When worries about job shifting hit employees in this new era of generative AI, marketing and e-commerce experts reveal ways to use technology features for in-store management. If implemented correctly, it can improve customer experience and satisfaction.
So, experts suggest using this technology as an ally instead of completely replacing the human touch.
Industry leaders, such as Intrepid Singapore CEO Fan-Ru Meng and AnyMind Group Managing Director for Product Development Ryuji Takemoto, support the integration of generative AI into businesses while preserving the important role of human intuition and expertise.
“Technology is a tool to improve the quality of our services together with a human expert. This is the assurance we want to offer, to our team, and to each individual, that ChatGPT, automation, or any generative AI is not there to replace human skills,” Meng told the Singapore Business Review.
Varun Sharma, senior vice president of Asia Pacific and Japan at Emplifi, calls generative AI a “people enhancer” because these tools cannot improve without human input on factual data sets.
Change and the unknown can scare some because of the job shift, but it can be a boon for brands around the world, says Chris Vincent, chief international officer of Pattern, a marketing company.
How to use AI
The first strategy to use generative AI is to train store managers or chat managers to improve their chat services to customers, which will also improve their experience, according to Meng.
Before AI was invented, store managers needed a trainer to deliver a dedicated session to a team. This will be removed because AI will allow store managers to ask hypothetical questions and in turn, provide answers to those questions.
“You can also configure that for different languages and behaviors from different countries,” Meng said. “That way, when it comes to text-generated or text interactions, you can help agents from any part of the world to … respond to the real customer in the type of way the customer came from.”
There can be different types of interactions or tones, however, when it comes to engaging customers about electronics or fashion, he added.
Pattern’s Vincent says generative AI can also be trained in multiple languages and allows companies to provide chat support to customers around the world. Generative AI can also learn from past interactions, continuously improving its responses and problem-solving abilities, he said.
The second strategy is that the invention of Open AI can also be used to create a question-and-answer format. Takemoto says it can be used to create prompts in customer chats to take specific actions such as advertising with relevant product recommendations and return orders sent to logistics companies. .
The third strategy is for generative AI to be configured in a chatbot to directly answer simple questions from customers.
“What we see in ChatGPT as different from the current chatbot is that it can process a larger set of data correctly and give you more comprehensive. [answers] and make better reasoning in the answer,” said Meng.
For Emplifi’s Sharma, AI-powered chatbots improve customer satisfaction as they cut response time and address concerns quickly. If a brand doesn’t do this, Sharma says it will fall behind competitors who are actively investing in these tools.
The fourth strategy, said Takemoto, is to create product reviews and user-generated content on social media. In this way, the business will understand the differences from the competitors and use them in the marketing plan.
Takemoto said store managers and chat managers can also use the technology to automatically generate content for ads and landing pages.
Sharma shared that their company has an AI tech solution that creates publish-ready social media copy for brands. Social media groups can put their instructions in the tool and choose customizations such as tone, emojis, hashtags, or questions.
The fifth strategy is to use text and image data, analysis, and explore other methods of using data for influencer marketing to encourage more potential customers to buy, Takemoto said.
The sixth strategy is to use generative AI to generate product descriptions to reduce manual inputs from people, who can better focus on other important aspects of their work, Takemoto said.
Emplifi’s Sharma is cited as an example using AI for personalization through emails that show products suitable for the target audience or landing pages that offer customers content tailored to their needs, interests, and values.
Pattern’s Vincent says generative AI can create thousands of product listings with a push of a button. It is more efficient compared to a great teamwork within a week to create the content.
“But generative AI can do it in an hour with the right framework around it. And that’s just scratching the surface,” he said.
The seventh strategy, according to Vincent, is to use AI models to predict customer demand and optimize stock levels. It provides great help in supply chain and inventory management. This will ensure that popular products are always available while avoiding overstocking.
There is no escaping cybersecurity issues
AI technology also has negative effects such as privacy concerns raised in news articles all over the internet.
To manage this issue, Sharma advises brands to train their AI models with strict guidelines, feed them with legally obtained data and comply with data protection laws.
The 2022 Gartner research shows that by 2025, businesses that use AI throughout the marketing function will shift 75% of their staff operations from production to more strategic activities.
This means that amid all the controversies surrounding generative AI, Sharma said the use cases for AI across marketing functions will continue to grow.
On the consumer side, senior analyst at Euromonitor International, Quan Yao Peh, said they need to know the trade-offs of sharing data with brands.
The AI trust must also be a specialist in the market to ensure the accuracy of the data collected.
Vincent advises that specialists should be critical on two points: One, making sure that the information that goes into the tool, such as the fact sheet, is accurate; and two, ensuring that the model is quality tested and refined before being used for mass production of assets.
More competition
As ChatGPT continues to gain ground in the marketing space, Meng said one thing businesses will focus on in the future is to stay competitive by “using the potential of ChatGPT and generative AI.”
He also said the challenge is to combine generative AI with human expertise. “If we integrate those, for the sake of integration but not improving quality, not improving productivity, or doing it less effectively,” he said.
Looking ahead, Takemoto highlighted the potential of using generative AI to create basic marketing content, such as text and visual content.
“Furthermore, tasks that require digesting large amounts of data and inputs [from both the business and end-user] and form an output [action or recommendation]will work well in various forms of marketing today,” he added.
For Vincent, generative AI, which has about 1,800 versions on the market, can be seen as a “major boon” in the e-commerce platform because it can increase productivity. “Those who do not fail. It’s that simple,” he concluded.
