Between the development of “super-apps”, the growing integration of the uses of artificial intelligence in our daily lives and the acceleration of virtual and augmented reality, 2023 was marked by a desire to develop an even more digitalized and immersive.
The technological ecosystem will experience new transformations in 2024, which will impact the relationship that companies and consumers have with customer relations. The latter, a pillar of daily life and a key element in the sustainability of many companies in key sectors (mass distribution, telephony, banking, etc.), must continue to innovate to keep up with the speed of technological advances and the evolution of consumer expectations. . Focus on three trends that will fuel reflections, projects and challenges in the year to come.
The development of sustainable technologies
If we wish to respond to current and future challenges in terms of sustainable development, the technologies used on a large scale by companies (AI, IOT, cloud computing) must now be designed to minimize their impacts on the environment. At the same time, companies must dedicate resources to training so that employees can use them responsibly.
It is essential to consider a balance between the integration of high-performance technologies and vigilance in their use, taking into account their potential impacts on energy consumption and their environmental repercussions. Sobriety must therefore be fully taken into account in the project, design and choice phases.
The choice of energy-efficient cloud infrastructures, “green cloud computing”, or the implementation of effective data management policies that avoid unnecessary duplication are all practices that must become widespread. Energy optimization of algorithms is another example. It can notably be based on the choice of the foundation model, by choosing Large Language Models that consume less energy during their training or operation.
Moderation, the integration of sustainability objectives and their achievement should therefore take the form of models proportionate to use.
The omnipresence of artificial intelligence
If 2023 was the year of experimentation – particularly in terms of generative AI – 2024 will be the year of acceleration.
For many companies, the various pilots and tests carried out over the past year now make it possible to deploy AI more massively. In customer relations, different models are now capable of providing real-time information, and contextual or even emotional recommendations to assist the actions and speech of customer advisors in their interactions.
The objectives are clear: advanced AI solutions can automate routine interactions, freeing up teams to focus on more complex problems. Above all, they play a facilitating role to better perceive solutions, accelerate responses and support advisors in their customer satisfaction objectives – hence the widespread notion of “augmented advisor”.
These customer advisors will benefit from greater agility and sagacity, via AI trained to make their task easier and support them in customer knowledge, whether it involves immediate access to data previously integrated into a database. dynamic knowledge, predictive or preventive analysis based on contact history, or even purchases. For their part, boosted by generative AI, virtual assistants will gain in sophistication and personalization, and support customers in an increasingly autonomous manner.
The development and integration of AI will also be an opportunity to rethink processes by integrating responsible, transparent, equitable and collaborative practices. Here again, it will be necessary to make a point of training, to give teams the necessary resources in the face of the meteoric rise of AI and its equally rapid integration into business activities.
The challenge in 2024 will be to position AI relevantly within a virtuous economic and societal model, and in the service of intelligent customer relations.
The advent of predictive customer relations
The exploitation of data associated with AI makes personalization more and more sophisticated. Brands will now be able to use predictive analysis to offer relevant and personalized solutions.
While a large number of technologies are already mature, others are developing very quickly to better understand expectations, anticipate future needs, prevent attrition, optimize targeting (segment, offer and timing) and improve relational models. Predictive customer relations are an example of this, and will enable dynamic personalization. The challenge will be to continually improve these predictive models to remain attentive to the changing needs and behaviors of customers.
These technologies are not trivial from the point of view of data exploitation, it will be necessary to find the balance between the personalization of interactions and the guarantee of ethics and conformity of the data collected.
New customer relations technologies offer companies competitive advantages in a constantly changing environment. Virtual assistants, personalization, omnichannel interactions, new conversational interfaces, data confidentiality, predictive analysis will be strong points of attention for brands in 2024. The future of customer relationship technologies will however have to be defined through sustainable and responsible innovation that places the evolving needs of clients and advisors at the heart of their strategy.