Scoring New Customers

News today that OpenAI is going to integrate discovery and payments within a chatbot should excite you and terrify you (click here).

I think carefully and often about what my role needs to be over the next five years. That role becomes clearer by the day. 

• I have to be the person who tells you if the new customers you acquire via technology are acceptable or not.
• I have to be the person who understands the intersection of technology and the merchandise you offer. In other words, I don't have to understand the technology ... I have to demonstrate to you how technology is impacting your business. When a new customer purchases some obscure item that is recommended by technology, I have to show you how your business is impacted going forward.

In upcoming posts, I'll talk about Scoring New Customers. I'll have to come up with a better name ... maybe you have one for me? Regardless, this intersection of technology/merchandise/channels is going to play out in a familiar manner, and somebody needs to be there to show you how every customer you acquire, every day, will change the future trajectory of your business. When I say this is going to play out in a familiar manner, I have the receipts ... when e-commerce took over from old-school catalog marketing, the old-school pundits told you to be "omnichannel", to do everything ... which meant you kept doing the old-school stuff that old-school pundits needed you to keep doing.

• How do you think old-school e-commerce professionals are going to respond to integrated discovery/payments within AI?

I see this gaping hole in the marketplace where "somebody" is going to have to explain the impact of AI-style decisions on your customer file. Example ... a business used AI to reactivate customers, but the reactivated customers were "different" than the typical customer. This changes what the brand needs to feature to these customers going forward.

For me, this is going to be SO MUCH FUN!

For you, you'll have to have this knowledge, you'll have to be smarter than the Lemonheads who blindly adhere to binding AI to the old-school e-commerce platform.