Key Takeaways
- The majority of enterprise marketers say in a new study that they are “disconnected” from their AI strategies.
- The study categorizes businesses through its CX AI Maturity Index, through labels including Disconnected, Constrained, Unbalanced, and Orchestrated.
- To see the most success with AI, it needs to be integrated into systems to create connected customer journeys.
A significant number of enterprise marketers are approaching AI in a “disconnected” way, according to a new study.
Adobe Business categorized marketers based on their ability to scale and control customer experiences, through its CX AI Maturity Index. Enterprises were grouped as either Orchestrated, Constrained, Unbalanced, or Disconnected in their approach.
In order for businesses to get the most out of their AI use, they need to use it as part of connected, repeatable systems. Opting to organize clear ownership and shared governance is the best way forward.
Marketers Are Failing to Leverage AI in a Connected Way
68% of marketers are “disconnected” in their AI strategy, according to a new study from Adobe Business. Disconnected, in the study’s sense, is understood as AI being used to produce content and launch experience, but removed from a connected, repeatable system.
According to Adobe, this translates to a lack of clear ownership and shared governance. Similarly, risk and compliance are reactive, rather than proactive within an established system.
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Overall, the study concludes repeatable systems and shared ownership across teams is vital to AI’s marketing success.
Adobe Reveals CX AI Maturity Index
Adobe categorized enterprise marketers based on how effectively they have integrated their infrastructure at scale with AI. Marketers fell into the following ranks:
- Disconnected (low execution, low control): Operations like content, data, and journeys happen in silos, so there’s no consistent way to use AI to improve the customer experience. AI does exist, but only in isolated instances.
- Unbalanced (high execution, low control): Execution is scaling quickly, but is lacking the governance and controls needed to keep operations safe.
- Constrained (low execution, high control): The governance is in place to scale safely, but there is a lack of capabilities to deliver the right omnichannel experiences.
- Orchestrated (high execution, high control): Experiences are overall connected, controlled, and continuously optimized. AI is orchestrating experiences across channels at the individual customer level.
The majority of enterprises (68.3%) surveyed fell into the Disconnected category. Orchestrated enterprises (15.3%) were second, with Constrained (9.8%) and Unbalanced (6.6%) following.
The Index draws on 501 completed enterprise assessments and over 6,800 responses across 12 questions.
Repeatable AI Systems Ensure a Connected Customer Experience
Ultimately, businesses need to allow AI to integrate itself into their workflows if they’re to see real results. This means building systems around ownership, governance, and compliance. One individual using ChatGPT to write an email might save some time, but for real scalability, AI needs to be practically invisible.
The study found 64% of enterprise marketers cannot fully trace how their AI-driven content and decisions were generated. Likewise, customer journeys are described as equally siloed or partially coordinated for 74% of marketers.
Additionally, as AI poses serious threats to businesses if not properly governed, risk and compliance needs to be integrated into decision-making. Having it be purely reactive puts your business at risk.
