When the Computer Says No!

From a Marketing perspective, there’s no doubt that AI and all its variants are revolutionising branding.

There are many positive aspects around this. But there are some negative ones as well.

Starting with the positives, here are four of them.

First, AI has enabled personalisation. Its algorithms can help to create personalised brand experiences by analysing customer behaviour and interactions.

Secondly, inspiring customer insights can be gained through AI enabling detailed data analysis and cross referencing which may not be so immediately apparent to human researchers. And these insights can feed the creative process and lead to great brand ideas.

Thirdly, to enhance these ideas in ways that effectively engage and motivate customers, AI can help to create branded content that’s precisely tailored to the target audience.

Finally, from a customer perspective, this is all good news. They will receive communications that are more relevant to them and, if they choose to through their own media habits, they won’t be bombarded with mass messages which are irrelevant to them.

On the negative side, issues mainly arise when, to steal the phrase from Little Britain ‘The computer says no!’.

Here are two examples of AI working negatively.

In financial services, more and more decisions are being informed by systems using machine learning. Anyone who has tried to open a bank account or take out a mortgage will have been on the receiving end of this. Sure, regulatory procedures must be followed but the sheer frustration of one tick box being incorrectly filled in will lead to delays and, at worst, rejection.

This is because these machine learning ‘black boxes’ are programmed to look at inputs (data) and make predictions and decisions purely based on those – without explanation. The human factor of making common sense decisions seems to go out the window – much to a customer’s frustration.

The second example, from my own experience as a customer, is Chatbots. Virtual assistants can be frustrating enough when the answer you want isn’t programmed in.

But dealing with a Chatbot when trying to reorganise our accounts on X recently, led to us going round in circles which we are still not out of. Without labouring the detail, the log in involved an email address which is now no longer in use. This meant that none of the requests could be logged or received. The Chatbot simply couldn’t cope with this and just sent out the same rejection to our requests over and over again. Replacing staff with Chatbots was not a good idea from this customer’s perspective Mr Musk!

At The Brand Inside, we frequently facilitate an exercise amongst employees called ‘Great, OK, Poor’.

We ask these employees to look outside of their own organisations and think of themselves as customers of whatever services they use – be it a bank, travel organisation, shop or utilities user. What’s been a great experience? What’s just been OK (does what it says on the tin)? And what’s been poor?

Invariably the great experiences have been due to people – through employees listening to customer needs, treating them as individuals, going the extra mile or displaying empathy, for instance.

Arguably AI can facilitate many of these experiences through behind the scenes systems and processes which get the computer saying yes. Then employees, as the visible interface with customers, can take the credit for it!