GenAI opens the door to many opportunities to augment products and elevate the overall customer experience. Here’s what we see as the best methods to harness GenAI’s power to enhance the value of your current offerings:

1. Automating the Mundane

While it might not sound like the most groundbreaking application of Gen AI, the power of automating repetitive tasks for your users cannot be overstated. In fact, it can be a game changer in how they engage with and derive value from your product.

Imagine a scenario where Gen AI seamlessly automates everyday tasks that were once mundane and time-consuming. This might involve the effortless organization of data, the automatic generation of reports, or even the proactive identification and resolution of common user issues.

Here are some examples of how this is currently being implemented:

• Amazon’s cutting-edge “code whisperer” draws insights from a colossal repository of billions of lines of code, similar to Github’s Copilot. It can deliver real-time code suggestions, ranging from concise snippets to complete functions. These suggestions are finely tuned to your comments and existing code, making it a powerful aid for developers.
• Loom, the dynamic video messaging tool designed to enhance communication, has taken a significant step forward with Loom AI. This ingenious addition autonomously crafts engaging titles and concise summaries for the videos you create, making your content instantly shareable and more impactful.
• Notion harnesses the capabilities of GenAI to augment your productivity in various ways. It can seamlessly generate tasks, offer invaluable assistance in initiating or refining your writing projects, and even adjust your message’s length, tone, or clarity. 

2. Personalizing the Experience

Before the emergence of GenAI, personalization predominantly relied on segmentation, using factors like location and browsing history to categorize users into predefined profiles. (Think Amazon’s “people like you also liked…” recommendation system.)

However, GenAI introduces a paradigm shift in delivering hyper-individualized and adaptable experiences. GenAI allows for creating content perfectly tailored to a customer’s unique position in the customer journey — whether it’s responsive communications, like sending customized emails when you leave items in your shopping cart or rekindling customer engagement with exclusive offers. Additionally, through GenAI, we can employ predictive approaches that anticipate future needs. For instance, GenAI can personalize a treatment plan based on lifestyle, genetics, and symptoms or craft a travel itinerary that aligns perfectly with personal preferences.

3. Customer Self-Service

Customer self-service combines the power of automation and personalization to instantly address a user’s needs in most situations. This not only benefits your customers but also offers significant advantages to your business by more efficiently allocating resources while enhancing user experiences. 

The primary application of GenAI-enhanced customer self-service lies in conversational search. This functionality is commonly implemented through a chatbot user interface, although it can also be seamlessly integrated via a search bar or virtual assistants. While the formats may vary, they all facilitate user interactions by enabling individuals to ask questions and provide context through ‘conversations’ with the user interface, leading to timely responses. 

Use cases include:

• Product Recommendations: Much like the helpful associates you might encounter in certain retail stores who assist you in finding what you need, GenAI can provide product recommendations based on a user’s preferences and requirements through casual, conversational interactions, eliminating the need for complex filters or manual browsing.
• Product Help: Picture a chatbot that effortlessly delivers up-to-date information by meticulously sifting through your help center, FAQ pages, knowledge base, and other company resources. Instead of offering outdated content, it provides current responses in natural language that is easily understandable to users.

These opportunities represent just a few ways GenAI can contribute to optimizing your product experience, but every innovation begins with quality data. Plugging OpenAI straight into your product may not produce the accuracy of information you want. It’s important to leverage trusted sources or direct queries toward your own data or knowledge base to retain control over the information being disseminated. Like any AI endeavor, this is an ongoing journey that requires constant data collection, analysis, and refinement to uphold the relevance and value of personalized experiences for your customers.

As the landscape evolves, integrating GenAI into your product strategies becomes less of a question and more of a strategic imperative. We are witnessing a rush of companies seeking to harness the power of this transformative technology. However, it’s crucial to approach this journey with prudence, understanding that innovation should always be in service of providing genuine value to both your customers and your business.