According to our experts at the Adetem Factory yesterday, we have entered the 4th Industrial Revolution thanks to Artificial Intelligence, a revolution comparable to the discovery of electricity. AI is only one facet of this revolution, which affects a more complete ecosystem: the Internet of Things and the Cloud are the other two contributors... for the betterment of marketing, we are told: to know us better, more finely and more individually, to better respond to our desires. Robots, which all have charming little names but no anthropomorphism, are almost as intelligent as we are! They could even make us more intelligent...
But do we really have a choice?
In San Francisco, Artificial Intelligence is already everywhere, in all areas of customer relations and in all sectors; it is said to be "pervasive"! There is a major cultural difference between Europe and Silicon Valley: in Europe, we see AI as a system of automation, whereas the United States sees it as a system of empowerment. Who will win this battle?
Artificial Intelligence - or 'augmented intelligence' as IBM prefers to call it to de-demonise the issue - is based on 4 characteristics:
1- This is a system that communicates naturally, using "human" words and expressions.
2- Who understands the intention, not just the key words
3- It has an unlimited capacity to ingest information, including unstructured information such as images, videos and sound - which represent 80% of the data around us.
4- It is a "learning" system, in tune with the world of learning.
What about traditional quantitative research when Watson aggregates various sources and digests thousands of pieces of information already produced to reconstruct customer segmentations and create new, more refined KPIs? What about qualitative research, when we can decipher the emotions and feelings produced by a film from the ingestion of 700 films, to build the trailer; or analyse the 'fit' between a bank customer and his account manager; or the correspondence between the customer's values and those expressed by the bank through the analysis of its brochure?
We urgently need to rethink our business lines and integrate new know-how and tools to support our customers in their digital transformation (AI and chatbots are part of this). Julien Lévy - Director of the Centre Digital at HEC, and co-author of the Mercator - tells us that in the face of the power of quantitative marketing automation, qualitative marketing must emerge. And it must be creative.
Victims of their success with advertisers (100,000 chatbots on Messenger), chabots have not yet been integrated into the world of research institutes. And yet they offer a host of benefits that should be looked at more closely. Some are even talking about a "spectacular future". Bearing in mind that consumers are afraid of the latent dehumanisation of the relationship and observe the inadequacy of chatbot responses (bugs, wrong answers, no answer...). A new profession is opening up: that of chabot coach!
It's not that simple: you have to know how to talk to my grandmother, but also to my mother-in-law, to my 18-year-old son and my 12-year-old niece, to accountants but also to hairdressers... it even seems that you have to appear less intelligent than the person you're talking to. In short, a whole range of communication tactics that the presenter has to put into practice! The future will be funny... let's embrace it!
Florence Hussenot
Managing Director
