towards easing this pain point with virtual try-ons.
Generative AI can take human photos and generate a photorealistic copy of a product they want to try on. This helps retail brands alleviate one of the biggest challenges of a customer's online shopping experience, and it allows them to have virtual fitting rooms to increase sales. Generative AI can also produce photorealistic images of homes and rooms, which allows customers to visualize how furniture, paint or wallpaper will look in their space.
Walmart is already using virtual try-on technology across relevant categories, and Google also launched its very own virtual try-on (VTO) technology to help customers visualize clothes on different real-life models. Google's VTO uses geometric warping and other techniques to account for cut, drape, fold and cling to create hyperrealistic images to help customers get the real feel of how the product will look.
The VTO technology is still relatively new. With wider adoption, the generative AI-powered VTO can augment existing AR technologies and transform online shopping experiences. The VTO technology market size has grown significantly in recent years and is expected to grow further, reaching $12.17 billion in 2025.
The growth trajectory is telling of a future trend. We may see generative AI-powered VTO technologies enhancing shopping experiences on a larger scale in the future. And given the availability of computing power and resources, we may see more and more retailers using it to deliver a realistic and immersive online shopping experience.
Enhanced Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty is deeply intertwined with customer experience. Working on one inevitably improves the other. Generative AI for marketing has helped businesses improve brand loyalty, an important area of customer experience.
By allowing hyper-personalization across various fronts, generative AI is helping brands deliver an engaging, immersive and personalized experience similar to or better than what their customers expect. This is helping brands reinforce brand loyalty and, by default, improve customer experience.
Related Article: Using AI Responsibly to Achieve Hyper-Personalized Marketing
The Risks of Generative AI in Customer Experience
In the two years since its public availability, generative AI has redefined many areas of customer experience delivery. From improving customer support to allowing hyper-personalization, there is a lot that generative AI has changed.
But this is just the beginning of a new era of artificial intelligence. We can expect more widespread use of AI technologies in the future in various business processes including customer experience.
With wider use, however, come more risks. As of now, generative AI for marketing is prone to errors. Therefore, it is necessary for a human to stay in the loop to cross-check generative AI deliverables for accuracy and compliance before they are sent out to the public.
Additionally, transparency in data usage is paramount. A recent survey revealed that 48% of consumers were willing to exchange personal data for better AI-driven brand experiences. Despite this apparent willingness, brands still need to be transparent with how they are using customer data to avoid making the customer feel uncomfortable with the high-level personalization.
Core Questions Around Generative AI for Marketing
Editor's note: Here are two important questions to ask about generative AI.
How is generative AI improving customer experience in marketing?
Generative AI allows hyper-personalization, automates content creation and provides data-driven insights. It lets brands deliver tailored, real-time experiences, optimize content for individual preferences and automate tasks like personalized product recommendations and customer service interactions.
What are the potential risks of using generative AI in customer experience?
While generative AI offers great potential, risks include data privacy concerns, the possibility of inaccurate or biased content and overreliance on automation. It's essential for brands to maintain human oversight to guarantee the quality and accuracy of AI-generated outputs, and brands should also be transparent with customers about how their data is used.
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