How is AI revolutionizing the digital customer experience?

AI will fundamentally change the way we operate and serve our customers. How can organizations leverage the opportunities offered by AI to enhance customer experience today and in the future?

This blog is based on our webinar on the topic – check out the recording here.

AI forces us to put the customer at the center

Traditionally, designing the digital customer experience has been largely company-driven, but AI enables a truly customer-centric approach. Implementing AI practically forces organizations to put customers and users back at the heart of their actions.

As our Design Director Katja says: “We can’t make better things with AI unless we first consider who these solutions are for.”

When we know who we are creating for and why, we can genuinely address the right challenges. Although this may sound simple, it can often be forgotten when we get excited about new technologies.

With AI, we can place customer needs at the center of development by collecting and analyzing data, which allows for real-time service personalization. Search functionalities are also shifting from traditional keyword searches to conversational searches, where AI can interpret customer needs through natural language and directly provide relevant solutions.

The use of AI benefits individual consumers as well, giving them more power. One concrete change will be how customers search for information before making purchasing decisions, and organizations need to keep up with this shift.

At what stage of AI development are we now?

Currently, AI development has progressed to a stage where systems based on machine learning and deep learning are in use. According to OpenAI, we have just entered a phase where AI can perform reasoning and assist in solving more complex tasks. The next phase involves the development of assistants or agents, where AI will play a more active role in supporting users across various tasks

These systems are utilized in various ways, such as in predictive analytics and customer interactions, but they are not yet capable of independent thinking or extensive decision-making. The next step in development is Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which would be able to perform complex tasks independently and adapt to new situations similarly to humans. Beyond that, the horizon includes Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI), which would surpass human intelligence in nearly all areas. At the current stage, however, AI primarily functions as a support tool for humans, an assistant that makes everyday life easier and improves the quality of services.

Search and conversational interfaces

AI-assisted search on websites works by understanding users’ natural language and providing relevant answers or suggestions directly in response to their queries. Already, AI-assisted searches can be implemented on websites, allowing users to prompt and instantly receive the information they seek from large data sets on the site.

A Conversational User Interface (CUI) enables users to interact with a service using natural language, such as through text-based chat or voice commands. In our webinar, we showcased a prototype of a conversational sauna booking system. AI assistants can be connected to various backend systems via interfaces, allowing the AI to perform database searches and bring information directly into the user interface.

It remains to be seen how quickly and widely users will adopt conversational interactions with services, as some users enjoy finding information on their own paths.

Hyper-personalization and reducing customer effort

Hyper-personalization is a new dimension that AI brings to the development of customer experience. It allows services to be tailored individually for each customer, such as by recommending products or services based on their past behavior. However, hyper-personalization should not be intrusive; it must genuinely provide value to the customer. The goal is also to reduce the customer’s cognitive load by presenting the right options at the right time without causing excessive decision fatigue.

The Future: screenless UX and AI agents

The development of AI is not limited to current services; in the future, we will see entirely new ways of interacting with digital services. Screenless UX, or screenless user experience, is one direction in which we are headed – this practically means using voice, gestures, and motion to interact with services, making interactions more natural and seamless.

In addition, AI agents are set to play a significant role. These agents can independently interact with one another; for instance, an AI agent planning a family vacation could organize the entire trip from start to finish – selecting destinations, routes, accommodations, and activities – based on the individual preferences of each family member.

AI and environmental responsibility

AI brings significant opportunities, but its environmental challenges must also be considered. Training and using AI consume a substantial amount of energy, and these impacts are already evident today. A practical example: each ChatGPT prompt uses 10 times the energy of a Google search. Large server companies have already noted that they need more data centers due to the increased use of AI, which has made it difficult for them to meet their emissions targets.

Companies should therefore consider how to use AI responsibly and what actions they can take to reduce their carbon footprint. AI should not be used “just in case,” but with purpose and thoughtfulness. It is important to be aware of one’s digital carbon footprint and actively work to reduce the energy consumption of both the organization and the users of its services. We have written a guide on the carbon footprint of digital services, where you can learn more about this topic. Download the guide here.

What does effective and responsible use of AI require?

Leveraging AI requires unlearning old habits, courage, innovation, and the ability to imagine new possibilities. Technology is advancing at an accelerating pace, enabling things that just a few years ago would have been unimaginable. To be bold and move beyond the familiar, we need to have time for innovation and collaborative envisioning of new opportunities.

How to get started at the company level:

1. Understand your customers – without customer insight, it is rare to create solutions that are genuinely useful to them.
2. Foster cross-department collaboration – establish a shared understanding of what is being done and the problems being solved, and bring together the people who can enable new solutions.
3. Manage change – implementing AI is a change like any other, so create a plan for how to carry out the transition.

How to get started at the individual level:

1. Try boldly, but responsibly.
2. Start by solving simple problems.
3. Share your experiences, and help cultivate a culture of experimentation.

The future of AI in digital customer experience holds great promise. However, it depends on the companies themselves how well they can adopt these technologies into their services in a way that genuinely enhances the customer experience and creates value. Now is the time to boldly experiment and build this future together.