The News: Customer data platform provider ActionIQ has introduced CXAI, a solution that brings together generative AI data and generative AI content to support CX, marketing, and data teams, and provide more personalized customer experiences. This first release starts with two modules, CXAI Data and CXAI Content. You can find more information on this announcement on the ActionIQ website.
ActionIQ CXAI Brings Together Generative AI Data and Content
Analyst Take: Personalization is a key part of customer experience. However, it’s not always easy to deliver as companies often struggle to connect the data points needed to better understand a customer. Being able to tailor an experience, whether that experience be a website or mobile ecommerce visit, a contact center or service outreach, or the receipt of a marketing message has crossed over from a nice to have to a need to have.
Customers desire personalization, especially if it enables them to save time and make better purchasing decisions. Recent research from the IBM Institute of Business Value found that more than half of those surveyed said they would be interested in receiving information, advertisements, and offerings from stores that are relevant to their specific interests. Companies are responding. Salesforce research shows that having the ability to create personalized communications is rising in importance, and 93% of retailers are investing in personalization and making strides in using customers data for this purpose. In 2 years, the percentage of retailers that say they have full ability to use customer data to personalize shopper engagement has almost doubled from 32% in 2021 to 57% in 2023.
Personalization done well can lead to deeper brand loyalty and more repeat business. However, it also often requires a coordinated, interdisciplinary approach. It’s not just operations and customer service – but other internal stakeholders such as marketing, data, IT and advertising.
Enterprise CDP provider ActionIQ has recently launched its artificial intelligence-driven solution CX.AI which is aimed squarely at the intersection of providing deepened personalization while also make it easier for companies to do so.
CXAI Data Helps Marketers Craft Audiences and Optimize Decisions
The CXAI Data module is comprised of two main capabilities. The first offers the ability for marketers to design audiences more easily, using a natural language interface. GenAI Audiences is described as an audience copilot for marketers and the solution makes the process far less manual. It allows marketers to design audiences without the need for SQL or data expertise (or drag/drop/search), but by simply using the language they would like to use. In addition to design, this capability can also be used for orchestration activities and to interact with data.
Another new capability of note is AI Decisioning & Analytics, a solution that also helps with efficiencies by making recommendations and suggestion on topics such as the most optimized audience as well as the most relevant products, offers, channels preference, etc. Customers have the option of using custom or in-house models or using an out of the box model.
CXAI Content Supports Workflow and Personalization at Scale
CXAI Content is a module that helps companies get to a level of personalization that is a gold standard goal, and that’s 1:1. ActionIQ is accomplishing this with a partnership with Typeface, a provider of a generative AI platform for enterprise content. This combination of CXAI Content and Typeface’s Multimodal Content Hub enables content to be created that matches easily with ActionIQ’s audiences and can be sent out to a variety of channels.
What ActionIQ also brings to the table is the ability to provide context for a particular interaction or touchpoint into the model using its novel abstraction layer in its CDP. Examples given include situations such as ‘loyal customer whose made a recent purchase,’ or ‘frustrated returning customer on the verge of attrition.’ This can be used by models to help create more specific content that will most deeply resonate.
Big Step for ActionIQ
These two recently introduced modules, described as the first release, are a good start to what ActionIQ has stated CXAI will be all about and supports its overall view of how customer data fits into CX:
- Getting to that one to one personalization: This means for audience, creative and channel
- More efficiencies for marketers and the ability to get campaigns out more easily (and faster)
- Support for data analysis: Getting to the insights piece more quickly so appropriate actions and tweaks can be made
- Flexibility for varied deployment models and in house capabilities
ActionIQ has of course been no stranger to artificial intelligence but has taken a measured approach to introducing it into its solutions. When The Futurum Group was briefed by the company last Fall, the ActionIQ indicated it would not be a bandwagon generative AI participant, but would be focusing on education and the use cases that align most closely with its desire to help companies access, activate and analyze customer data to support a positive customer experience. This solution launch is a good step in that direction.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other Insights from The Futurum Group:
Data Flexibility Drives Customer Targeting, Insights for The Washington Post
How Are People Feeling About Their Retail Experience? Not Great …
Salesforce’s Connected Shopper Report: Digital, Physical & Service Crucial
Author Information
As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.
She brings more than 20 years of experience in technology research and marketing; prior to her current role, she was a Research Analyst at Omdia, authoring market and ecosystem reports on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and User Interface technologies. Sherril was previously Manager of Market Research at Intrado Life and Safety, providing competitive analysis and intelligence, business development support, and analyst relations.
Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.
