Happy Friday! ‘This week in CX’ brings you the latest roundup of industry news.
This week, we’re looking at how the hospitality industry feels unsupported, as well as Gartner’s definition and perspective on ‘AI-mature’ organisations.
Key news
- In case you’ve somehow missed it (it’s been everywhere, how could you have not seen?!) Greta Gerwig’s next huge box office hit, Barbie, has absolutely smashed records, expectations, and reignited our nostalgia for our childhood. But why is CXM talking about it? From a marketing and brand awareness perspective, this movie is a mastery. It is definitely one that marketers everywhere are taking inspiration from. Check out the full marketing campaign here.
- Elon Musk is once again making changes to Twitter – he is rebranding it to X. A lot of Twitter users are now naming this move as “the end of the app”.
- A new Greenpeace report has highlighted that train tickets are on average twice as expensive flying in Europe. The UK was found to have the biggest disparity in cost between trains and flights, with it being up to four times as expensive to travel by rail. Greenpeace compared air and rail fares on 112 routes between major cities in 27 European countries.
- A new app for ChatGPT is now available for Android, making the AI more widely available and easily accessible for users.
- Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic are coming together to focus on ensuring the safe and responsible development of frontier AI models. The group is named the Frontier Model Forum. It will leverage the collective technical and operational proficiency of its member companies to contribute positively to the AI ecosystem.
Commentary share: Twitter’s rebrand
Examining what this means for tech and marketing businesses, we have comment from Chloe Cox, Head of Social at Wunderman Thompson Commerce and Technology.
“Rebranding Twitter as ‘X’ may be Elon Musk’s ticket to success, but it’s also a huge gamble. Twitter is a recognised global brand and one wonders if the ‘X’ moniker will carry the same weight; brands thrive on awareness and the Twitter name has that in spades. It’s yet to be seen whether X will be able to command the same pull, both from an advertising campaign and audience retention perspective.
“The upheaval isn’t going unnoticed either. Musk’s continuous tinkering with Twitter has caused frustration among its loyal users. The imposed limit on the number of tweets that can be read daily was met with ire from both users and marketers, sparking a boon for Threads to amass 100 million sign-ups within five days of launch. We mustn’t forget the influence of established apps with Meta’s dominance evident, and shoppers preferring to shop via Facebook (27%) or Instagram (20%) over other channels.
“With 67% of global shoppers already turning to social media for purchases, and 53% intending to increase spending via these channels, Threads is in a prime position to capitalise on Twitter’s unpredictability. And as the era of social commerce develops, Threads may just steal the show,”
Commentary share: Consumer Duty comes into force on 31 July
Richard Bassett, VP of Digital & Analytics at NICE is an expert on AI and automation in customer service. He is working with dozens of leading financial institutions to respond to the new requirements of the Consumer Duty laws.
“As the Consumer Duty deadline arrives, the worrying thing for businesses looking to offer support is that they don’t know how to find the most vulnerable customers. Traditionally, organisations have relied on human agents to manually identify and manage vulnerable customers, an expensive and tedious process. Relying on human agents alone to identify vulnerable customers guarantees that some will be overlooked. Without AI, this is a time-consuming, complex task with lots of room for error.
“AI not only analyses every customer interaction to identify vulnerable customers, but also simultaneously coaches and guides agents on how to address complex needs in real-time. It eliminates manual and subjective analysis, reduces costs and is highly scalable. It eliminates potential for human error, including biases and weaknesses of human judgment, and greatly increases the level of care businesses can provide to
their customers.
“Additionally, these systems can help businesses provide evidence of compliance to regulators, by surfacing relevant information for accurate, effortlessly produced reports.”
62% of hospitality businesses think sector receives less support and attention than other industries
The majority of the UK’s hospitality businesses believe the industry is overlooked by the Government, new research from Peckwater Brands has found.
Europe’s largest virtual food brand operator commissioned an independent survey of 250 decision-makers in senior management positions within UK hospitality businesses (restaurants, takeaways, cafés and bars). It found that 62% of UK hospitality businesses believe their sector receives less support and attention from the Government than other industries.
This comes as many hospitality business struggle with rising overheads, staff shortages and falling consumer spending. This has lead to 4,600 closing their doors in the 12 months leading up to March 2023.
When asked what support could be beneficial to the sector, 28% of businesses believe employment incentive programmes would make a positive difference. 21% want additional visa opportunities for foreign workers who could work in hospitality.
Two in five (40%) would welcome an extension of energy bill relief. 36% would like to see the return of ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ or a similar initiative.
In a move to cut costs, 48% have renegotiated with or changed their supplier in the past year. A further 44% plan on doing so in the next 12 months. Many are also reevaluating their business strategy: 26% have switched to a takeaway-only model, with 32% planning to do so, while 39% are planning a complete rebrand of the business.
52% of organisations say risk factors are a critical consideration when evaluating AI use cases
A new Gartner, Inc. survey revealed that 55% of organisations that have previously deployed AI always consider AI for every new use case that they are evaluating. 52% report that risk factors are a critical consideration when evaluating new AI use cases.
The survey was conducted in October through December 2022 among 622 respondents from organisations in the U.S., France, the U.K. and Germany that have deployed AI. Gartner defines an “AI-mature” organisation as those who have deployed more than five AI use cases across several business units and processes, in production for more than three years.
Across all organisations, respondents had deployed an average of 41 AI use cases, with use cases remaining in production for 3.5 years.
The most significant differentiator identified among AI-mature organisations was the involvement of legal counsel at the ideation stage of AI use cases. AI-mature organisations were 3.8 times more likely to involve legal experts at the ideation phase of an AI project’s life cycle.
When evaluating the return on AI investment, 52% of AI-mature organisations focus on a combination of technical and business metrics to assess ROI. In less mature organisations, technical metrics are most often used to measure the value of AI use cases. More AI-mature organisations – 41% compared with 24% of all others – use customer success-related business metrics to estimate ROI. Furthermore, 47% of AI-mature organisations cite customer service as one of the top three business functions benefiting from AI, compared with 34% of others.
Thanks for tuning into CXM’s weekly roundup of industry news. Check back next Friday for the latest updates of the week!