At SIGNAL 2023, Twilio introduced new CustomerAI solutions to harness the potential of AI for businesses. The solutions include new AI tools for prediction and content generation and enhancements to Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) that support various impactful AI applications.
“Today we are announcing a slate of new CustomerAI capabilities that make AI more accessible, powering dynamic customer engagement that adapts to every individual customer. Getting smarter and more tailored all the time, every interaction creates new data and signals, and every new signal then cycles back around to inform the next AI-powered communication. This flywheel creates precise 1:1 personalization that ensures each unique customer is taken care of, in turn accelerating competitive advantage and business results for brands by boosting customer satisfaction and long-term loyalty,” said Kathryn Murphy, SVP of Product at Twilio.
Through CustomerAI, brands can broaden their comprehension of customer data, leverage it more comprehensively, and gain enhanced insights from a deeper understanding. The SIGNAL 2023 announcements include:
CustomerAI Predictions and Voice Intelligence
With CustomerAI Predictions, Twilio is making predictive AI readily accessible to marketers. This means that without needing technical support, marketers can effortlessly create highly targeted audience segments, initiate customer journeys, and tailor multi-channel experiences based on factors such as a customer's lifetime value, likelihood to make a purchase, or propensity to churn, among others – all of which are tracked through Segment's real-time data.
Through Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Voice Intelligence can identify trends such as common feedback, competitive insights, and compliance risks within voice data. Twilio Flex and Voice customers can also effectively handle regulatory requirements by automatically redacting personal information (PII).
During the beta testing phase, one organization reported a 21% improvement in lead attribution management margins, thanks to streamlined processes and reduced human errors facilitated by Voice Intelligence.
Generative AI Tools to Activate Customer Data and Adaptive Engagement
Twilio unveiled generative AI capabilities within Twilio Engage and Segment, offering marketers the opportunity to save valuable time, enhance productivity, and optimize their efforts for better results.
For instance, Twilio Engage will soon feature the CustomerAI Generative Email design, allowing marketers to input simple text prompts that will be transformed into HTML code within seconds. This builds upon Twilio Engage's existing AI capabilities, including Smart Headlines, the Smart Image Generator, and Smart Buttons, which suggest the most effective content for conversion.
Furthermore, marketers will no longer need to manually design customer journeys, with the help of CustomerAI Generative Journeys. Marketers will simply describe the campaign type (e.g., promotional, win-back), define the target audience, specify preferred communication channels, and Twilio Engage will automatically construct the entire customer journey.
Generative AI capabilities are extending to Twilio Flex, as previously disclosed in collaboration with Google Cloud. For instance, Flex users will soon have access to CustomerAI Agent Assist, which will provide customized recommendations to contact center agents. These recommendations will guide agents on the "next best actions" to take when interacting with specific customers. Additionally, Agent Assist will offer AI-generated concise summaries to expedite the call wrap-up process.
Segment B2B Edition and Zero Copy Architecture
Twilio's latest offering, Segment B2B Edition with Linked Profiles, enables businesses to establish connections across all their customer data within an expanded data network.
While Segment has always been adept at consolidating data into unified customer profiles, many organizations also possess business-related datasets, such as company accounts, subscriptions, product information, and household data, stored in their data warehouses. With Linked Profiles, companies can create a comprehensive network of relationships linking customer interactions, experiences, and profiles with these additional datasets.
This enhanced visibility across data, interconnected with each customer, helps companies train AI models, develop advanced segmentation, and fuel cutting-edge personalized recommendations and marketing efforts across various communication channels.
Zero Copy Architecture
Twilio is introducing Zero Copy Architecture in collaboration with Databricks and Snowflake, designed to assist businesses in preparing their data infrastructure for AI applications. With these new capabilities, customers can directly perform query processing within their data warehouse or data platform, eliminating the need for data duplication and additional ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) processes. This results in more timely, secure, and precise insights while also reducing redundancy and the complexity of managing data pipelines.
Zero Copy, an extension of Twilio's Customer Data Platform (CDP), provides a fresh approach to data ingestion and accessibility. For AI models developed within the data warehouse, the Zero Copy "Data Sharing" technology simplifies the process of activating these models in downstream applications. Additionally, Twilio Engage and Twilio Flex users will experience accelerated and simplified onboarding of customer data into these applications.
