AI-generated recommendations are playing a major role in the customer journey reshuffle, as brands lose visibility into what drives customers to their website.
Once they arrive, however, shoppers may already have established expectations about price, service, and product suitability, shaped by the AI assistants.
Given a lack of marketing awareness, CX leaders will need to rely on proactive strategies to ensure experiences are relevant and personalized for customers.
Speaking with CX Today, Tara DeZao, Senior Product Marketing Director at Pega, explained why brands have less time than ever to meet customer expectations.
“The window to get in front of them and do it right is even shorter than it has been.”
A Harder Path to Visibility
AI assistants are becoming another point of influence in an increasingly fragmented customer journey, creating a visibility challenge for brands.
With these tools now shaping how everyday customers research products, little insight means the traditional marketing funnel is becoming far too obsolete.
“It’s actually making the funnel shorter in a way, but just making the top of the funnel more opaque for brands,” DeZao acknowledges.
Today, brands that are absent from AI-generated recommendations risk being excluded from the consideration process before they have an opportunity to engage directly.
Despite its value, however, appearing in an AI recommendation only puts a brand's foot in the front door.
When customers eventually reach a brand's website, they may already have specific expectations around pricing, service, or the solutions available.
In fact, recent Bazaarvoice research revealed that in high-consideration categories, a product would need to be 50% cheaper for shoppers to switch brands.
For smaller or newly established businesses, delivering an experience that reflects those expectations is crucial, despite potentially lacking the context behind the customer’s decision.
DeZao highlighted:
“They don’t care that you didn’t see what was happening in the awareness phase. They only care about how the interaction goes.”
This challenge places greater pressure on the first direct interaction, as fragmentation can quickly undermine confidence.
For brands intending to expand their customer reach need to prepare for customers who arrive further along the decision-making process, even when the journey that brought them there remains largely invisible.
The Cost of Disconnection for Your Brand
Once customers arrive at a brand after using AI to research their options, disconnected data and inconsistent channel experiences can quickly undermine their confidence.
For example, a personalized offer may differ in a mobile app from one on social media, while receiving irrelevant messaging through email. These inconsistencies can reveal siloed MarTech stacks and mistakes in traditional segmentation.
When brands are unable to keep up with changing intent due to old or disconnected data, they risk losing the customer at critical moments.
“Making sure that the journey is connected and that first interaction after AI is really important because what you do from there will make or break your customer interaction,” DeZao warned.
