How to Build Deeper Customer Relationships with ChatGPT? 

Open AI’s ChatGPT has only been around for a couple of months, but if there was a competition for the digital technology that has caused the biggest stir in recent years, it would easily win. However, the biggest changes that could really transform the way we use the internet and its plethora of services are yet to come. How can ChatGPT affect customer relationship management (CRM) and why should marketers be paying attention to it?

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ChatGPT (GPT stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer”) is undoubtedly the most discussed machine learning model of today. It uses available data from all over the internet to generate natural-sounding answers to a wide variety of queries. Simply put, the vast amount of text available to the model (on which it is “trained”) allows it to predict the next word or phrase in a sentence, and to do so with a high degree of accuracy. It is also the first model of this type that is available to the general public. 

From a “toy” to a useful assistant  

While at this early stage many people are casually playing around with ChatGPT and posting the AI’s answers on their social networks for the amusement of others, in just six months’ time some of us will probably start using it for serious work purposes. Let’s leave aside for now how ChatGPT can simplify the work of, say, software developers and other professionals. The most significant change will probably occur in areas related to the promotion of products and services, i.e., contact with end customers. 

For now, only a general “conversational” interface is available, but soon there will be tools that will allow ChatGPT to be more precisely configured and connected to internal company databases. OpenAI’s GPT model will also soon become part of various comprehensive solutions that are already widely used: Salesforce, the world’s leading CRM platform, for example, is about to come up with its own integration with ChatGPT, called EinsteinGPT. For marketing teams, a new era will begin when AI allows them to manage customer relationships in a much more efficient way, both for small local companies and large ones with an international presence.  

“By leveraging ChatGPT’s natural language processing and CRM’s data analytics capabilities, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of their customers’ preferences, pain points, and buying patterns. This knowledge can be used to personalize customer interactions, optimize marketing campaigns, and ultimately drive revenue growth,” says Actum’s Managing Partner Ratibor Líbal. 

How can ChatGPT be useful in the future? 

  • With the ability to analyse vast amounts of data, it will provide valuable insights into customer behaviour, enabling improved marketing and sales strategies.
  • It will save a lot of time and money by automating many tasks such as creating descriptions for a large number of products. It will also be able to write, for example, a newsletter or blog article about your new service. It will then succinctly summarise a longer piece of text into a few sentences that you can use as an annotation. This will make regular content creation much easier.
  • It will provide 24-hour customer support, which will be personalized. Unlike a live person, ChatGPT will instantly draw on all available data about a particular customer that has been collected over, say, many years, without having to interview them at length first. In addition to that, it is also able to react to changes in customer behaviour in real time.
  • It is easily scalable to meet the needs of both small and large businesses, allowing customer service teams to handle more volume with fewer resources.
  • As can be seen, ChatGPT has the potential to transform the CRM process by improving efficiency, customer satisfaction, and business growth. It is a real game changer that no company, including manufacturing companies, should miss. Even something as common as shopping could see huge changes. 

The future of shopping

Imagine you’re running an online grocery store and your customer is having a conversation with ChatGPT while shopping about what they’ll be cooking at home this weekend. For example, they start by prompting ChatGPT to suggest a tasty and healthy menu, taking into account their specific dietary restrictions or foods they just don’t like. The AI will respond to them like a nutritionist and salesperson in one, and when the customer agrees to its advice, it will load everything they need into their cart. This will take the complexity out of coming up with a menu and searching for individual foods in the online store. The customer can do the same in other e-shops, too.

ChatGPT in its current form is not infallible and you need to know how to use it 

ChatGPT in its current form (the model is limited to a generic interface) is not a final product and it cannot be said that there are no pitfalls associated with its use. In fact, the risks are similar to those in human-to-human communication. Just like among the general population, arguments for various extreme views can be found on the internet. After all, artificial intelligence can’t come up with anything new on its own, and its “advice” is only as good as the data we feed it with. 

A general conversational interface also requires a person’s ability to ask questions in the right way, as this will fundamentally affect the outcome. ChatGPT is not immune to cognitive bias, nor is it able to know if it has correctly captured the meaning of your query. Thus, in some situations, prior knowledge of the topic is necessary on the part of the interviewer – only then can ChatGPT navigate in the right direction and achieve the desired results. In other words, if it’s not meant to be just a phrase generator, you need to learn how to use it.  

There’s no doubt that ChatGPT is a powerful tool that will help many companies improve customer experience and engagement in the near term – but it can’t do without human supervision. This applies both to the use of the general conversational interface and to the correct integration of products based on this technology into a company’s databases. 

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