The Future of Connection: How Businesses Can Use AI to Grow Better

Looking Ahead to the Future of Connection

Only 50% of Australian business leaders, and 33% of Singaporean business leaders, feel that their organisation is more effective than competitors at connecting with prospects and customers. This means business as usual isn’t leaving leaders feeling confident — so there’s a huge opportunity for companies to invest in the future by prioritising true connection. 

In order to keep winning and keep growing, businesses will need to radically rethink the prospect and customer experience. The number of touchpoints matters less than it used to — it’s the depth of those connections that matter more. 

“Companies are struggling with unprecedented disconnection from their customers and each other, compounded by disconnected systems. They’re grasping for growth. Their revenue is unpredictable. Their flywheel is stalled. Their teams are burnt out,” shared Yamini Rangan, HubSpot CEO. She continued:

“It’s time to evolve. Companies can’t continue relying on broken data, broken processes, and broken strategies. The only way to solve this crisis is to adapt and find new ways to grow.”

The future of good Customer Experience is in connected experiences, so it’s time to focus on driving memorable, connected customer experiences. Perhaps ironically, one of the best things a company can do to prioritise human connection is to test into AI tools — we’ll explain.

Implement AI and Automation Tools to Help Customer-Facing Teams Get Back to 1:1 Connections

Currently, only 40% of GTM teams in Australia and 41% in Singapore feel they can effectively connect with prospects. And in customer care, it’s about the same: Only 39% of Australian customer success teams, and 38% in Singapore, are happy with how they’re able to connect. Why? They’re just inundated with other work. 

Only around 40% of customer-facing teams are effectively connecting with customers and prospects

Instead of connecting, they’re busy wrangling calendars, cross-checking, syncing, and cleaning data, wrangling dashboards, and doing manual tasks that take them away from customer-facing interactions. 

But AI tools can automate much of the manual, repetitive stuff and give teams hours back every day to actually spend connecting with customers and prospects. With tech doing the heavy lifting, sales and CS reps can take the time to learn more about customers, and close deals or fix issues with nuanced, tailored conversation. 

That’s why 56% of business leaders in Singapore, and 39% in Australia, believe AI is a game-changer for go-to-market teams and will increase efficiency, productivity and revenue. Only around a third of leaders in both regions feel that the negatives of AI outweigh the positives, or that AI has too many limitations and is over-hyped.

AI is also enabling APAC teams to become more effective, not just efficient. More than 70% of marketers in Australia and Singapore are using generative AI tools to make their content more personalised. And around 70% of sales professionals in APAC have found that using AI tools has improved their prospecting response rates. 

How are companies using AI and automation to improve personalisation and connection?

At Spenmo, the customer success team has overhauled their process and implemented widespread segmentation and automation — leading to a 30% productivity increase for sales, marketing, and customer success, and 1300% growth in new visitor sessions in 8 months. “The Customer Success team can now create customer pipelines per country, which has given much visibility into the process. We can now track CSM performance across the company, which has helped the marketing team create informed campaigns and nurture leads for the sales team.”

“The CSM team has also set up onboarding and customer engagement sequences to automate the process, which has increased productivity by up to 20%”, shared Calvin Ng, Customer Success Lead at Spenmo.

But it’s not just buzzy startups testing into AI — even hundred-year-old brands like Woolworths are harnessing the power of this tech. Woolworth’s launched a smart search and service feature, called Olive, that’s built on conversational AI. “The customer simply says ‘the oranges are missing from my order’. Olive then cross-checks, processes a refund and sends a text confirmation to the customer – all without human intervention,” shared Alex Colorado, Engineering Manager at Woolworths.

Key Takeaways 

Disconnection, in its many forms, is a societal problem — and we’re all only just starting to reckon with it. 

After such an unpredictable few years, businesses are at a crossroads: keep going full steam ahead, with a more-is-more approach that creates more noise than value — or slow down, take stock of what isn’t working internally, and find out which strategies actually reach your community.

To us, it’s a no-brainer. Prioritising customer connection and providing an exceptional customer experience is the way to future-proof your business. 

"The most successful [businesses] recognise how critical big-picture thinking is to enhance the customer journey,”  said Kat Warboys, head of Marketing for HubSpot APAC. “They're deliberate about mapping out and deeply understanding their customers' journeys, from the first touchpoint with their brand, to repeat business." 

“Your customer experience sets you apart. The saying reigns true – it is not what you sell but how you sell.”

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Methodology

We asked 1,021 Australians and 1,022 Singaporeans about their experiences as consumers over the past few years to dig into what’s changed. Then, we looked at the perspectives of 525 Australian business leaders, and 250+ business leaders in Singapore, getting their takes on their experiences as both business leaders and B2B buyers to get the full picture.