Better-informed customers, with nearly free access to limitless analytical power, are poised to shake up the entire economy. As AI gets smarter and more ubiquitous, more customers will have a built-in assistant for scheduling and reminders, a paralegal to review contracts or terms and conditions (flagging anything that looks amiss), a research analyst to compare plans and pricing and provide recommendations, and a peer to go back and forth with, weighing options for every single decision. This 24/seven support will be a game changer.
This is the customer of the future. We’ve never seen this level of customer empowerment and companies, from large enterprises to consumer tech startups, are not ready.
What Are Bionic Consumers?
Bionic consumers actively and passively use constantly improving AI to enhance their decision-making capabilities. This always-on, nearly instantaneous and omniscient decision support will allow them to be better informed, demand more, and effortlessly switch preferences, plans and providers.
Hyper-Informed Consumers, Thanks to AI
Your customers know more today than they did yesterday. More about their fitness, their relationships, their screen time and their money. Anything they don’t understand is only a Google search or ChatGPT prompt away.
So, even before they’re paying customers, consumers are getting better at understanding how effective your business will be at serving them and their community. They’re beginning to see how you — and your competitors — make, spend and invest money, plus how much value you pass on to them. In turn, this information tells them whether or not they should become (or continue to be) your customer.
Companies will have a harder time hiding fees and recurring subscriptions they hope people forget about. Hard-to-understand fine print with unfair terms will be dragged into the daylight, dissected on #finTok and amplified into the ether. Business models depending on obfuscation i.e., customers not fully understanding the implications of their choices, will struggle.
Decision Support for All
The AI-powered internet will give us all well-summarized, synthesized information and agents to execute on highly actionable, super-optimized recommendations based on our needs. Remember what buying plane tickets was like when carriers weren’t incentivized to share pricing details or help consumers figure out different ways to fly somewhere while staying within a budget?
Kayak revolutionized the travel industry by transforming the experience for both customers and service providers. Kayak introduced a user-friendly interface with a metasearch engine that aggregated information from hundreds of travel sites. This allowed users to compare prices and options across multiple platforms without having to visit each site individually. Concurrently, Kayak provided valuable insights to airlines and hotels by tracking customer search behaviors and purchase intentions, allowing service providers to understand customer preferences and trends better. And with better access to real-time data and analytics, service providers could offer dynamic pricing. Ultimately, these changes created a more competitive environment where providers had to continuously innovate and optimize their services to attract and retain customers.
Now think bigger and more broadly.
Bionic customers will be able to fully see the Matrix thanks to always-on recommendations for action from AI-enhanced platforms, easily answering questions like:
- Which subscriptions should I keep given my usage and overall expenses?
- When and what should I sell if I need a down payment in 18 months?
- Given my work schedule, current family situation and finances, what should the itinerary and budget for our next three family vacations be?
- What percentage of my assets should I hold in cash and stock for the next 12 months based on our current household spend and how should I spread it around to maximize for safety?
- Should we stay in the city or move to the suburbs given the age of kids and the current job market?
Customers will make better choices all day, every day. Today, a customer may intend to dump your service for another company, but the amount of friction involved in fully researching competitors, calling customer service to switch accounts, or retaining counsel to claw back an erroneous charge might just feel like too much. So, they forget about it and move on.
Ultimately, I believe that decision support services will take the next big jump from just showing you choices to acting on those choices on your behalf. AI-enabled analysis and action agents will guide customers through their interactions with most providers overseeing basic functions in near real-time asking for input only when faced with higher stakes or unfamiliar patterns. We’re already seeing this in financial services.
Ultimately businesses whose models rely on information asymmetry and friction will lose customers until and unless they adapt to aligning their business model to supporting their customers’ personal interests.
How to Prepare for Bionic Consumers
Businesses both small and large need to adapt to serve consumers who are better equipped to take advantage of all benefits offered, who have fully read the T&C and can spot predatory behaviors, who are seamlessly able to change providers and get out of contracts without onerous paperwork, and who demand ethical behavior from the companies they choose to do business with.
Let’s explore what this could look like for money management. With AI, business could deeply understand you and your needs.
- All of the best rates across checking, savings, CDs and other short-term debt instruments.
- Your cash flow patterns, risk tolerance and how life events might change both.
- Your desire to buy a home within the next 24 months but lack of a plan.
Knowing this, your bank could then provide you with the best rates, recommendations, and a personalized plan to get you to the next step. Think private banking, but for the masses.
Staying competitive in the era of the bionic consumer will mean truly understanding the motivations of the customer, identifying and then helping to solve core problems, and implementing better CX to meet them where they are.
Loyalty will be key to maintaining a successful business. But how?
Conduct Better Discovery
Sensing and responding to evolving customer needs in a data-driven way before customers self-declare will help companies better understand their customers, their preferences, their needs and how to serve them better.
Build Customer Command Centers
Focus on “command center” strategies. Think about how your company/product/service can become the starting point in key areas of a customer’s life. This may mean looking at the spaces adjacent to where you believe you have permission today. For instance, a vitamin and supplement company building a health app to help their customers assess and track their energy levels and sleep patterns, then making recommendations based on data within the app. Become the trusted partner that your customers habitually turn to first in between transactions.
Investing in Trust
Build trust via radical transparency around data and business models and competitive pricing. This also means openly sharing how data is collected, used, and protected, as well as being upfront about costs and potential additional charges. Make it easy for customers to find the answers they need and what they’re looking for, and prioritize helping even if it means short-term loss for long-term gain. Loyalty will be tantamount in the age of the bionic consumer.
And that's just the beginning.
