Simply Speaking: The New AIxperience - CX in an AI-first era

“True wisdom is to know the extent of what you don't know quite as well as you know what you do know.” ⁃ Gore Vidal

If only idiots could understand. Idiots dictate metrics to expect magic from marketing. I’m saying ‘idiot’ not as a pejorative but to indicate lack not comprehension.

When someone doesn’t understand yet decides, he is setting himself up to be an idiot. There are enough idiots in charge. And they create consequences that drive them onwards to being even bigger idiots.

Marketing management usually maps the ideal customer journey like a straight path from first touch to final sale. But AI is confirming what we long ignored namely that people don’t move in a straight line.

Among the toughest thing is to ignore the urge to make things more complex. I have seen how tempting it is for management when they are talking about AI and customer journeys to move towards greater complexity.

This has to be resisted because we end up with a hydra headed monster and lots of content that has to be managed, but ultimately does not serve the needs of the organisation or the end users. There is a cost to complexity which idiots don’t understand.

Let’s recognise the reality that the old funnel is broken. Now, customers jump in midstream, loop back, and hand off decisions to others (including digital assistants!), they hybridise physical and digital, flip between screens and drop off only to reemerge with newer contextual realities.

From Control to Trust

We’re now in the era of co-created experiences, where brands must shift from rigid rules to responsive logic. It’s suboptimal to think of AI for automation alone. That’s not intelligence , it’s mere acceleration.

We must think of AI for CX in a liberating sense. Stop forcing fixed funnels and start asking “What does this person need right now?”

The best brands won’t predict.

They’ll adapt.

Seamlessly.

Empathetically.

Instantly.

To create magic, you need rigour. You can’t just jump to flashy AI outputs without the groundwork of data, planning, and discipline. There’s no magic without method.

Humans will still guide the strategy, but the heavy lifting, the tasks many of us built our careers on, will increasingly be done faster and smarter by machines.

Until recently, most experiences focused on self-serve with good design and good content. But in many industries, a guided journey is now a game changer.

Thanks to DXPs and data-driven tech, true personalization has become possible. Today, we design for one user which is the human. Soon, we’ll design for two: the human and their digital agent.

We’ll need to ask: What does each need? What’s for the person, and what’s for the AI working quietly behind the scenes?

CX can no longer be imagined or designed for a single user or a single channel or a single moment. It has to be thought of as multi-modal. Firstly, AI makes actionable iteration. A possibility where consumer engagement is concerned. Secondly, omni channel was the high Marc for digital experience.

But compatibility across devices is only hygiene now. The brand has to build connection across every mode of interaction. This means text, image, audio, video and immersive reality.

Google’s project Astra and GPT-4o clearly illustrate that AI is capable of interpreting, reflexively, responding and managing multi model inputs in real time. It can understand imagery, video and voice simultaneously.

This shift transforms brand communication and static will be old world where Digital is concerned.

The AI enabled engagement is all about senses and engagements merging across all devices. It is also a truth that new consumers prefer conversation ability and are in tune with visual, intuitive discovery rather than text will search.

In diverse area of categories where look, feel, style, context, and harmony matters much more than description, this will prove to be in valuable.

Digital code work happens on isolated projects. Conventional digital marketing was about reaching customers who ,on average, were less digitally savvy than the marketers. The tables have turned. Now the need is for dynamic ecosystems that can continuously adopt, adapt and improve, and this means digital marketers are often playing catch-up with customers.

Rather than running disconnected projects, all business teams have to engage with data through a data platform which then informs innovation and ideation across the organisation. Therefore, no matter how sharp the digital marketing team is, next level of transformation can only come through collective adoption.

From concentric circles to interlocking loops

Brands that win in the new environment will focus on building systems that foster and enable continuous connection. Earlier the customer was in the outermost circle and all things were generated inside out. In the interlocking experience loops, every interaction provides intelligence back into the ecosystem. improving all the other loops and their touch points simultaneously and automatically.

If it seems at all order, smart design and technology can help.

1. AI pilots have to be small and learn to scale

Rather than launching grand, sweeping projects that attempt to transform entire business systems overnight, this mindset encourages organizations to begin with focused, narrow applications of AI. A small pilot is easier to manage, faster to implement, and less costly to refine. It allows for rapid testing of assumptions, clear definition of success metrics, and the ability to learn from both the technology and the organization’s response to it.

However, success in a small pilot is only the beginning. The second half of the idea—“learn to scale”—is what turns experimentation into transformation. Pilots that succeed must be designed with scalability in mind. This means thinking about how the solution will adapt to new datasets, integrate with existing systems, meet compliance and governance standards, and remain reliable under pressure. Scaling also involves cultural and structural readiness: training users, aligning cross-functional teams, and creating feedback mechanisms that improve the system over time.

2.Data is the foundation of all the Magic

Proprietary data is more precious than anything else in the organisation. Loyal customers who gives you continuous engagement data sets are worth their weight in gold as they will help to deliver capability of building unique experiences and highly customised products that others will then struggle to match. This is the new road to differentiation.

3.Without feedback in the loop, all data will stagnate and begin to impact productivity. Every interaction, external and internal must help with feedback

If done well, a smarter, more engaged and more responsive brand will emerge. It will be an environment where trust will deepen, personalisation on scale will be sharp and the brand associations will strengthen alongside customer relationships without any loss of authenticity.

For those idiots that don’t get it, AI will only scale up and accelerate their mess.

Don’t be an idiot.

Shubhranshu Singh is a marketer and business leader currently CMO at Tata Motors. He was honoured as one of the 50 most influential global CMOs for 2025 by Forbes and serves on the board of the Effie LIONS foundation. He writes a column “Simply Speaking” for Storyboard 18. Opinions are personal.

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