The $15 Trillion Industry Seeking Unification in the Cloud

By Yaniv Masjedi

As makers of cloud communications technologies look to provide the best solutions, one of the most important steps is to focus on the unique needs of different sectors. So our team at Nextiva keeps an eye on the latest research.

A new study zeroes in on a huge industry: fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). It finds what these companies need in a business communications platform, and why many current offerings aren’t achieving the needed results. Fortunately, the solution is clear.

The FMCG market is valued at $15.4 trillion, and projected to exceed $21 trillion by 2033, S&S Insider reports. It includes a range of goods, from food and beverages to personal care, household products, and more.

As Investopedia explains, FMCGs are sold quickly and have high turnover. Companies in this space generally operate on small margins, and count on high volume to drive profitability.

What does it take for a company to win over customers so that they repeat purchases quickly or add new ones to their shopping list? The best possible customer experience.

Unified Customer Experience Management

Today’s customers want a single, consistent experience with any brand, no matter what touchpoint they’re using. Whether they’re communicating via an app, messaging a chatbot, or speaking with a human, they want the brand to know them and appreciate their business.

AI-powered platforms can make this happen. Unfortunately, “Many FMCG companies operate legacy systems that may not be fully compatible with modern AI technologies,” researcher Janice Abeykoon writes in the International Journal of Research in Commerce and Management Studies. “The lack of integration between AI systems and existing CRM tools can lead to data silos, inefficient workflows, and inconsistent customer experiences.”

“One of the main challenges of multichannel marketing is maintaining a unified customer experience across different platforms,” she adds. “AI solves this problem by using customer data to track interactions across channels and deliver personalized content based on the customer's journey.”

This is why a unified customer experience management (UCXM) platform is essential. It automatically pulls together every piece of information a company has about each customer, creating a single record. It uses AI to provide the most important insights at a glance. And it recommends actions for how to satisfy each customer, based on the customer’s journey and records of other customers with similar issues.

Experience has shown me what a huge difference this makes. In one case, Nextiva worked with a conglomerate that operates several wildly successful global brands in the consumer goods space. With more than 50 support channels and customers spread out across multiple countries, the company struggled to keep up with customer communications.

By providing the right solution, we streamlined the experience for their customers, filtered out spam messages slowing down their team, and eliminated tedious busywork so the company could focus on delivering the best customer experience (CX). The operations transformed, and metrics skyrocketed.

Immediate responses every time

Successful CX is also about speed. In this era of instant consumer gratification, customers understandably expect an immediate response from a company on any channel. So in addition to having chatbots respond on digital platforms, brands need to answer phone calls with no delay. Every missed call costs the company -- not just in the moment, but through lost future purchases as well.

An AI receptionist is a new necessity, whether as a primary mechanism for taking calls or as a backup when humans are tied up with other tasks. Either way, it should be designed to alert human agents when they’re needed to step in.

And, crucially, the agentic AI should be knowledgeable, helpful and empathetic. “Empirical findings suggest that perceived AI technology attributes, namely, perceived usefulness, ease of use, anthropomorphism, intelligence, animacy and attitudes toward AI have a significant positive influence on consumer purchase intention for FMCGs,” says research published by the European Journal of Management Studies.

The benefits of a UCXM also apply at brick-and-mortar locations. We’ve worked with consumer goods companies to provide consistent customer experiences in person and online. And the benefits apply to brands that sell products at all price points, from the most affordable to high-end luxury.

That's because no matter what they’re paying for, customers want the best experiences they can possibly have. UCXM keeps them coming back for more.