Last week we wrapped up CX Summit EMEA 2024.
Firstly I have to say a massive thanks to everyone who attended, both in-person and virtually, as well as to the team behind the scenes that worked tirelessly to put on a great show. It takes a village of people who you see on stage and front of house, but also of coordinators, project managers, AV techs, graphics, marketing, catering and a dozen other jobs to bring everything together so when the house lights dim and the music plays, its all good.
So, thank you!
Human+AI Resonated
Since 2020 we’ve focused the theme of CX Summit EMEA on what’s going on in the world right now. Lets face it, we’ve had an “interesting” few years – COVID, massive digitization of everything, hybrid work, war in Ukraine and now the Middle East, energy crisis, and so on. Global imperatives that CX teams have been forced to react to, roll with and adapt to. This year we wanted to do something different. Yes, generativeAI is hot, but rather than rooting our event in what to do today, we wanted to frame it against a backdrop of what a genAI powered future might look like. Judging by the buzz of conversation and the social media comments, the theme resonated.
We outlined three key transformations that will shape a genAI powered future:
- Conversational work. The ability to talk to large data sets in natural language.
- Conversational experiences. The ability to talk to brands and transact in natural language.
- Conversational autonomy. The ability to empower smart agents to interact, and even transact on your behalf.
Meet Your Digital Double
In her recent blog, my colleague Stephanie Liu introduced you to your digital double. We define a digital double as:
A digital double is a consumer-owned, algorithmically driven agent. It interacts with brands on the consumer’s behalf, using the consumer’s preferences and context to signal to a brand’s algorithm how to tailor outputs and digital experiences based on the consumer’s goals and values.
In other words: What do I want? Where am I? What am I trying to achieve? What’s important to me?
We think the future we laid out in our human+AI journey will evolve over three phases:
- First is the AI assistant. These are somewhat available today. These are experiences that answer questions, and learn by what we ask.
- Next comes the agent. As we build trust, and as the algorithms learn more about our preferences, can begin to understand our motives, goals and the caveats we place on experiences, they will begin to understand the mental models we hold as we interact with the world. Agents will begin to suggest better answers to questions we didn’t even ask, or guide us to better ways of doing things.
- Finally we will see empowerment. As we get to the stage where the algorithm of you becomes autonomous, armed with your preferences, your payment authority, the ability to transact on your behalf, and the ability to learn, your digital double will interact with brands on your behalf.
Trust is the Rosetta Stone
All this begs the question what entity am I asking? Who do I trust to own the algorithm of me? Big tech? Meta? Apple? Amazon? Your bank? The government? Sovereign digital entities? What walled gardens will they create? How will they, or even will they inter-operate? All questions we will continue to ask as we continue our research in this space.
More to come, but in the warm afterglow of a successful event, thank you again to everyone who helped make it a success. See you next year?