Mumbai: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been one of the celebrated buzzwords of all time across various industries. It has been answering a lot of questions and taking humankind to new places, quite literally, with customer service like chatbots and autopilot driving machines.
With people adopting the digital way of living, brands aggressively engage with digital technologies and innovation to propel their marketing efforts. AI is disrupting nearly every digital experience and has altered the way consumers interact with services.
The deployability of AI-led technologies and the difference it has brought in achieving customer satisfaction is now posing a serious threat to digital marketers. With AI's agility, it is normal for marketers to be a little insecure. However, the day when AI takes over digital marketing jobs is still years away. On the contrary, automation creates more opportunities than it is killing, with vacancies for AI coders and AI software handlers.
Seven in 10 marketers claim to have a comprehensive AI strategy. Undoubtedly, organisations have found various machine learning applications that can benefit marketing endeavours.
Customer service chatbots are one of the everyday uses of AI. It allows brands and businesses to offer 24/7 service to their customers and address basic queries. AI gives advertisers an edge by offering a tailormade digital advertising experience. and allows advertisers to acquire factual information for customer profiling such as age, gender, geographies and behaviours. This data further will enable marketers to create effective ads.
AI technologies such as Augmented and Virtual Reality are also stealing the limelight by the way they are revamping the online shopping experience.
Marketing professionals are also aligning Artificial Intelligence towards marketing content creation. With stacks of data accumulated by AI, marketers can easily decide on the content that will drive engagement. AI has been efficient in predictive analysis, allowing marketers to identify potential customers and strategies that will yield better results.
Despite the significant advancement witnessed by AI, there are still some aspects that consistently need human intervention and expertise.
Creative quotient: No matter how advanced, machines are still lagging in keeping pace with the human brain. Creative problem solving, music creation, painting landscapes, photo and video editing remain a few aspects where AI fails to perform. On the other hand, AI has been bringing a revolution in cutting down repetitive tasks such as creating customer profiles, sending personalised messages and scheduling.
Decision-making: AI is adept at assisting humans but can't have the final say. It requires a considerate amount of critical thinking and analysis to govern any marketing action. AI is crucial for acquiring data but cannot strategise or develop a plan on its own.
The human touch: AI has proven effective at answering all the questions hurled at it by customers, but AI cannot build customer relationships due to the lack of emotional connection. The responses provided by AI-powered chatbots are restricted to their programming, whereas humans share similar experiences with other people, which forms a sense of relatability and understanding.
AI is dependent on humans: AI is a technology developed by humans and cannot function independently. Therefore, it is dependent on humans to be programmed and be successful at performing a task. In addition, AI machines need to be upgraded as per the market's changing landscape, which again requires human expertise.
AI may still not be powerful enough to take up creative jobs, but it definitely eliminates a lot of human intervention from monotonous and routine jobs. As a result, businesses have been quick to deploy automation to boost productivity and mitigate the costs of resources.
(About Author - Sahil Chopra is iCubesWire founder and CEO)
