How AI enables brands to transform the consumer experience

A brand’s success no longer hinges on just having a superior product or a competitive price. Because of the need for digital immediacy in this channel-less day and age, consumers expect excellent experiences whenever and wherever they shop.

At the same time, the economy is seesawing between severely contracting and steady growth. The consistent uncertainty is forcing brand leaders to grapple with the question: “How do we do much more with much less?”

For companies to maintain business momentum and minimize expenses, investing in the right AI infrastructure is quickly becoming table stakes. Simply put, without AI brands will struggle to automate repetitive tasks, analyze customer data, predict behaviors and trends or create more efficient communication channels with customers. This will also spark increased costs, inefficiency, and subpar customer service — making it impossible to effectively retain customers and drive future sales.

To stand out amid the increasingly crowded tech-driven competition, brands need to elevate their AI strategies to provide value as consumers shop, browse and interact.

Helping brands boost customer loyalty  

Brands should always be mindful of providing utility to consumers by focusing on giving useful and relevant information in their advertising rather than just trying to sell a product or service.

When the economy is bad, consumers may spend less or explore new brands that offer the most value. The ripple effect may cause brands to face challenges in maintaining previous customer loyalty.

Yet consumers are simultaneously looking for streamlined commerce experiences to help them in their buying journeys and bring value and efficiency to their lives.

As consumers are able to interact with open-coded tools like GPT-4 and Stable Diffusion, the technology is more meaningful and relatable; in fact, a majority actually want AI to improve their experience.

As a result, consumers are likely to perceive brands that use AI in their commerce experiences as more innovative, reliable and customer-centric. They’re willing to have AI influence their experience to build trust and credibility because they see their needs and preferences are taken into account.

So even if AI is taking place on the backend rather than in front of the consumer, they can still anticipate that it’s being used as they traverse the digital landscape.

AI-powered solutions are crucial to identifying in-market audiences and delivering more valuable commerce experiences. Commerce data merged with AI can be used to better predict consumer needs in a channel-less way and foster brand loyalty no matter where consumer engagements take place.

Personalization, predictive analysis and more

It’s well-known that AI analytics can help personalize marketing, make product recommendations and elevate customer service to make the entire buying experience more tailored to specific needs and preferences. But customer data and AI can also pinpoint the right behaviors and trends, allowing brands to anticipate and meet customer needs before they arise.

Brands using AI to proactively alert their customers about new products and services also need to find balance within their value exchange with consumers to avoid inundating them with irrelevant marketing messages that don’t tie to their personal needs. Brand messaging and marketing must be able to meet their desired customers where they are, with what they need and want.

Creating this satisfaction is key to retaining the right customers during these tough economic times.

AI-driven experiences can also help brands reduce operational costs by automating various back-end processes. At scale, customer service inquiries, inventory management and social media management will become streamlined for better operational efficiency.

Final thoughts

For brands in the evolving ecommerce environment, AI is quickly being embraced to aid in the personalization of the customer experience, automate tasks, and make data-driven decisions with a tech-first mindset.

The use of AI can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, which can help businesses stay competitive even during tough economic times. As automation technology continues to evolve and improve, the opportunities for businesses to leverage AI to transform customer experiences will become even greater.

Todd Parsons is chief product officer of Criteo.