Report Suggests Marketers May Not Want to Fully Commit to AI Just Yet | B2B Marketing

Marketers have turned to artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the customer experience, but is it hurting or helping their overall efforts?

To gauge the impact of AI on the customer experience, Invoca and Adobe published the “Emotions Win: What Customers Expect in the Age of AI” report. Statistics showed that 80 percent of customers still believe that a human representative (in-person) offers the best emotional quotient (EQ) – the ability to recognize and respond to their emotional state. This was compared to 24 percent who said the same about a voice assistant and 22 percent who cited chatbots.

“Many companies are taking a more automated approach to the customer experience, using AI to communicate with their customers,” wrote the authors of the report. “Invoca found nearly 7 in 10 consumers believe brands will mostly use AI for communications five years from now. But the convenience of AI may not win over the appeal of connecting with other people.”

Top-Performing Marketers Remain Skeptical of AI

As customers remain skeptical of AI, some marketers have expressed their own skepticism of the tool as a way to provide an adequate buyer experience.

Adobe also conducted another recent report, “Digital Intelligence Briefing: 2018 Digital Trends”, alongside Econsultancy, to determine how AI is being used by marketers globally. Statistics showed that most top-performing companies (43 percent) do not have plans to use AI within the next 12 months.

The majority of agency respondents (61 percent) said their company or clients are not planning to use AI because they have a lack of knowledge on how they can use it.