In the age of the digital buyer, most companies that prioritize customer experience face the ongoing challenge of meeting ever-evolving expectations, emotional needs, and practical requirements. This is where generative AI technology comes into play. Generative AI is a powerful tool capable of generating vast amounts of content, uncovering information based on natural language prompts, and bringing unique ideas to fruition.
While generative AI tools excel in summarizing and responding swiftly, they lack the essential human element of empathy that defines a truly engaging experience.
Instead of displacing knowledge workers and content writers, vendors are leveraging generative AI to enhance their capabilities.
Marci Maddox – Research Vice President, Digital Experience Strategies
Active Learning: Enabling Empathy at Scale in Generative AI
For most humans, the ability to demonstrate cognitive empathy is intuitive during in-person interactions. They continuously listen, learn, seek new knowledge, and refresh their understanding based on the information acquired during and after each interaction. This dynamic cycle enables them to intelligently engage with others and foster meaningful connections.
To be perceived as empathetic, one of the core capabilities that enterprises must develop is the ability to actively learn about their customers so that they can communicate and engage in an intelligent manner that best resonates with customers.
– Future of Customer Experience framework, IDC
This is a yet untapped opportunity for generative AI. Once the tool learns to recognize the sentiment of a customer’s inquiry and respond in an appropriate, empathetic way, improved customer experience becomes scalable.
One way to apply active learning to the content that is created by generative AI is to adjust the model’s underlying customer data inputs in real time so that the returned results are the most relevant at that moment in time. Language learning models (LLMs) in generative AI shouldn’t rely solely on static information.
Instead, they should incorporate a range of data signals, responses, transactions, and other customer data to continually train for future content requests. By leveraging insights gained from each interaction, the precision of personalization increases, leading to better outcomes for the business.
Harnessing Generative AI: Implications for the Enterprise
AI-based deep learning capabilities are particularly suited for situations where organizations strive to deliver an enhanced customer experience but face limitations in scaling their resources effectively.
Marketing teams have long struggled to keep up with the increasing demand for content creation across multiple channels while meeting personalized expectations. This challenge is compounded by the difficulty of responding to customers in real-time with relevant and valuable content.
As a result, content authors often feel overwhelmed and time constrained. Automation has demonstrated its potential in enabling marketers to keep pace with the digital era’s fast-paced environment. However, there is still a significant apprehension among content teams regarding the potential replacement of their role by generative AI. Bridging this gap remains a significant challenge.
Generative AI and the Empathetic Content Life Cycle
The integration of generative AI in applications is poised to revolutionize the life cycle of persuasive text and media-rich content. Instead of displacing knowledge workers and content writers, vendors are leveraging generative AI to enhance their capabilities.
While AI-powered content creation and recommendation technologies have existed for some time, the introduction of ChatGPT, with its user-friendly prompt-response system, quickly captured the attention of one million users within its initial five days. Since then, it has gained further momentum as an embedded prompt response in various content-related technologies.
Generative AI finds widespread application throughout the content life cycle, including in the following common use cases:
- Produce unique personalized content
- Faster branded content creation
- Improved content quality
- Better content discovery
- Unified content management
Authenticity of Gen AI-created content
Trust and security regarding the data used and generated by generative AI technology are a top concern for many enterprise leaders.
IDC sees an opportunity for generative AI vendors to apply objectivity to the output by leveraging a portfolio of prior approved assets and training the AI model to score the results based on trusted source elements and business logic tied to the derived assets.
Utilizing untrusted data sources in generative AI poses certain risks and challenges. These sources may lack accuracy, appropriateness for commercial use, or compliance with legal requirements, and could potentially introduce bias or include copyrighted content that necessitates legal approval for usage.
Additionally, there may be undiscovered flaws or faulty logic in these data sources. Consequently, it is crucial for generative AI projects in marketing to establish clear and explicit guardrails to govern the selection and usage of assets in training the learning models.
Advice for Emerging Tech Vendors
- Don’t use generative AI as a replacement for existing content teams.
- Train LLMs to incorporate customer context, e.g. sentiment, behavior signals, and intent.
- Take time to assess the repetitive content tasks that have become commonplace in the course of content management tasks.
- Review the implications of generative AI on the authenticity and tracking of content sources.
If your organization is interested in partnering with IDC to better understand how Generative AI will impact the markets most critical to your success contact us.
We also recommend you take advantage of these recent resources from our thought leaders and tech market experts:
IDC Webinar: Unlocking Business Success With Generative AI
IDC Blog: No Turning Back: AI Everywhere Causes a Seminal Shift in the Tech Market
IDC eBook: The Tech Vendor’s Guide To Embracing Responsible Generative AI
IDC Research: Future of Customer Experience Incorporates Generative AI into the Persuasive Content Supply Chain
