Technologies like Affective computing (Affective computing is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognize, interpret, process, and simulate human affects. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer science, psychology, and cognitive science) or Emotion AI ( Artificial Emotional Intelligence, is one of the emerging areas of Artificial Intelligence where machines study non- verbal cues of humans like body language, facial expressions, gestures, and tonality of voice to detect their emotional state) can bring in a paradigm shift in experience by combining data driven experiences embodying the latest techniques in Human Centered Design (HCD) inspiring deep emotional connections with products and brands, which in turn can drive loyalty and business growth.
Operational customer experience at scale requires contextually relevant content, which is the major touch point for a brand to engage with customer. Brands earn higher lifetime value by presenting serendipity moments to their customers through relevant content. Marketers leverage content, the familiar frontier of AI, to deliver the experience. Empathetic, contextualized response strengthens emotional bond.
Example is of AI driven apps designing custom drinks and fragrances for fashion- show attendees based on emotional quotient (EQ) inputs. These apps factored mood of the attendees, their stress levels based on responses to questions to then create custom drinks and perfumes that matched their context and sentiment. Humans are complex emotional beings, so an inherent challenge in such cases is to distinguish between conscious demonstrated emotions and unconscious hidden sentiments. Same is true for many cognitive bots these days which are getting closer to human like interactions thanks to a combination of voice and tone recognition, facial expression recognition resulting in emotion detection and subsequent action. Their effectiveness is good as long as the demonstrated emotion is consistent with true customer sentiment.