By Matt Fulton

Think about this: Over the course of your life, you will meet about 80,000 people. Of those, you might remember or have some sort of ongoing reciprocal engagement with 600 of those people. And close relationships? Perhaps 50 qualify.

People who know and treat you as a unique individual are few and far between. That rarity makes those relationships precious—and that’s also why elite brands invest so much in building relationships with their most important customers.

Now imagine if every company had the tools to scale that 1:1 relationship across most or even all of its customers. That’s the promise of AI-powered CX.

AI can help companies and their employees by doing the heavy lifting associated with remembering, interpreting, and reacting to the large set of experience data that defines their customer relationships. And since it can now be augmented by vast amounts of quantitative customer data gathered from across the organization, feedback evolves from a tool that helps organizations benchmark past experiences to one that enables them to create more personal, empathetic, and enduring relationships with their customers.

AI and Feedback: Personalization That Adds Value

Companies have long been inserting customers’ first names into emails. But sophisticated tailoring of every customer touchpoint—from the email to the website content it links to and the incentives it provides—is where personalization truly adds value to the customer experience. 

Deep-pocketed companies like Amazon have been doing this for years. Its recommendation engine is a driver of sales, with AI that leverages data including browsing patterns, wish lists, purchase history, and direct feedback. The power behind that personalization–when skillfully designed, deployed, and managed–is available to drive results for companies everywhere.

Stronger Together: Feedback as Part of a Larger Data Ecosystem

In the AI era, feedback no longer needs to be treated as a special class of data that is interpreted apart from other customer data. Instead, it can and should be integrated into the broader data ecosystem an organization owns. When analyzed together with information including transactional, behavioral, and operational data, feedback becomes exponentially more valuable, revealing insights that help organizations deliver better products, services, and experiences. Beyond satisfaction metrics like NPS, feedback also can now be used to learn about customer preferences and behaviors, gain deeper and more specific insights into customer motivations, and inform personalization.

Netflix, for example, uses AI to customize every aspect of its service. Its recommendation engine not only accounts for over 80% of hours watched but also is attuned to signs of customer satisfaction or potential churn. It constantly recalibrates the next show it suggests to the customer. This personalization extends far beyond show recommendations to include everything from the customer interface to the types of shows the company produces. This strategic use of AI has been instrumental in driving customer engagement, retention, and ultimately, Netflix’s continued growth and market leadership.

Using AI to knit together data from across the organization also addresses the challenge of limited direct feedback, as typically only a small fraction of the customer base provides it. 

Now, patterns between data from across the organizations can help CX professionals extrapolate from the limited feedback pool to provide insight and confidently optimize the experience of your entire customer base.

Moving Beyond Metrics: A New Paradigm for Feedback

Instead of being limited to repetitive questions like “How was your call with us today?” feedback can be used to test hypotheses, to add granular knowledge of a specific customer’s opinions, and to deepen the relationship with each customer. The ability to do this at scale elevates feedback to its rightful place as a key tool in building a 1:1 customer relationship.

This shift means that organizations need to move beyond a metric-centric mindset to a customer-centric mindset. It’s not just about what customers do or buy, and their self-reported level of happiness at each stage; it’s about what they tell you about themselves, their preferences, and their needs, and how you anticipate and meet those needs both now and in the future. 

Communication is the core of every meaningful human relationship—personal or professional—but it’s much more than a simple information exchange. In a relationship, these exchanges are about remembering, learning, and using gained knowledge to demonstrate empathy and loyalty. By continuously learning from feedback, organizations can demonstrate empathy and refine their approach going forward in much the same way personal relationships evolve over time.

This humanization of brand and company has always been a key aspect of elite brands. They know it’s never just the quality of the product but the strength of the relationship. Picture bringing that world-class experience, affordably and at scale, to every customer of your company.

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