Editor’s Note:
In case you missed the news, it’s Data Privacy Week. See why we’re making such a big deal over it below, a very solid case for NOT pulling back on your CX initiatives, If you’re experiencing CDP woes you’re not alone, and finally a (weird) solution for Zoom fatigue.
– Mike Giambattista, Editor in Chief 
FEATURE: Growing Retail Loyalty via Sustainability Discounts
As retailers struggle to retain sales volumes amid heightened inflation and a prolonged recession, innovating customer loyalty offerings may offer a key opportunity to retain consumer support. A new study has shown that a majority of consumers across all ages believe that they should be rewarded for sustainable consumption choices. Read more …
Data Privacy 1
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week, a T-Mobile executive wrote that the “bad actor” — who may have acted alone, or might be connected to a larger group — used an application programming interface (API) to access some customer data in a way that went beyond what the company intended. Simply put, APIs allow developers to access certain parts of another website or service when they’re building out their own applications.
Data Privacy 2
Lessons Learned from the Latest Third-Party Breach of Uber Data. Lesson #1: Third-party risks will continue. As long as we are building software using APIs, we will encounter third-party risks. APIs are an integral part of building applications in the cloud so we will always rely upon them in some way until there’s another fundamental shift in IT architecture. According to 2022 IBM research, almost half of all data breaches happened in the cloud. The lesson here: we must build applications with a zero-trust strategy at their core so guardrails are in place to protect from third-party risk.
CX
CX May Not be Top of Mind, but it Should Be. Some 71% of CX decision-makers worldwide say that a broken customer service experience damages a company’s ability to generate revenues (per Forrester Consulting), but less than half (48%) of US executives plan to invest in it this year, according to an August 2022 PwC survey. Instead, the majority of executives will invest in digital transformation, IT, and cybersecurity and privacy. Though these areas may be more time-sensitive, it’s important that leaders recognize how important CX can be to staying in the black.
AI
AI says AI is Now an Expectation. Suzy used ChatGPT, the revolutionary language model developed by OpenAI, to analyze responses from a diverse group of consumers about AI and output the report. With ChatGPT, Suzy also analyzed consumer attitudes around pricing sensitivity and consumer willingness to pay for AI tools. Suzy’s survey revealed that: 35% of consumers are aware of AI tools and most familiar with Grammarly, ChatGPT, and DALL-E. 37% of AI users would likely purchase an AI tool like ChatGPT..78% of AI users would be upset if they were no longer able to use an AI tool.
CDPs
Despite all the buzz and potential customer data platforms (CDPs) may offer brands looking to modernize their customer experiences, more than one-third of deployed CDPs deliver little to no value, according to the CDP Institute’s 2022 member survey. A primary reason for that low success rate is the tension between marketing and technical teams. Marketers are looking for functionality and ease of use, while IT and data teams are focused on efficiency and data security.
Didn’t see that coming …
You want to look at the camera, but it feels unnatural to look at essentially nothing, so then you look at the screen to see the person talking, but now it looks like you are looking away. If you’re like me, you end up trying to get as close to the webcam as possible to make it look natural – but what if AI could do it all for you? NVIDIA’s new Eye Contact AI can supposedly do just that, by using artificial intelligence to make it seem as though you are always looking at the camera, even when you aren’t.
