We’re capitulating to AI. But have we forgotten about people?
We have never had more information about our customers.
We know what they bought. What they browsed. What they clicked. What they opened. What they abandoned. When they bought it. How often they buy. What they are likely to buy next.
And now AI can make sense of all of it.
It can segment, predict, personalise, optimise and automate at a scale that would have been unimaginable a decade ago.
So why is some CRM starting to feel less personal, not more?
Because somewhere in the rush to make marketing smarter, we may have forgotten something rather fundamental.
Customers are people.
And people are not data points.
We are emotional, irrational, habitual, inconsistent and often completely unpredictable. We do not always buy the most relevant product. We do not always respond to the most personalised message. We do not necessarily want what an algorithm predicts we want.
Most importantly, what someone does is not necessarily why they did it.
AI is exceptionally good at recognising behaviour.
But recognising behaviour is not the same as understanding it.
And that distinction is becoming increasingly important in CRM.
When the data is right, but the human is wrong
Consider the post purchase journey.
You place an order online. Your parcel arrives. Within an hour, your inbox can contain an email asking you to review your purchase or tell the brand what you think.
Mecca, for example, can send a ‘Tried it? Tell us’ email remarkably soon after delivery. Vinomofo takes a more relaxed approach with its ‘Hey, how’d we do?’ email.
The data is right.
The parcel has been delivered.
But has the customer opened it? Tried the product? Used it properly? Decided whether they love it?
Probably not.
The technology has identified an event.
It has not necessarily understood the moment.
And then there are the reviews.
We are constantly being asked to review the products we buy.
How did we find it? How would we rate it? Would we recommend it? Tell us what you think.
On the surface, it sounds like the brand wants to hear from us.
But increasingly, it can feel like what the brand really wants is for us to make it look good.
Give us five stars.
Tell us you love it.
Tell everyone else how great we are.
The brand gets valuable customer insight, social proof, content and data that can ultimately help drive another sale.
But what does the customer get in return?
Sometimes, nothing.
And that is where the relationship starts to feel less like a relationship and more like an extraction model.
We give brands our attention, our data, our preferences, our feedback and our purchasing behaviour.
But personalisation should not simply be about a brand knowing more about me so it can sell more to me.
It should be about the brand using what it knows to make my experience better.
Then there is the constant pressure to convert.
Visit a website and before you have even had time to read the headline, a pop up can take over the entire screen offering you 10% off your first order.
You haven't decided whether you like the brand.
You haven't read the proposition.
You haven't looked at the product.
But the brand has already decided that the next best action is to get you to buy.
And once you do buy, the relationship can become a relentless sequence of triggers.
Purchase made.
Review requested.
Offer served.
Email sent.
Another offer.
Another email.
Every interaction creates another opportunity to convert.
But somewhere along the way, the customer experience becomes secondary to the conversion opportunity. The question we should be asking more often is what would a human being actually appreciate right now?
We are confusing behaviour with intent
This is where CRM risks becoming dangerously reductionist.
A customer buys something, so we assume they are ready to buy again.
A customer opens an email, so we assume they are interested.
A customer clicks on a product, so we assume they want it.
A customer gives us their email address, so we assume they want to hear from us every day.
But behaviour is not intent.
A purchase can simply be a purchase.
A click can simply be curiosity.
An email open can simply be an interesting subject line.
Human behaviour is a nonlinear mess.
It is shaped by emotion, memory, habit, context, culture, social influence, salience and countless other factors that cannot always be neatly translated into the next best action.
And this is where marketers need to be careful.
AI can tell us what happened. It can help us predict what might happen next. But it does not absolve us from understanding why.
This isn't an argument against AI. It is an argument against confusing technological capability with customer understanding.
The irony of intelligent CRM
There is an irony here.
We are building increasingly sophisticated systems to make our communications feel more personal, while some of those communications are making brands feel less human.
The more we optimise every interaction, the more predictable the experience can become.
Order delivered.
Review requested.
Purchase made.
Offer served.
Email captured.
Newsletter activated.
Click detected.
Next message triggered.
Everything is optimised.
Nothing is necessarily considered.
Perhaps the question we should be asking more often is what would a human being actually appreciate right now?
Sometimes the answer will be an offer.
Sometimes it will be a perfectly timed recommendation.
Sometimes it will be a genuinely useful piece of content.
And sometimes, the smartest thing a brand can do is nothing at all.
Let the customer enjoy the purchase.
Give them time to experience the product.
Let curiosity become intent.
Let the relationship develop.
Because relevance is not simply about delivering the right message.
It is about knowing when the message is right.
AI gives marketers an extraordinary ability to understand patterns of behaviour.
But the brands that win will not necessarily be those with the most sophisticated algorithms.
They will be the ones that use those algorithms without forgetting the most important data point of all.
You.