According to McKinsey, brands that utilise artificial intelligence (AI) can better segment customers, reach higher customer engagement levels and adopt dynamic content strategies. In the travel and tourism industry, for instance, Malaysia Airlines started using AI-based platforms to better manage content delivery and digital experiences for customers, so they can deliver timely and relevant content to create more impactful engagements and tailored interactions with their customers, enhancing overall satisfaction with the brand.
With the advent of generative AI (genAI), brands are quickly realising that they will lose out if they are not employing AI to transform how they engage customers. GenAI can reshape every aspect of customer experience design and delivery to help teams work smarter, faster and with more creativity to deliver near-term value for brands. In essence, genAI is not only highly capable, but it is also a dependable co-pilot for individuals in organisations.
Optimize customer experiences in real-time
A study by Adobe on genAI’s growing footprint with consumers and businesses revealed that more than nine in 10 (93%) of marketing and customer experience leaders in Asia Pacific say that genAI will assist them in delivering improved, personalised customer experiences.
One such example is evident in chatbots. Traditionally, chatbots lack the ability to understand context, and conversing with a chatbot feels robotic, impersonal, and ultimately unsatisfying for users. With genAI chatbots, these conversational experiences with customers are undergoing a revolution. Brands now have access to superior tools that engage visitors to their digital platforms and provide summarized interactions for future re-engagement.
Conversational interfaces are also undergoing improvements to ease businesses’ access to relevant and contextual customer insights. For consumers, chat technology is evolving into a more effective and empathetic tool, helping businesses determine when and where to deploy conversations across the customer journey.
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Brands will also be able to use genAI to instantly create messages and copy variations for consumer touchpoints across webpages, emails, mobile messages, and social media, all tailored to the brand’s style and language. For instance, genAI now allows business owners and employees of all experience levels to generate high-quality images and text effects that are commercially viable.
Marketing and advertising campaigns have become more precise than ever thanks to genAI. The information and insights obtained by AI enable businesses to connect the dots with greater effectiveness and engage customer segments in real time. It can also simulate customer experiences across different channels and provide real-time insights on the optimal offers and touchpoints to utilize. This can help businesses deliver new customer experiences faster and more efficiently based on prior best practices.
Accelerate and maximize genAI adoption in enterprises
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Like all transformational technologies, the ultimate measure of genAI’s impact on employees, customers and companies is not whether — but how — it is developed and deployed. As with all emerging technologies, there are recommended best practices to help brands make better decisions for the business and their customers.
For brands to make better AI decisions for their customers and businesses, they must first establish governance infrastructure and principles. Groundbreaking technologies are almost always ahead of legal and regulatory rules, and genAI is no exception. When developing or deploying genAI, it is crucial to establish ethical frameworks to govern their creation and use. This includes guidelines for bias testing, avoiding IP contamination, and monitoring feedback. Establishing strong guidelines and internal guardrails will help brands make thoughtful decisions and provide guidance for broader regulations.
Only when there is a governance framework in place can businesses ensure that content generated by AI tools does not flout or infringe upon intellectual properties. It is essential that genAI adhere to enterprise standards for security, privacy, data handling, compliance, governance, transparency, and responsibility. Generated content must also align with the brand’s style and guidelines and be designed for use in commercial settings. For example, brands that adopt genAI must ensure that the platform is trained on datasets comprising openly licensed work and public domain content, where copyright has expired. This ensures the generation of ethical results.
Most importantly, brands must choose to invest in tools that are tailored to specific business needs. So far, the majority of genAI art and text tools are available either on web pages or within dedicated apps. For these tools to be truly beneficial for businesses, they need to be customized to suit their specific use cases and integrated deeply into workflows.
While genAI will not instantaneously transform struggling brands into industry leaders, the technology holds the potential to enhance human creativity and productivity. It empowers digital customer experience management teams to achieve greater scalability and agility, enabling higher project velocity and superior performance in delivering experiences.
Just as content and data form the foundation of digital marketing, AI — particularly genAI — will become a trusted co-pilot for the next generation of digital customer experience management. It will drive experience-led growth that ensures the long-term health and competitiveness of companies in the years to come.
Chandra Sinnathamby is the director of Digital Media B2B Strategy & GTM for Asia Pacific at Adobe
