Using generative AI to accelerate product innovation – IBM Blog

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) can be a powerful tool for driving product innovation, if used in the right ways. We’ll discuss select high-impact product use cases that demonstrate the potential of AI to revolutionize the way we develop, market and deliver products to customers. Stacking strong data management, predictive analytics and GenAI is foundational to taking your product organization to the next level.  

1. Addressing customer inquiries with an AI-driven chatbot 

ChatGPT distinguished itself as the first publicly accessible GenAI-powered virtual chatbot. Now, enterprises can adopt the foundational principles of this technology and apply them within their operations, further enriched by contextualization and security. With IBM watsonx™ Assistant, companies can build large language models and train them using proprietary information, all while helping to ensure the security of their data.  

Conversational AI solutions can have several product applications that drive revenue and improve customer experience. For instance, an intelligent chatbot can address common customer concerns regarding bill explanations. When customers seek explanations for their bills, a GenAI-powered chatbot can provide them with detailed explanations, including transaction logs for usage and overage charges.  

It can also provide new product packages or contract terms that align with a customer’s past usage needs, identifying new revenue opportunities and improving customer satisfaction. Businesses that use IBM watsonx Assistant can expect to see a 30% reduction in customer support costs and a 20% increase in customer satisfaction.  

2. Accelerating product modernization 

GenAI has the power to automate manual product modernization processes. GenAI technologies can survey publicly available sources, such as press releases, to collect competitor data and compare the current product mix to competitor offerings. It can also gain an understanding of market advantages and suggest strategic product changes. These new insights can be realized at greater speeds than ever before. 

A key benefit of GenAI is its ability to generate code. Now, a business user can use GenAI tools to develop preliminary code for new product features without as much reliance on technical teams. These same tools can analyze code and identify and fix bugs in the code to reduce testing efforts.  

GenAI solutions such as IBM watsonx™ Code Assistant meet the core technical needs of enterprises. Watsonx Code Assistant can help enterprises achieve a 30% reduction in development effort or a 30% productivity gain. These tools have the potential to revolutionize technical processes and increase the speed of technical product delivery. 

3. Analyzing customer behavior for tailored product recommendations 

With the power of predictive analytics and GenAI, businesses can understand when specific customers are best suited for new products, receive suggestions for the appropriate products, and receive suggested next steps for engaging with the client. For example, if a customer undergoes a major business change such as an acquisition, predictive models trained on previous transactions can analyze the potential need for new products.  

GenAI can then suggest upselling opportunities and write an email to the customer, to be reviewed by the salesperson. This empowers sales teams to increase speed to value while offering customers top-tier service. Using IBM® watsonx.data™, enterprise data can be prepared for various analytical and AI use cases. 

4. Analyzing customer feedback to inform business strategy 

Enterprises have the opportunity to use GenAI to improve customer experience by more readily actioning customer feedback. Through IBM® watsonx.ai™, various industry-leading models are available for different types of summarization. This technology can quickly interpret and summarize large volumes of customer feedback.  

It can then provide suggested product improvements with fleshed-out requirements and user stories, accelerating the speed of responsiveness and innovation. GenAI can pull themes from feedback from lost customers to illuminate trends, suggest new sales strategies, and arm sales teams with business intelligence and pre-scripted follow-ups. 

5. Applying customer segmentation for intelligent marketing 

GenAI has the potential to revolutionize digital marketing by increasing the speed, effectiveness and personalization of marketing processes. Using standard data analytics practices, businesses can identify patterns and clusters within data to enable more accurate targeting of customers.  

Once the clusters are created, GenAI can power automated content creation processes that reach specific customer groups across various platforms. IBM watsonx™ Orchestrate enables the user to automate daily tasks and increase productivity. This tool can create content, connect to different platforms, and send out updates across them at the drop of a hat, saving marketing teams time and money as they deliver solutions.  

This content creation and customer outreach ability is the key differentiator of generative AI and part of what makes these new technologies so exciting. GenAI can take expensive, manual marketing processes and translate them into accelerated, automated processes. 

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