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Personalization matters now more than ever. In a 2021 report, McKinsey research found that 71 percent of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76 percent get frustrated when they can’t find them. Their report also claims that companies that grow faster drive 40 percent more revenue from personalization than their slower-growing counterparts.
Emerj Senior Editor Matthew DeMello facilitated a conversation with recent ‘AI in Business’ podcast guest Chloe Rice, Director of Global Customer Experience of Shutterstock, and Peter Mullen, Chief Marketing Officer of Interactions, to discuss the importance of enhancing customer experience through personalization. Their ideas spanned many areas and highlighted the best strategies for adopting hybrid AI solutions while maintaining a human element to ensure accuracy and customer satisfaction in an evolving, commoditized market.
Interactions provides customer engagement solutions through its IVA, and Shutterstock is a global provider of stock photography, stock footage, and music, offering visual and audio content for creative projects. Their shared perspectives illuminate challenges in elusive eCommerce spaces and what AI will mean for media-based customer experiences in the future.
The following analysis examines two critical insights from their conversation:
- Prioritizing customer experience and personalization: Focusing on enhancing the customer experience through a personalized journey, swiftly addressing obstacles to foster loyalty, and adopting a culture of care as a foundational strategy for future success.
- Embracing hybrid AI solutions for enhanced customer experience: Integrating generative AI (GenAI) with traditional systems while ensuring a “human in the loop” to enhance accuracy and improve customer interactions.
Guest: Chloe Rice, Director, Global Customer Experience, Shutterstock
Expertise: Customer Success, Project Management, Customer Experience
Brief Recognition: Chloe Rice is the Director of Global Customer Experience of Shutterstock. She has been with Shutterstock for close to a decade and has worked in a customer success role. She earned her Bachelors in Arts and Science from the Auckland University of Technology.
Guest: Peter Mullen, Chief Marketing Officer, Interactions
Expertise: Artificial Intelligence, Brand Strategy, Demand Generation
Brief Recognition: Peter brings more than two decades of marketing leadership to his role as Interactions’ CMO. Previously, he was Senior Vice President of Marketing at Payactiv, where he led customer success marketing, lead-gen programming, customer acquisition, product marketing, and more. Prior to Payactiv, he held prominent marketing and communications roles at VXI Global Solutions, Comcast, and Netflix.
Prioritizing Customer Experience and Personalization
Peter begins the conversation by emphasizing that customer experience is a linear journey involving stages like awareness, engagement, and enablement. He warns that brands risk losing market share as commoditization allows customers to switch providers effortlessly, making brand loyalty increasingly fragile. To counter this trend, he believes brands must enhance customer loyalty through an interconnected customer journey. He reflects on the complexities faced by companies with long histories and multiple systems, which can create operational chaos.
For business leaders to drive a proper and robust customer journey, Peter stresses the importance of quickly resolving any roadblocks customers encounter after closing a deal, arguing that this fosters loyalty by moving them farther into the engagement funnel. He introduces the Customer Effort Score (CES) as a measure of how easily customers can achieve their goals, focusing on whether they can get what they need quickly and without hassle.
In response, Chloe notes how hard it is to measure success in customer journeys through metrics, noting that her team currently relies on more than one metric and expresses skepticism about whether they should. She acknowledges that every metric is flawed, which complicates the process of evaluation. Chloe shares her aspiration for the future: she would like to see the development of a metric that is closely aligned with the objectives of their customers:
“Customer objectives make metric analysis tricky because different segments of customers will ultimately have a different objective, and it might even be a different objective at different times, depending on where they are in their life cycle. But yes, meeting a deadline is certainly going to be one. In some cases, for others, it’s going to be producing the highest quality or the best possible creative output. And I would love to see something that is personalized and built into showing an understanding.”
–Chloe Rice, Director of Global Customer Experience of Shutterstock
Peter then underscores the crucial role of personalization in enhancing customer experiences. He agrees with Chloe that focusing on personalization is a strategic move for businesses, envisioning a future where content and platforms offer tailored experiences based on users’ brand identities.
He predicts that customer experience will become a key metric for Fortune 500 CEOs to gauge future revenue, highlighting its growing importance. Despite any current industry chaos, he believes that advancements in personalization and AI will significantly elevate the value of customer experience in the next five years.
In turn, Chloe also stresses that customer experience is vital, as customers can feel how well they are treated through digital experiences. She argues that demonstrating care and understanding for customers is essential for businesses, especially given the current chaotic environment where traditional operations are no longer effective. AI is a critical factor in the shift in these customer expectations.
Chloe believes that embedding a culture of care into daily operations is crucial for future success, viewing it as a foundational requirement for businesses to adapt quickly in the coming years.
Embracing Hybrid AI Solutions for Enhanced Customer Experience
Peter contrasts traditional LLMs with GenAI, which can create unique responses each time. While acknowledging the potential of GenAI, he also talks about the uncertainties surrounding its use, stating that these will only partially disappear in the near future. He shares examples of prior inaccuracies in AI systems that have since corrected themselves, emphasizing the importance of integrating various AI platforms into a hybrid solution.
He advocates for a combination of generative AI, conversational AI, and traditional LLMs, suggesting that businesses need to implement these technologies thoughtfully. Peter further argues that off-the-shelf solutions won’t suffice as an alternative; organizations must invest the time to create responsible and effective systems:
“You have the guardrails of an LLM. In our case, you have a human in the loop who is guarding this at the high level and pushing a conversation forward when the technology breaks up. I think what we’re all seeing across businesses of every single size is that this is the way to do it. Out of the box, solutions are not going to just work. You cannot just flip a switch and suddenly you have a brand new system. You gotta take the time to adopt AI responsibly.”
–Peter Mullen, Chief Marketing Officer of Interactions
Agreeing with Peter on the insufficiency of LLMs alone, Chloe describes the complexity of existing systems that have evolved over the past 20 years. She highlights the importance of a thoughtful and considered approach to integrating new technologies. Instead of discarding legacy systems that are still effective, she advocates for a strategy that combines the best of current practices with innovations.
Chloe appreciates that retail and eCommerce spaces have yet to rush into adopting new solutions, indicating that taking the time to evaluate their options is beneficial. She advises leaders to press for intentionality in decision-making and to consider various factors in the process of integrating different technologies.
