Many businesses today are using technology and AI to help their brands become more well–known and help their growth. We can say that we are now living in the digital era, so many tools and innovations can help your business overcome uncertainty.

In this article, we’ll understand how businesses can use technology and AI to create customer experiences to meet the needs of modern consumers, by creating intelligent experiences in order to provide a seamless customer experience. 

What is“Customer Experience” (CX)? 

Customer Experience (CX) literally means a customer‘s feelings or experiences that encompass the interactions a customer has with a brand over time. The customer’s relationship with the brand can begin at the very beginning of getting to know the brand f exploring the website, reading customer reviews, talking to customer service, or promoting it. Everything that a brand offers or servicese provide, will affect the entire customer experience, whether or not they return to the brand or service again. 

A good customer experience may not always require a premium service but providing customers with a simple and smooth service. Such a service will leave a constant impression on customers that will make them loyal customers, and today’s modern businesses can add personalization or branding that recognizes customers, by using digital tools and AI technology. 

The key word is personalization: create a cognizant customer experience with data and AI. 

Personalization, or personalized marketing, is considered an essential tool for creating the most customer-aware brand, which has become the core of the business, but not all businesses can do it so easily. 

To understand and visualize it better. Let’s take a look at five case studies of brands that have successfully used data and AI technology to grow their businesses. 

5 brands that use technology and AI to grow their businesses 

1.Lululemon: A yoga shirt brand that understands what customers want. 

Lululemon, a Canadian yoga clothing brand, has grown to outperform many conventional clothing brands. Despite selling very niche products such as yoga shirts only, Lululemon penetrated the market segment by collecting customer data through the use of social media, thus expanding its customer base beyond yoga clothing, yoga equipment and yoga classes. 

Lululemon first started collecting customer data by sending customers electronic receipts via email, then marketing by creating a campaign for customers who open their emails to see receipts. The customer could then get free yoga classes just by clicking to register online. Once customers start to bond with the brand, they will start downloading the application or visiting the website, allowing visitors to analyze when most people viewed the products or which products took the longest time to view. This method is to use the data to predict and recommend products that customers are likely to be interested in in the future. 

2. Qantas Airline: An airline that aims to provide customers with a seamless travel experience. 

The Australian airline Qantas is a great example of an organisation trying to create a seamless experience that makes passengers travel easily through their application, which is designed to remember and store detailed passenger information. This application can track the passengers in real-time that can determine exactly where passengers are at the time, where the nearest check-in, the best time to leave the airport, and the directions to take after leaving the airport.  

Qantas Airline is also partnering with many companies to cover other services beyond travel. For example;  Avis car rental services, Hilton hotel businesses, and  e-commerce businesses like eBay. Moreover, the customers can collect points when using these services and can see what the customer experience of Qantas is from start to finish the trip.  

3. Sweetgreen: Personalized restaurant business that has outpaced big brands.  

When it comes to personalized businesses that have penetrated the multi-channel customer market, you can know from lots of big brands that are‘s using it. But Sweetgreen is the small  personalized restaurant that can outpace big brands like Starbucks, which has been successful in this kind of marketing before. Sweetgreen created an application that allows customers to participate when they make a purchase. Additionally, they promote ads through various platforms when customers are most likely to want snacks or coffee. There’s also a digital drink list with many flavors that changes through the weather and location.  

There’s a lot of big brands can affects small food and beverage businesses that can’t fight back with high-capitalized data and technology. But with food businesses like Sweetgreen, which uses technology and AI, they can personalize their customers using it conveniently. Also, they provide digital menus and phone payments in every step to done with a single application. As a result, Sweetgreen’s user count is 16% higher than Starbucks.  

4. Giant Eagle: A supermarket that makes customers want to come back through gamification.   

Mid-sized supermarket business like Giant Eagle is the one interesting example of creating a customer experience using tools called Gamification. It can make customers shopping like playing a game, an application that rewards or gives points for loyal customers, and for the new customers on a shopping mission to earn more points. In addition, each month there is a special event to give away free extra points and refueling for customers who come to shop at supermarket. As a result, customers don’t want to miss out on important deals so they would like to come back every week. And it also affects the customer experience in the long run and leading to long-term customer loyalty.  

5. Stitch Fix: A stylish brand that does not own clothes but has customers every day.   

Private stylists like Stitch Fix are another example of trying to create the best possible customer experience by constantly experimenting. Whether its clothes, shoes, or accessories offered to customers, the customer’s job is simply to shop. And Stitch Fix then analyzes these details with AI and a network of data science employees with more than 4,000 stylists. 

Stitch Fix’s service has helped solve the problem of buying fashion products online that consumers have not tried before or do not have time to sit down and find on their own. As a result, Stitch Fix’s performance continues to grow even without owning a single product.  

Summarize 

Creating a customer experience may not just be a fixed formula to follow for successful executives, because it’s what comes from surveying customer behavior, collecting data, listening to customer voices, and then adjusting it to each brand’s service. There are different strategies, and we see that modern consumers are inevitably dependent on technology. In the future, advancements in technology and AI will help each business discover the answers of knowing how to improve the customer experience even more.                                                     

Cite: 

• https://hbr.org/2022/03/customer-experience-in-the-age-of-ai 
• https://blog.hubspot.com/service/what-is-customer-experience 

Article by Thanisorn Boonchote