Machine customers and the future of CX and service

The fifth edition of the global best-selling Customer Experience book series was released on January 22, 2024, covering the latest trends and strategy developments in CX.

Sirte Pihlaja, head of team at CXPA Finland and CEO of Shirute, is one of 18 expert CX authors featured in Customer Experience 5 and her chapter on machine customers explores one of the biggest customer behavior trends to emerge in recent years.

Enabled for the masses by the rise in IoT devices, consumer-friendly AI tools and the January 2024 launch of the ChatGPT Store, Pihlaja says machine customers represent a change twice as big as when e-commerce first emerged.

In this interview, she tells CX Network what is happening and what it means for organizations around the world.

CX Network: Tell us more about Customer Experience 5 and the chapter you authored.

Sirte Pihlaja: The book is a compilation of collaborative work from 18 writers and the chapter I wrote is about machine customers.

Machine customers are bots, algorithms or processes that make it possible for customers – whether they be in B2B or B2C – to interact with companies and public organizations without needing to be part of the process themselves. Essentially, they are a virtual or digital assistants that act on behalf of the person behind them.

As an example, as clients and customers, we are utilizing and benefiting from machine customers by the fact that we do not need to stand in line or change our own bookings or address details on an account.

From a business standpoint, machine customers may even be better customers in a way, because they are very reliable and committed to making purchases. As long as you are delivering on what these machine customers have been given as tasks and meet the criteria, they will keep coming to you and buying from you.

Machine customers represent an unprecedented growth opportunity for all industries.

CX Network: You distinguished between B2B and B2C customers and we do see a lot of people using generative AI in their day-to-day professional work. Do you think this trend will become more evident in B2B first or are we expecting the technologies to be rapidly adopted across both areas?

Sirte Pihlaja: M2M commerce has existed in B2B for a long time, for example RosettaNet and different XML-based technologies back in the day, or different ways for businesses to exchange value and commodities on different kinds of platforms via backend integrations.

But now, we have easily accessible tools, whereas previously it has been a huge IT project involving entire departments and probably an external consultancy. Now, we are talking about purchase processes that can be developed and created by marketers or sales personnel themselves with no existing knowledge of how to code or program, using just natural language. That is the big change!

In B2C the use of digital assistants is not so much about productivity, but convenience. As consumers, we want to make our lives as easy as possible, and we are already familiar with assistants like Google Assistant, Siri and Alexa. We are also getting used to commanding our homes or vehicles through wearables, connected devices and other types of interfaces.

Machine customers will be able to conduct the tasks that feel like chores to customers – changing account details or even negotiating a mobile subscription.

Then there is the ease of doing shopping or business. One example would be that I can share various purchasing preferences – probably via voice command – with my machine representative, and it can go on the web and find the best possible price and product for my needs.

If we think about wearables, they can monitor our health at all times, so it is possible that my digital assistant arranges a doctor’s appointment in response to what that wearable has detected.

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CX Network: Machine customers are not the only new CX tech or buzzword that we have heard in recent years. What makes machine customers more than a buzzword?

Sirte Pihlaja: Machine customers are not just hype, because digital assistants are already part of our everyday lives. In fact, Gartner says there are more machines with the potential to act as buyers, than there are humans on the planet right now.

If you think of the billions of IoT devices and all kinds of AI assistants that are waiting there to be used, there is a big chance that the machine customers will rise from there – and there is research to back this. Gartner says that in 2025, four out of 10 people in developed countries will have experimented using machine customers and by 2027, half of us will use a digital assistant every day. It is quite the prediction, but looking at what has been happening around us just in the last year, I think that outlook may even be a little cautious.

By 2030, almost one fifth of all of company revenues could come from machine customers. That would represent a change twice as big as when e-commerce first emerged. It is huge.

CX Network: How should organizations prepare for the M2M future of customer service?

Sirte Pihlaja: There are two things that we need to keep in mind: this is not a technology-first kind of project or development, but it will free up human agents to assist human customers. We need to deliver seamless transactions to the machine customers and the efficiencies an organization creates should be put into delivering more and better emotional experiences to human customers.

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When it comes to how to prepare, you can read all about it in the book! However, there are five steps that you can take.

First, form a team that is fearless enough to start planning for the future, because it might mean that you are actually cannibalizing some of your own business when you are adapting for machine customers. Do not just look at the kind of services that you are delivering at this moment, rather have a much wider vision when you are doing this and involve executives to discuss the strategies you should be taking.

The second step is to identify how virtual shoppers then impact your business and what the timeline could be. This will allow you to create a machine customer roadmap or some kind of plan for how you move forward.

Based on what you are intending to create, evaluate the skills required, train your people and recruit if you do not have those skills in-house. One skill that CX professionals will need is knowing how to design machine customer experiences. There are so many things involved in that because you are not talking to actual people anymore.

Another important thing is also to decide who owns the development, so that somebody is overseeing that the designs follow the same patterns.

Then it's about experimenting, starting with something small that then caters to these machine customers and do a minimum viable product (MVP) to see what works and what does not, then start over and do your next experiment.

This is not about the technology; it is about the needs of your customers.

The organizations that start experimenting, will learn something new as they go, but they need to be able to think creatively. That is one thing that I want to bring to business: being creative in what you do and not just doing the rinse and repeat!

Have your eyes open and be ready to make drastic changes in your business, because there are huge opportunities just waiting for companies to grab them.

To find more about the book click here or visit Shirute’s website, here. To buy your copy of CX 5 follow these links:

Amazon UK
Amazon US