Moderator Shibani Joshi (from left) discussed how AI is helping brands to better engage with their customers with Amy Hannah, Rob Giglio, and Jenn Garbach at the Fast Company Grill during SXSW.
Image: Fast Company
AI is providing brands new ways to create deeply personal, engaging experiences at scale, redefining how they interact with their customers. Leading companies are combining AI-driven insights and human connection to drive brand loyalty.
During this year’s SXSW conference, digital design firm Canva sponsored a panel at the Fast Company Grill with innovative marketing leaders to talk about how they—and the companies they work with—are shaping the future of customer connection. Here are four takeaways from the discussion. (Scroll to the bottom to watch the entire panel discussion.)
1. Humans provide the connection; AI provides the scale.Customer loyalty stems from a personal connection to a brand, and panelists agreed that humans will always be key to creating that personal connection. “Nothing could ever replace the way that humans can make each other feel,” said Amy Hannah, vice president of brand marketing at jewelry company Kendra Scott.
AI’s major strength is in sorting through and analyzing the huge stores of customer information that companies are constantly collecting. “Today, masses of data are available about how people think, what they say, what they’ve done, where they worked,” said Rob Giglio, chief customer officer at Canva. “Our ability to digest that volume of data and be smart and savvy about how to have relevant conversations has gone up.”
2. AI can help “close the loop” of customer feedback.Canva uses AI and data analysis to build a personal connection by acting on customer feedback in a process the company calls “closing the loop.” Customer support interactions provide a trove of explicit, actionable feedback from Canva users. But the company also relies on product usage data as another source of feedback. For example, software platforms can see where users are stalling out in the middle of certain tasks to identify opportunities to improve certain features and create a more responsive product for the customer.
To solidify customer connection, Giglio said Canva follows these improvements with personalized messages. “We send them an individual email saying, ‘We really appreciate you giving us that feedback. We’ve fixed it. Click here to see that new feature.’ And it blows people’s minds.”
3. AI gets personal.AI is making it possible to focus on customers as individuals and craft more personally relevant experiences. “We’ve got to get out from behind the spreadsheet of revenue bands and these overly simplistic ways of looking at customers and bucketing them,” said Jenn Garbach, chief marketing officer at PNC Bank. Her goal is to create an internal connection to the customer that drives deeper awareness and understanding of their needs. Only then, she said, can you create external elements, including communications, products, and services that are actually going to land.
AI is also helping customers arrive at the right communication strategies. At Kendra Scott, Hannah and her team are using AI to personalize marketing communications. “We have a multigenerational customer,” she said. “When you think about leveraging all the different messages, all the different products, all the different brand stories, you’re really trying to think what’s the message I’m trying to send, who am I trying to reach, and what’s the right time to reach them?” The company uses A/B testing driven by AI to help test different communication strategies and choose the one that resonates most with customers.
Businesses with physical retail locations can even use AI to know a customer’s preferences or needs before they walk in. Take a brick-and-mortar bank: One customer may come in after having difficulty completing an online application, while another might be looking for a mortgage. Knowing their background ahead of time allows bank personnel to address those customers’ particular needs more efficiently.
At a Kendra Scott location, for instance, the relevant information might be the customer’s purchase history. If the customer has historically purchased silver pieces or statement earrings, the stylist can direct them to products that are likely most relevant to them. That not only helps drive a sale, but also makes a customer feel seen, building brand loyalty.
4. Customer trust is a necessary ingredient in AI-assisted engagement.Trust is foundational to the effective use of AI in any area—in fact, Canva’s Giglio said it’s an issue that keeps him awake at night. One way Canva builds trust in its AI-powered features is through Canva Shield, a collection of safety and privacy tools that guard enterprise customers from liability related to their use of AI. Canva also makes it clear that it won’t train its AI models on the private content users plug into its AI tools.
It’s also critical that customers trust what companies are doing with their data. In recent years, the default for many companies has been to collect every piece of data they could get their hands on. Now, companies are starting to embrace giving customers more control over what data they share. “We are staring at a future where consumers can choose to share their personal information,” Garbach said, “and that’s very empowering.”