"Customers are now expecting highly personalised, seamless, and efficient interactions across all the touch points,” stated Rahul Sareen, the Senior Leader–Cross Industry, Private Equity and Startups Solutions at Amazon Web Services (AWS). Sareen’s statement represents the state of customer experience (CX) today. 

It’s a demand that is forcing businesses to completely rethink how they engage with customers.

In the recent episode of the Don’t Panic It’s Just Data podcast, John Santaferraro, CEO and Head Research Analyst at Ferraro Consulting, speaks to Gary Class, Industry Strategist, Financial Services at Teradata and Sareen. They discussed how data, AI, and hyper-personalisation are reshaping customer experience (CX). 

The time of one-size-fits-all customer service is long over. Sareen emphasises this change by quoting Jeff Bezos: "If you have 4.5 million customers, then you cannot just build one store. You have to build 4.5 million stores." 

This isn't just about dividing customers into groups; it’s about providing a truly unique and personal experience for each person. 

How AI is Enhancing Customer Experience (CX)

Alluding to the use of gen AI and AI agents in customer experience (CX), Class highlights a key application of AI – analysing unstructured data. He says, “The one time that customers tell you what they really want and need, it's on the phone." 

By "grafting the unstructured data analysed through speech and text onto the structured data," businesses get equipped with rich insights on untapped possibilities. Overall, it also provides a 360-degree preview of the customer experience (CX), which allows for increased proactive and custom developments.

AI agents are set to take hyper-personalisation to new heights, the podcast guests believe. Alluding to the pros, Sareen points to their "predictive and proactive nature," which lets AI agents "identify and resolve issues before even customers are aware of them." 

Imagine a situation where a device automatically finds a problem, starts a support case, identifies a solution, and even applies a fix—all in real-time and without any input from the customer. Sareen calls this the "Nirvana state" of AI-driven customer service. It promises a smooth and genuinely smart experience.

Unified Platform for Simplified Quality Data

Simplifying how we manage raw data and turn it into quality data in a single system is critical for meeting the needs of AI in customer experience (CX).

This is where Teradata comes in. Class says the company’s approach centres on "harvesting all the data that you can collect in a conformed and harmonised framework." Their strategy includes providing industry-specific data models and leveraging the "capacity of a relational database engine that can deal with complexity at...