Last week, on the personal invitation from Plamen Russev, Ph.D, Founder and Executive Chairman, Webit Foundation I was honored to deliver a keynote in Sofia, Bulgaria on “Rethinking B2B Customer Engagement in the Age of AI” at the Summer Edition of Webit – “AI. A future to share”.
The event was co-hosted with a VC/InvestX Forum to represent the investment community perspective on the AI movement. Altogether, more than 2000 leaders from over 50 countries attended the event.
During my talk I shared a 5 key observations on the trendlines impacting B2B customer engagement, specifically from a marketing and sales perspective.
> B2B engagements have become even more complex. Post Covid, and in a Cloud Dominant world, there are now even more buyer and user personas (>12) involved in purchase decisions. A whopping 83% now expect deep personalization in their experiences. The number of touchpoints in a buyer-seller-user-advocate relationship has ballooned from an average of 7 to more than 50. And the channels of formal and informal interactions (in-person, on-line, and digital) have almost doubled from an average of 6 to 10.
> When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. The discussions during the conference ranged from how AI was all hype – just another useful tool in the tool kit, to how AI would eventually achieve singularity and destroy humanity. While >80% B2B companies have been using some form of AI (predictive to proactive) for over the last decade or more in sales and marketing initiatives, the future clearly belongs to generative AI (preemptive). Most companies are at early adopter stages of experimentation. The question for B2B firms is how to thoughtfully separate the hype from the reality.
> Customer Journeys move from Episodic to Dynamic: Taking a lead from B2C organizations, AI can help customer segmentation models from where it is today – a few simple attributes such as company size, geography, or industry to much deeper and nuanced segmentation curated from across hundreds of behavioral, psychological, and situational attributes. These segments could be served with dynamic and personalized journeys assembled on the fly and enriched with sophisticated solution bundles and offers.
> Human Expertise moves from Scarcity to Abundance. Personal interaction will continue to the backbone of B2B experiences. When asked, 74% of customers preferred to talk to a human and have their problem resolved in 10 minutes, instead of having the same problem solved by chatbot in 5. Generative AI creates a massive opportunity to assemble, slice, and deliver the human experience and knowledge resident in B2B ecosystems at scale – i.e., move from a system of scarcity to abundance.
> Self-guided Learning moves from Standardized to Personalized. Motivated by personal growth, 2/3 B2B buyers would rather learn how to solve a problem independently through digital modalities than have the problem solved by someone else. Generative AI creates an opportunity to rethink new learning initiatives and programs that enable massive enablement of individuals at global scale.
In conclusion, I shared an example of historical precedence – how conversations around AI today: namely, the hope – an accelerant to human ingenuity, the skepticism – potential abuse of truth and facts, and desire for regulation – to control power structures was similar in nature the discussions around the invention of Gutenberg’s portable press. The Gutenberg press was a machine that enabled text and images to be transferred to paper or other media by means of ink, which ended up fundamentally changing the face of how we learn, teach, and communicate today.
