#120 Strategies for Integrating AI in CXM from a Marketing Legend

When you think of combinations who comes to mind?

👉 Jobs and Wozniak?

👉 Proctor and Gamble?

👉 Hewlett and Packard?

When it comes to customer experience and one-to-one marketing, hands down, it's Don Peppers and Martha Rogers. They are the individuals behind the Peppers and Rogers brand.

Don has authored or co-authored eleven different business books, collectively selling more than a million copies in 18 languages. 

In 2022 Peppers and Rogers released the greatly revised and updated Fourth Edition of their graduate-level textbook and desk reference, Managing Customer Experience & Relationships (Wiley, 2022).

I had the chance to pick Don's brain about the intersection of AI and customer experience management. It was a lesson in how to think about the value customers expect and the value companies desire.

There were so many powerful insights including:

👉 Transforming Customer Interactions with AI:

Don highlighted how AI, especially generative AI, can revolutionize real-time, individualized customer interactions by analyzing emotional sentiment and providing empathetic, immediate responses.

👉 Rethink Success Metrics:

Don emphasized the importance of measuring success through customer-centric metrics like customer lifetime value (CLV) and proposed the innovative concept of 'Return on Customer (ROC)' as a more accurate gauge of business performance over traditional Return on Investment (ROI).

👉 Fostering Trust for Long-term Value:

A significant part of his message was about building trust with customers. Don stressed that maximizing customer value inherently requires businesses to always act in their customers’ best interest, nurturing trust and long-term relationships.

Don's vision and experience provide a roadmap for leveraging AI in creating truly personalized customer experiences. For more pearls of wisdom from Don Peppers, tune into the full episode of the Delighted Customers Podcast!

Meet Don Peppers

During the course of his career, Don has authored or co-authored eleven different business books, collectively selling more than a million copies in 18 languages. 

His first book, The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time (Doubleday, 1993), coauthored with business partner Martha Rogers, kick-started the Customer Relationship Management discipline (“CRM”), which has evolved over the years into the “customer experience” field. 

This is near and dear to my heart because I’ve had the blessing to teach customer relationship management at Michigan State in the first CXM Masters Degree program in North America.  

So you’ll have to understand, this is an extra special episode for me. To have the Tom Brady, the Wayne Gretzky, the Babe Ruth, and the Michael Jordan the GOAT on the show is a big deal.

Finally, In 2013 Don and Martha were inducted into the Data & Marketing Association’s Hall of Fame, along with their business colleague Seth Godin (Don wrote the foreword for Godin’s 1998 breakthrough book Permission Marketing). 

In 2022 Peppers and Rogers released the greatly revised and updated Fourth Edition of their graduate-level textbook and desk reference, Managing Customer Experience & Relationships (Wiley, 2022). As an Adjunct Professor of Marketing at Menlo College, Don teaches from this very textbook, and when time permits he Harvard Business Review articles:

• World Class Bull (May 2009), an HBR Case Study commentary, with Martha Rogers

• Is Your Company Ready for One-to-One Marketing? (Jan-Feb 1999), with Martha Rogers and Bob Dorf

• Do You Want to Keep Your Customers Forever? (Mar-Apr 1995), with Martha Rogers and B. Joseph Pine II