Why We Need Sentient Robots

“What do you know about me, ChatGPT?” I recently asked OpenAI’s Generative AI conversational bot. It responded in the following way:

As an AI language model, I don't have any personal information about you unless you provide it to me. I don't have access to your identity or any personal details such as your name, age, gender, or location. My purpose is to respond to your questions and provide information to the best of my abilities based on my programming and training. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask!

I’ve conversed with the bot before, sharing information like my name, age, job title, interests, and asked questions about the respective topics. If the bot retained this information, it would be able to spit it back out at me: You are Christine, you write for Customer Engagement Insider, you like animals, and your favorite color is purple. For better or for worse, however, ChatGPT does not retain this information.

Maybe that’s for the best—I would be sufficiently creeped out if it started making deductions about things I never fully revealed. There are situations when I want to be a little creeped out about how much the computer knows about me, though, moments when I want the bot to say; Yes, I know you, I know where you live, I know your credit card number, I know your transaction history and your spending habits. When I interact with my favorite brands, I want them to know me so well I don’t even have to introduce myself when we chat.

The truth is, unfortunately, most brands we interact with on a daily basis do not know us this intimately. The businesses that we frequent have our purchase histories, they know where in the world we live, how frequently we return products, complain, or write reviews. Still, roughly 68% of brands are not automatically tailoring web and mobile content to customers, failing to make a stellar first impression.

When we click the chatbot in the corner of the screen on the webpage of most retailers, the first question is often: “Hi, what can I help you with today?” instead of something more personalized like: “Hi Christine, is this about your recent [insert product here] purchase?”

When we continue speaking to the bot, it asks us what product we got, what the issue is, and then often transfers us to a live agent to help with the issue. Then the live agent arrives in the conversation and asks us our name, what the product is, what the issue is, and then tries to provide assistance.

This shows that not only do the bots not have the information they need, but agents don’t either. Indeed, 60% of brands don’t feel their agents engage in sufficiently personalized, human conversations—likely because they lack customer data.

So brands aren’t storing data in a way that makes it easy for either bots or agents to access. It’s a simple enough issue, but with an uncertain economy and mass layoffs happening around the board, is now really the time to focus on fixing this?

Short answer: yes. And not only is this data important in inbound messaging, but in outbound marketing messages—messages that will drive increased sales even in tough financial times.

In CEI’s recent market study, Principal Analyst Brian Cantor states the aforementioned statistics and problems speak “to a significantly missed opportunity; brands that can deliver relevant messages to the customer in preferred channels at opportune times stand to demonstrate customer recognition, reduce customer effort, drive sales conversions, and reduce inbound volume.” If they choose to not do this, though, their messaging will be dismissed as spam and push customers to give the competition their business instead.

Maybe I don’t want ChatGPT to know everything about me—I am not sure it having all my personal information would ultimately benefit me in any way. I do, however, want my most frequented businesses to know me intimately, predicting my actions before I come to them with an issue.

Personalizing communication, whether it is using a chatbot, an agent, or marketing messaging, is crucial to the success of your business and to positive customer relationships.

For more information on this along with the top trends and predictions for the digital customer experience, check out CEI’s first market study of the year: Digital CX & Engagement, featuring insights from PlayVox, Wysdom, UJET.cx, and more!

Photo Sources (In order of appearance)

Photo by Andy Kelly on Unsplash

Photo by Cytonn Photography on Unsplash