The Customer Decision Is Changing

Jeannie Walters 0:00

Let's talk about a customer experience shift that's happening faster than many organizations and leaders realize. For decades now, we have been yearning and struggling to understand our customers, those very individual humans that we serve, their needs, their emotions, their pain points, their challenges, their expectations. We've mapped journeys, we've measured how they feel, we have sought out insights from the feedback and worked very hard to build loyalty. But what happens when your customer isn't the only one making decisions anymore? Today, AI agents are being used to research options and compare prices, ultimately to purchase on the customer's behalf, to reach out for customer service, to schedule appointments. The list is endless. And customers are becoming more comfortable with this option. We are living in a world where organizations like Visa and Google are investing heavily in understanding how do we serve agents who are really AI. What that means is that our customers now have access to data and technology and are not really making decisions based on their emotions, like we've been taught. The other part of this that I think is super important for every customer experience leader to hear today is that with AI, there is no longer any fine print. If there is something that you try to just hide a little bit or protect from your customers, AI will find it and your customers will use it to make sure that they are getting what is expected from a warranty or making sure they have the right language to get what they want. So, what does this mean for customer experience? We are entering a future where customer experience isn't experienced solely by a human, it's evaluated, interpreted, and acted upon by an AI agent. So let's talk about what that means for you today.

Meet The New Journey Participant

Jeannie Walters 2:18

The customer journey is getting a new participant. We have to embrace that reality. For years, we have been talking about the individual customer who we are serving and the brand and the interactions between the two of those. Now there's this third participant, which is agentic AI. Right now, customers already use AI to research products very regularly. AI can compare products and pricing, features, benefits, you name it. AI can also recommend service providers or different brands or products. Soon, if it's not happening already, AI may complete purchases and manage subscriptions. This creates a fundamental shift because instead of customers investing their time, making a decision to research, to find out what they need to to make a purchase, they are now handing that evaluation over to AI. AI can do that research in seconds, but here's the big difference AI is doing that all based on available data. Customers do that with both data and emotions, perception, their life history, their expectations. So the key question here if an AI agent is helping customers make decisions, what information is it finding out about your organization? Now, this isn't just about marketing messages. This is looking at things like the reviews that it will pull, the policies, that fine print I talked about, the pricing, customer complaints that maybe don't even live with your organization but are out in the world, your reputation, all of this AI uses as data points to become really the world's fastest decision maker. So if we know that, when we are trying to understand our customers' journey today and tomorrow, we have to consider that the agentic AI component could be a part of that. That means we have to look at things through that lens. We have to make sure that our data is organized in the right way. We have to make sure that if we want to be recommended, that we are set up in a way where the agents can find

Trust Signals AI Will Rank

Jeannie Walters 4:45

it. We're also living in a world where trust is becoming even more important than it was in the past. Now, trust has always been a huge part of loyalty and connecting with customers. But one of the things that I think we have to consider is that when we are building trust with a human being, that is based on credibility, basically doing what we say we're going to do. It's based on communication, it's based on consistency. That means AI agents are likely to reward organizations who are consistent because that's a data point they can evaluate very quickly. Some of the signals that AI might evaluate are things like transparent pricing. What are customers saying about the return policies? Are they clear? Are they consistent? Do we have reliable delivery? Do we have consistent customer reviews and accurate product information? Is there responsive customer service? These are individual data points that these agents will go out and assess and then rank and evaluate for the customer. The bottom line here is that AI is more likely to identify the gaps between your promise as a brand and what customers actually experience. That's why organizations who have built strong CX foundations, you've heard me say it before, the mindset, the strategy, and the discipline, knowing why and what is most important for your North Star of what is the promise that we've made to our customers and how do we do that? How do we deliver that every day? To what are we actually focusing on for the organization to be sustainable and successful? And what are we doing every day to make sure we're delivering on those two things? So as you move through this, instead of getting overwhelmed by the technology, instead of getting overwhelmed by all these options, I want you to think about your foundations. What can you do to create things that are more consistent for the customer? What can you do to make sure that the consistency is seen by the AI? And how do you make sure that the customers who are still recommending you, who are showing up in the way that we want, how do we recognize and reward them? How do we engage with them and make sure we do not lose that human element?

Why Emotions Still Drive Loyalty

Jeannie Walters 7:10

Now that leads to my last point, which is emotions still matter. Connections still matter. So if we are saying AI is making all of the recommendations, does that mean loyalty disappears? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Because humans still make the final decision about who they trust. Humans still use emotion, whether they know it or not, to make those decisions. And they remember how brands make them feel. So if you have not defined your customer experience mission statement and gotten to that final question of how do we want our customers to feel, I highly recommend you do that. Now, there are options for you in the book, Experience is Everything, as well as part of our membership program, CXI Membership. So if you look into those things, you can get templates and you can really guide through that mission statement process. The reason I believe this is so critical right now is because if we are training models on the brand side, saying, you know what, we want our customers to feel valued versus we want our customers to feel like they got exactly what they ordered, or we want our customers to feel delighted, we have to get really clear on what the promise is. That will train the technology on the inside of the organization. And by doing that, by showing up consistently, the agents that our customers are going to use to evaluate if they will be working with us to get those recommendations, they will be able to relate to the ones that really mean the most for them. This is both straightforward and very tricky. And that's because we are talking about data, which is so important. And the filter that these AI agents will use is just data. They do not have emotions, but we have to drive the emotions of customers. We have to decide proactively and intentionally, what are we designing so that we can help our customers feel a certain way, so we can help them accomplish a goal, so we can help them achieve something. If we are clear on that, then we will be consistent in the experiences. We will be consistent in what we do for customers, so that all those signals that AI is looking for, things like reviews and recommendations and renewal rates and all of those things, they will be able to see that this is a consistent experience that we can trust.

What CX Leaders Should Do Now

Jeannie Walters 9:52

So, what should CX leaders be doing now? First of all, we need to understand this technology. So I encourage you, if you haven't already, start experimenting. Start learning how AI works. Use your personal life as an example. Try the different things that are out there that are available to you, things that will help you as a customer get the recommendation, compare prices, look for different brands. Just start understanding that customer side of things to see how this works. The other thing we need to do as leaders within our organization, we need to start auditing our digital experience on a regular basis. We need to look for how are we serving up information that will be collected by these AI agents. We want to look at our policies, our FAQs, our customer communications. Remember, there is no fine print with AI. If we have trouble finding policies or accessing the right information, then that tells us that maybe the data isn't in the right place. The information isn't in a format that these AI agents will be able to collect. We also want to continue to focus on consistency. Consistency is what will build trust in this new era. So what that means is if you walk around your company today and you ask 10 people, what makes a great customer experience here? And you get 10 different answers, that tells you that you might have 10 different great experiences, but they're inconsistent. That's why the foundations are so important. We need to have alignment from the beginning. We need to have a strong foundation to build from in order to be consistent. That consistency is what will drive trust with AI agents. So it's the time to truly double down on trust. Double down on consistency. Make sure that what we say on the inside of the organization is reflected in the right way outside of the organization. Our digital experience represents exactly who we are, and it does so consistently. There are lots of different ways to do this. But if you wanted to start somewhere, start with asking: do we have the foundations right? Start by looking at where is the fine print? Where are the things that aren't transparent to customers? And can we make that more transparent? And then look at your reviews, at the way customers respond to your feedback surveys. What is inconsistent? Nail down those inconsistencies so that you can improve things, not only for your customers, but for your customers' AI agents.

Lead The Shift With Courage

Jeannie Walters 12:49

Now we are living in interesting times, folks, and we are doing that because we're stepping into a new phase of the future. And while it can feel really overwhelming right now, and I think everybody's feeling a little unsteady, we're all learning this together. But I want to remind you of a few things. We have lived through hard things before. We have transformed customer experiences during the whole digital transformation phase. We have put out mobile first customer experiences because suddenly that was the driver. We have understood and reacted and built around things like social media and self-service. We can do this. However, we have to lead. We cannot wait around and wait for our customers to not find us because they're using an AI agent. We can't decide that whatever we have today is going to serve us tomorrow. Now is the time to think about innovation. Now is the time to think about how we can improve the experience in leaps and bounds instead of by inches. That takes real leadership and it takes some courage. So consider this your rallying cry. You are the leader who will lead your brand's customer experience into this new age. You will accept the responsibility of understanding not only your human customers, but their AI agents. And if you haven't started experimenting, even in your personal life, I encourage you to do that. We have to understand how fast this technology is moving. We have to understand what people are capable of. And we have to understand how we can best serve our customers. Now, if an AI agent was evaluating your brand today, what would it say about your customer experience? That's my challenge for you. Go find out. All right, we got this, folks.

Resources And The Final Challenge

Jeannie Walters 14:52

I want to remind you, my book Experience is Everything is out wherever books are sold. That leads you through the three foundational pieces: mindset, strategy, and discipline. And right now, I'm believing that we need those things more than ever. So I encourage you to check that out. And if you'd like more information about membership, reach out at cximembership.com. So good to have you here. Let's lead into the future. If you're ready to turn insights into action, join CXI Membership, our community for customer experience investigators just like you. Get the tools, support, and inspiration to move from ideas to true impact. And don't miss my book, Experience is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations. Available wherever you order books. Until next time, keep asking questions, keep improving, and keep leading with experience.