At the recent Customer Engagement Summit in London, consumer experience expert Veatriki Tzannatos, former European Division Consumer Affairs Senior Manager at Colgate-Palmolive, warned that the arrival of consumer-facing AI agents could change the balance of power between businesses and their customers.
“The power shift is going to change and I'm not sure enough people—some people are— but enough people are considering the impacts on what that means for the future for CX.”
That comment prompts a question worth considering: If consumers increasingly rely on AI to help them interact with businesses, will organizations need to rethink how they manage customer relationships and the data underpinning them?
The answer will depend on how these technologies develop and how consumers choose to use them. But there are already signs that AI is changing the information businesses receive from customers, adding another dimension to the challenge.
When AI Becomes an Intermediary
Businesses have long focused on building customer relationships through a combination of marketing, personalization, loyalty programs and service interactions. Customer relationship management (CRM) platforms help bring customer information together, forming a record of previous interactions and a basis for tailoring future communications.
Consumer AI agents could complicate that model.
If buyers increasingly use agents to research products, compare offers, identify suitable providers or manage routine interactions, businesses may have fewer direct opportunities to influence those decisions. Their relationship with the customer could increasingly involve an AI intermediary interpreting requests and helping determine which businesses deserve consideration.
“I think there's going to be a lot of rethinking on how we're going to approach consumers with their new powers,” Tzannatos said.
How should CRM leaders think about the role of customer data in a world where the customer journey may involve more interactions between software agents and business systems?
Will existing customer profiles provide the context needed to support these interactions? How will businesses recognise customers across different channels and agent-mediated conversations? And what information will they need to make available to consumer agents without compromising privacy or security?
Much will depend on how agents access business services, what information consumers allow them to use, and whether organizations can support these interactions reliably.
Customer Communications are Already Changing
The potential influence of autonomous consumer agents remains an emerging area. But AI is already changing how customers communicate with organizations.
Al Davies, Business Development Manager at ArvatoConnect, described a growing challenge in regulated sectors, including financial services and healthcare: