Tag: Artificial Intelligence

Kuala Lumpur – The shift in customer communication preferences has been found to lean noticeably towards conversational interactions, making more companies expand and invest towards conversational commerce. This was according to the latest data from an InfoBrief provided by global cloud communications platform Infobip, and IT market research and advisory firm IDC. 

The InfoBrief by Infobip and IDC suggested that the potential of conversational commerce is now being employed and recognized, with tools such as CPaaS and SaaS enabling businesses to provide a seamless, customer journey that’s visible across multiple touchpoints.

The increasing popularity of customer-centric business strategies among brands in the Asia Pacific region reflects consumers’ present attitudes and expectations. 70% of organisations in the region plan to increase communication platform spending in 2023–2024, despite the fact that only a few countries use CPaaS on average at 50%–59%, in order to offer distinctive customer experiences to the region’s expanding social media users, who are primarily young, active, and conscious of the power of their own influence.

All nations intend to spend money on CPaaS and SaaS solutions in the near future, but their reasons are claimed to be very different. Businesses in Indonesia and Singapore strive to improve customer experiences and develop new revenue streams, while those in China, Thailand, and the Philippines are driven to expand their domestic and global markets as well as improve and mobilise their business operations. This is probably owing to the latter countries’ booming retail and e-commerce sectors and overall greater adoption rate of CPaaS solutions, which is around 60% and above.

Nikhil Batra, research director of telecommunication for IDC Asia/Pacific, said that CPaaS solutions are increasingly recognized as crucial catalysts for enabling conversational commerce experiences.

“In fact, 27% of businesses in Asia Pacific are actively partnering with CPaaS platform providers to deliver contextualised customer interactions that not only boost profitability but also foster emotionally fulfilling engagements. This trend highlights the increasing importance of leveraging these technologies to meet customer demands and achieve business success,” he added.

Meanwhile, Velid Begovic, vice president of revenue at Infobip, commented, “Businesses position themselves to forge ahead, leveraging AI technology to create connections and unlock new growth opportunities, whilst organisations need an actionable, customer-centric strategy and the ability to invest in the right tools to grow the business and keep customers happy. By aligning their strategies with conversational commerce, businesses can proactively meet customer expectations, enhance engagement, and establish long-lasting relationships.”

Singapore – Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Twilio have announced an extension of their strategic partnership, aiming to empower Twilio customers with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. 

This collaboration, unveiled at the AWS Summit in New York, marks a significant step in the evolution of Twilio’s Customer AI roadmap, which seeks to provide personalized and real-time experiences for leading brands.

Moreover, the key focus of this partnership centers around predictive AI technology, which will merge Amazon SageMaker’s AI capabilities with Twilio Segment’s Customer Data Platform. The forthcoming features will enable businesses to gain deeper insights into their customers, allowing them to deliver more relevant and personalized experiences promptly.

Shawn Nandi, director of technology, industries at AWS, expressed excitement about Twilio’s AI innovation and its potential to revolutionize customer engagement. He emphasized that AWS is committed to supporting businesses in enhancing customer experiences through AI and machine learning.

In a statement, Alex Millet, senior director of product at Twilio, outlined their vision for Twilio CustomerAI, which aims to enable businesses to foster trusted relationships with customers at a digital scale. He highlighted that the ultimate goal is transforming how marketers, contact centers, developers, and data teams deliver world-class customer experiences.

Previous AWS and Twilio partnerships include Twilio Segment’s status as an AWS Marketplace partner and deep product alignment, featuring partnerships that leverage Twilio’s Programmable APIs and integrations with more than six AWS products.

Singapore – Asian food and grocery delivery network foodpanda has partnered with Singapore-based AI provider TabSquare to introduce new digital solutions for restaurants, including QR code-based ordering and AI-enabled predictive analytics.

Under parent company Delivery Hero, the two brands are working with restaurants in Asia starting with Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Taiwan in digitising their orders, payments, and customer engagement-related processes.

Using TabSquare, foodpanda’s restaurant partners can digitise analog items and automate tasks, enabling restaurants to be more time-efficient in the ordering process as customers can use digital menus to browse, order and pay at their pace and convenience.

Restaurants within foodpanda’s range also get a competitive advantage in customer engagement and retention thanks to TabSquare’s AI analytics, offering useful insights using a ton of aggregated data from customers’ shopping histories. The trends in price sensitivity, volume, and menu choices can be applied in a variety of situations once they have been found.

Commenting on this new venture, Jakob Angele, APAC CEO of foodpanda, comments that with this technology, they want to play a part in as many of their customers’ food interactions as possible.

“Moving into QR ordering in restaurants was therefore a very natural choice for us. It allows us to offer great benefits to our 500,000 restaurants, helping them with their profitability by serving their customers better. I am absolutely convinced that in five years from now, restaurants worldwide will be using QR code-based ordering and paper menus will be a memory of the past,” he added. 

Meanwhile, Anshul Gupta, co-founder of TabSquare, also said: “TabSquare has always tried to be at the forefront of innovation in the industry by bringing AI-powered solutions to boost restaurants’ revenue, streamline operations, and offer a better dining experience to their guests. With foodpanda, we will be bringing many new innovative features to the industry, for example, restaurants working with TabSquare can now promote themselves to foodpanda’s large customer base and attract new customers.”

Singapore – Travel service provider Trip.com has unveiled a series of enhanced AI-powered services to aid travellers in planning their next trip. More specifically, they include AI-curated itineraries such as include ‘Trip.Trends’, ‘Trip.Best’, and ‘Trip.Deals’, cater to users’ diverse needs and preferences by capturing real-time information on the latest travel trends, prices, and top-ranked hotels, flights, and attractions.

Each list focuses on a different consumer group and market position. ‘Trip.Best’ enables global travellers to select the best experiences a destination has to offer, including flights, hotels, and attractions, as well as lifestyle choices such as restaurants, nightlife, bars, and shows. The list is curated by examining various travel products on Trip.com and scoring them based on an algorithm, with only the top 1% of products featured.

Meanwhile, ‘Trip.Deals’ is designed for budget-conscious users who are looking for the best deals on flights, accommodation, and travel destinations. The list is curated based on various factors, such as historical and projected price changes, as well as current travel expenses.

Lastly, ‘Trip.Trends’ tracks the most popular travel topics and events in different markets, based on user searches across various platforms including Trip.com, mainstream online search engines, and social media. This feature provides users with up-to-date information on the most exciting and current activities and events worldwide and in their local areas.

James Liang, co-founder and executive chairman of the board at Trip.com Group, said, “Tourism will continue to be an important industry in a smart society, as it satisfies people’s innate desire to travel and explore. Artificial intelligence cannot replace this experience but can help to advance it. Trip.com Group will actively embrace technological development and use advanced AI-driven services to improve the travel process and overall experience.”

Manila, Philippines – In today’s competitive business landscape, brands are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) as a powerful tool to enhance customer experience strategies. AI technology has revolutionised the way companies interact with their customers, offering personalised and efficient experiences that drive customer satisfaction and loyalty. But with AI still being an overwhelming technology for many in the industry, how can brands and marketers properly navigate existing and future AI technologies to help in their marketing efforts to improve customer experience?

To navigate the complexities of AI in customer engagement strategies, MARKETECH APAC returns with a new webinar this July 25. Titled “The Future of Customer Engagement: Harnessing the Power of AI”, the webinar aims to impart valuable insights to marketers to harness the full potential of AI and stay ahead in the ever-evolving landscape of customer engagement.

The webinar will host a panel discussion, tapping some of the Philippines’ leading industry leaders to impart their thoughts on how brands should implement AI-powered customer engagement strategies. The panel is composed of Greg Anonas, international wine and food marketing director at Emperador Distillers; Francis John Chua, marketing director, head of digital sales channels at Globe Telecom; and Albet Buddahim, chief marketing officer at PRIMER Group of Companies. The triad of Philippine marketing leaders will also share their advice on how to deliver personalised and targeted marketing campaigns at scale using AI.

Moreover, the webinar will also feature a keynote presentation by Sarah Chan, regional account executive at Braze, where she will discuss the evolution of AI technologies in marketing and how brands should check out the right channel and the right time to execute such a strategy.

The presentation will also discuss the following:

  • How does AI-powered automation help in delivering timely and relevant messages across multiple channels?
  • What are the benefits of harnessing AI-driven customer journey mapping to ensure seamless experiences at every touchpoint?

“​​The marketing industry is in a constant state of change, and AI has introduced both challenges and opportunities that can be intimidating to many marketers. AI isn’t new technology, but with its evolution–marketers can no longer ignore the potential it brings. Join us in this timely webinar to explore AI-driven marketing and how it can transform brand’s customer engagement strategies,” said Katherine Sy, regional head of content at MARKETECH APAC.

The Future of Customer Engagement: Harnessing the Power of AI is made in partnership with customer engagement platform Braze. Catch this webinar on July 25, 11AM (PHT) by registering HERE. See you there!

Singapore – Consultancy firm Human8 has recently unveiled its employee AI prompt school, accompanied by its own AI research assistant. 

To address concerns regarding data ownership and the impact on confidential research data and PI information, earlier this year OpenAI developed a proprietary AI research assistant utilising the ChatGPT algorithm, enabling them to conduct real research data experiments and evaluate the capabilities of generative AI.

Annelies Verhaeghe, chief platform officer of Human8, said, “Just like with the internet and social media revolution, as an agency we’ve always embraced tech and innovation, investing in discovery to accelerate success. However, to safely and creatively experiment with AI, we first needed to overcome the data privacy obstacle.”

Meanwhile, Maz Amirahmadi, Managing Director, APAC, said, “In Asia Pacific, AI adoption has taken off in 2023 across various verticals and markets. According to an IDC report, a top adoption driver is improving employee productivity. The tool will enable our team of consultants in APAC to keep pace with the acceleration, and we are already seeing strong appetite among colleagues and clients to collaborate with AI.” 

Human8’s trials show that using generative AI as an analytical tool with thick data from primary research produces far more actionable research results. This emphasises the significance of using up-to-date data.

Verhaeghe added, “With our proprietary AI tech at hand, we defined a series of A/B experiments to gain a better understanding of the potential and implications of generative AI systems for our business and the industry at large. Our experiments were designed to explore well-known challenges related to AI data quality, data sampling and even data hallucination.”

Human8 has incorporated its personal AI research assistant across its global operations. By utilising AI automation for more analysis of unstructured data, this has opened up more opportunities for human interpretation and consulting. 

Singapore – Dentsu Next, part of Dentsu Creative, has announced the debut of Mixer and Lucie, a pair of AI marketing solutions which aims to reinforce the agency’s commitment to establish meaningful connections with modern creativity between brands & consumers, through the use of technology to reinvent the future.

Mixer explores hundreds of scenarios based on the marketing requests input by users. This solution condenses a process that traditionally takes months into hours, while ensuring each fresh idea is generated. 

Moreover, Mixer propels go-to-market strategy, significantly reduces product development time with data-led analysis & insights for competitive advantage.

Meanwhile, Lucie is an advanced customer intelligence & engagement AI designed to enhance loyalty-driven experiences in the retail service industry, supported by dentsu Japan, with a team of dedicated engineers and research team. 

Lucie has two parts: the digital avatar production workflow AI Lucie and live generative production feature Live Lucie.

Richard Tan, CEO of Denstu Creative China, said, “The debut of MIXER & LUCIE, aim to optimise all brand interactions & create unparalleled experiences! dentsu brings value to businesses through our integrated ecosystem to seize opportunities in the AI-led digital marketing era – to maintain brands’ relevance and inspire authenticity across the customer journey. Ultimately, to help drive business profitability at every stage.”

Meanwhile, Alex Chu, creative partner at Dentsu Creative China, commented, “AI is becoming a cornerstone of customer service for businesses around the world. The key to growth is to strategically engage with evolved consumers, while being in control with content and creativity, to meet growing demands & capitalise on market opportunities.”

Jakarta, Indonesia – Home Credit Indonesia has tapped comprehensive AI-powered platform FPT Smart Cloud to help enhance its customer experience and streamline operations through artificial intelligence (AI).

By seamlessly integrating its operations across both online and offline platforms, the firm ensures that its customers can access services anywhere, anytime, echoing its commitment to provide trusted financial services at the fingertips of its customers.

Moreover, by joining forces with FPT Smart Cloud, the financial services company gains access to a wealth of advanced AI offerings and expertise to elevate services, enhance operational efficiency, and deliver unparalleled customer experiences.

At the heart of this partnership lies its AI chatbot project, aiming to revolutionise customer interactions and support services. The AI chatbot showcases linguistic comprehension, enabling it to understand and respond to customer inquiries in multiple languages, particularly, Bahasa, the local language.

Le Hong Viet, CEO of FPT Smart Cloud, said, “FPT.AI, developed and nurtured by FPT Smart Cloud has a global vision to harness the power of natural language processing to address challenges faced by businesses worldwide. Indonesia, being a market full of potential, has been a priority for us.”

He added, “Through this collaboration with Home Credit Indonesia, we aim to create lasting value and drive digital transformation in the financial sector. Meanwhile, by leveraging FPT.AI solutions, Home Credit Indonesia gains a competitive advantage in the fiercely competitive market of Indonesian financial services.”

Meanwhile, Yusron Anas, chief information officer at Home Credit Indonesia, commented, “As a customer-centric organization, Home Credit Indonesia is committed to constantly enhancing the experience for our valued customers. This partnership with FPT Smart Cloud marks a new milestone in our journey to leverage advanced technology and innovation to serve our customers better, and part of the landscape enhancement towards delivering automation everywhere in the company.”

He added, “The implementation of AI technology will significantly enhance the speed and efficiency of our customer service, ensuring that our customers receive prompt assistance and a seamless experience across various touchpoints. Thus, we open up various possibilities for our customers to use our services.”

Singapore – Digital media measurement software platform DoubleVerify and cloud-based software for AI-powered digital marketing Scibids has announced the launch of ‘DV Algorithmic Optimizer’, an AI-powered attention solution for advertisers.

The combination of DoubleVerify’s proprietary attention signals and Scibids’ AI-powered ad decisioning enables advertisers to identify the best-performing inventory that maximises business outcomes and advertising ROI.

‘DV Algorithmic Optimizer’ combines DoubleVerify’s media quality and attention data with Scibids’ AI technology to generate optimisation algorithms customized to drive advertiser KPIs. With this, global advertisers are able to combine end-to-end granular measurement and optimisation at scale.

Daniel Slotwiner, SVP of attention at DoubleVerify, said, “The DV Algorithmic Optimizer is a significant advancement for advertisers seeking to maximize the impact of their campaigns through a focus on attention.”

He added, “By harnessing DoubleVerify’s attention measurement alongside Scibids’ AI, we are providing brands with the critical tools they need to serve ads on top-performing inventory while preserving scale and maximizing efficiency.”

Leveraging DSP impression-level data feeds first-party data and measurement data provided by the brands or their agencies, Scibids AI dynamically generates custom bidding algorithms aligned with client KPIs and desired outcomes.

Meanwhile, Remi Lemonnier, CEO & co-founder of Scibids, commented, “With its massive scale and near-real time data, digital marketing is the ideal environment for the deployment of machine learning.”

He added, “The combination of Scibids AI’s capabilities and DV’s expertise in attention measurement brings valuable new data critical to driving business results for advertisers across channels. Our partnership lets us offer mutual advertisers cutting-edge solutions that precisely and efficiently align campaign delivery with business goals through enhanced attention metrics.”

Singapore – With many mass consumers experimenting with the potential of generative artificial intelligence (AI), a new report from Capgemini Research Institute reveals that 73% of consumers globally trust content generated by AI, more specifically in assisting in financial planning, medical diagnosis, and relationship advice.

The research notes that 53% of consumers trust AI-generated content for financial planning, 67% for medical diagnosis, and 66% using generative AI tools for seeking advice from in terms of personal relationships or life and career plans.

However, it is also worth noting that consumer awareness around the ethical concerns and misuse of generative AI is low. The data notes that 49% of consumers remain unconcerned by the prospect of generative AI being used to create fake news stories, and just 34% of respondents are concerned about phishing attacks.

In addition, only 33% are worried about copyright issues and only 27% are worried about the use of generative AI algorithms to copy competitors’ product designs or formulas.

In terms of businesses adopting generative AI tools, 43% of global consumers are keen for organisations to implement generative AI throughout customer interactions, and 50% consumers have a positive reception to the highly immersive and interactive experiences that this technology can enable.

For Niraj Parihar, CEO of the insights and data global business line and member of the group executive committee at Capgemini, awareness of generative AI amongst consumers globally is remarkable, and the rate of adoption has been massive, yet the understanding of how this technology works and the associated risks is still very low.

“Whilst regulation is critical, business and technology partners also have an important role to play in providing education and enforcing the safeguards that address concerns around the ethics and misuse of generative AI. For example, our role at Capgemini is to help clients cut through the hype and leverage the most relevant use cases for their specific business needs, within an ethical framework,” Parihar said.

He added, “Generative AI is not ‘intelligent’ in itself; the intelligence stems from the human experts who these tools will assist and support. The key to success therefore, as with any AI, is the safeguards that humans build around them to guarantee the quality of its output.”