The End Of Consumer Inertia

Jeannie Walters 0:00

Let's be honest. A lot of business models run on one secret ingredient. Customers who simply can't be bothered. The gym membership maybe you forgot about or you keep intending to cancel. Oops. The streaming service you meant to cancel back in March, or the free trial that ultimately became a line item on your budget. We've all been there as customers. Now, as brands, we have to consider how the world is changing. And how while Wall Street has a polite word for this, calling it consumer inertia, we all know it as I'll get to that later. Later just showed up and its name is Muse. And it does not get tired, distracted, bored, or get lost in cat videos. It stays on task no matter what the goal is. Meta's new personal AI agent can read your customer's email. It can check their card statements, compare prices, and even cancel that subscription they've been meaning to do all before lunch.

Jeannie Walters 1:27

This is not a robots are coming episode. We've done a lot of those. This is really about why Muse is changing the game. Now there are other AI agents out there, but none have received the attention and adoption of Muse in the short time it has. Muse hit number one on both the Apple App Store and Google Play and reached 560,000 daily active users in 11 days. That's according to Yahoo Finance. And a fun detail, you can actually name your agent. That's one of the first things it asks you to do. So I'm thinking I should probably go with something like Gator for Investigator. Yeah, there's a big groan there. I know. And Mark Zuckerberg at the Metaconnect show actually showed off the Muse Charm, which literally is like a Tamagotchi, if you remember those. So it's a little device you can talk to without unlocking your phone. I thought this was really interesting because one of the things that we assume in today's world is that our customers will interact with our brands via their mobile devices. But what if we are skipping that step? Now, I'm not sure if this will be one of those ideas that catches on or not. It could be just another thing people don't want to carry. I totally get that. But Meta is saying they're trying to get that device out by holiday shopping season. So it might be a big holiday gift. We don't know yet. So in the 90s, we had to feed our Tamagotchi to keep them alive. And now this device might actually help us cancel those meal subscription things that we wanted to cancel a while ago. But the other interesting things that's happening is in order for this to work for your customer, we have to make sure Muse can get to where they want to get. And there are different strategies around the partnerships. Shopify opened its full catalog and checkout to Muse. Walmart, GameStop, Gap, and Wayfair all signed on as shopping partners, but Amazon blocked it. So we'll have to wait and see how much adoption on the brand side, on the shopping side, actually happens. Some brands are going to put out the welcome mat. They understand this is maybe what customers are looking for. Some brands are going to keep it out so that they can maintain some control. I think this is another wait and see, but it's something that's happening right now.

Muse Adoption And Shopping Gatekeepers

Jeannie Walters 3:52

Now, Muse is what we're talking about because this is the one with the highest adoption. But there are plenty of assistants already out there helping your customers research, compare, and act. 41% of consumers already use AI assistants to research products, and 31% of them hunt for deals. That's according to IBM. And what that tells us is that people are experimenting. They are taking some small risk steps like research and getting that information before they let the agent actually act. But as comfort levels go up, that adoption where the agent will be able to go all the way through and purchase, that is going to go up as well. And think about who this actually applies to. We have the customer who maybe has been meaning to cancel, right? We all have these kind of lazy Larrys out there who we know maybe they aren't as engaged as we want them to be, but they are not canceling. So if you are relying on consumer inertia as part of your strategy, that is going to change because those folks are going to use agents like Muse to actually cancel, to compare prices, to maybe look for better opportunities elsewhere, and then go all the way through that process and just get approval from the customer. 52% of consumers canceled at least one subscription last year because they weren't using it. And 43% now say they're comfortable with AI managing their subscriptions. That tells us, again, adoption is going to keep going up as that comfort level goes up that AI can handle this. If we are naming our agent, we are creating that relationship and saying, okay, gator, go figure this out for me. And it actually helps us complete that goal in a very hands-off way. We're not going to want to go to different websites or do our own research. This will basically just show up and do it for us. So when we talk about things like retention in customer experience and how important that is, we have to understand that retention has signals typically from humans when they are not as engaged as they should be, or when they start asking questions about the upcoming renewal. Those are signals that humans give us that tell us, hey, maybe they're not going to renew, maybe they are shopping around. But if we don't know what those signals are because the agents are doing all of the work, that's going to be a lot harder to figure out. So right now, I would ask, what are those signals that maybe these agents will start showing us? Are they going to start asking the questions in chat? Are they going to actually start comparison shopping? We have to look for different signals moving forward to understand how to maintain or increase retention rates. This is going to be really,

New Churn Signals In An Agent World

Jeannie Walters 6:54

really important. And then I think there's an evolution here in the contact center as well, because for a while now, we've been talking about how AI has been able to handle those repetitive, kind of mundane tasks. And that means that the things that are left for the humans are harder. They are the more complex, nuanced situations that require a human. I think that's going to get even bigger. So what that means is that AI, these agents, will be able to handle a lot more. They'll be able to handle some of the heavy lifting of understanding complex things like insurance policies or comparing phone plans. But that means that the conversations that are left are really those high-level escalations. So in the contact center, we're going to have to make sure that we have people who are highly qualified to address those things. Now, this is where the way that we've always hired for the contact center may not be the way we can hire for the future. We need to bring in highly skilled people who have very specific skill sets to address things with the customer when things have already escalated. And we're not going to have that chain of humans giving us context. We're going to have to rely on AI to give us that context and understand when to bring in a human. So as you think about the future, think about how are you hiring for your customer service agents, for your frontline folks, for even your uh cashiers in some cases. We need to make sure that we understand who is really needed at that frontline and when do those escalations need a human who can finally resolve something.

Contact Centers After Automation

Jeannie Walters 8:38

Now we're talking about all the different ways that we are going to outsource to our AI agents, but most customers, it's going to take a while for them to get there and let them totally take over. Instead, what's going to happen is they're going to have their agents do a lot of the legwork, the comparison shopping, the research, looking for deals, all of those things. And then the customer will be the one to approve it. Now, one thing to consider here is that this means that your customers are not necessarily going to your website. We are missing opportunities to build that brand relationship. And this is why I keep saying with AI, we have no fine

No Fine Print Plus Early AI Bloopers

Jeannie Walters 9:21

print. We cannot hide things. They will find it. And so what we want to do is make sure that we understand what are the things that customers are looking for. And how do we show up in an authentic way with the right language, with the right tone, so that when customers are actually showing up for that final say for the approval, we want to make sure our brands are showing up in the way that is important and reflects our brand strategy, our brand promise, and our customer experience mission statement, of course. Now, this is not yet perfect, and there are some funny stories that are coming out. There was a funny story about how a customer was interacting with Muse, and the agent kept referring to him as Arjune, and that was not his name. And this is kind of one of those things where I'm like, well, we all think this is adorable after a while, just like we do when they mess up our names on Starbucks cups. Another reviewer asked Muse to buy a video game and thought it was going to be kind of a speed run, right? But there were all these forms you had to fill out, and they described it as just watching the robot fill out the forms you could have filled out yourself. So I think speed will be changing as this evolves too. So what does this tell us? Well, these are still early days, and there's no need for panic, but customers will actually forgive a tool that is learning, and they won't forgive a brand that makes the tool's job impossible

Get Agent Ready With CX Basics

Jeannie Walters 10:53

or hides the human. So we're in this very interesting time where we have to balance how do we understand not only our side of the equation as brands, but also the customers' side with their AI agents and how personal those can become. And we want to make sure humans are available and in the loop at the right moment. So, how do we do this? Here are a few ways to get agent ready for your customer experience. How can someone cancel today? We want to make leaving easy and staying easier. Now, that doesn't mean we want to put a bunch of friction and obstacles in front of somebody to cancel, but we could offer some alternatives. For instance, if you offer pause before cancel, that can actually help you retain customers, give them exactly what they want, which is maybe a short-term pause. And it is still making things easy for the customer or the agent. Now remember, these AI agents, they will not get tired. They will not get frustrated. So if we're putting a bunch of forms or tasks or steps just to cancel, they're just going to fly through those. It doesn't matter how long it takes them. Those are not going to serve us. That's actually going to erode trust with that customer. Now, if we offer something like an alternative, like a pause, that can actually help. First of all, the AI agent would have to go back in many cases and offer that as an alternative and say, is this what you want to do instead? Or it's just another way to serve the need that the customer has in that moment. So merchants offering pause before cancel saw pause usage jump 337%. And three out of four subscribers who paused eventually came back. That's from the 2026 State of Subscriptions report from Recurly. So if we give somebody an opportunity to pause instead of cancel, that's options. Agents love options because humans love options. So consider are there ways you can retain customers, even if it means pausing the process, the system, the product, whatever it is. Okay, number two, we want to keep the human findable. And then, of course, we need to brief the human. We need to make sure we're not just throwing them into the deep end of a conversation with no context. So make sure that somebody who is frustrated, who is trying to escalate, maybe their agent is starting to get the human involved. We want to make sure they can find a person fast that is available to them. And then we want to brief our frontline team that customers may arrive with that agent. Um, we're hearing this already. We're hearing about how customers are using AI to write these huge briefs about their problems. It's actually quite cumbersome because AI will include lots and lots of detail unless you tell it not to. Unless you give it limits, like keep this to a paragraph, it might give you four pages and customers are showing up with those four pages and saying, here, do with this what you will. We want to brief the frontline on those types of situations. When customers arrive with that agent written summary or with the context or with the agent itself involved, we need to understand those handoffs and understand what they could look like. So even Meta built a human layer behind Muse because they knew that this was not going to be perfect all the time. All right. And and the last thing, it's a little harder. And I don't know exactly how this will look, but I think we have to start thinking of it. We have to earn that final click. We have to make sure that we built enough trust with the customer and with the brand so that when that customer gets to approve what the agent did, when the agent presents them with the final outcome and says, is this what you want? They feel comfortable going through that because they understand they built that relationship with the brand, the product, and understand that there is trust there to do that. They feel confident moving forward with that. This is where we can also add some reassurance. Uh, mention easy returns, making sure that there are visible protections, those reassurances that things are happening in the way that customers expect, that's going to help them build that trust with us, continue to earn that trust on a regular basis so that when they're ready to click, they feel good

Mystery Shop Your Brand With AI

Jeannie Walters 15:36

about it. All right, a few ideas for how to get started. Number one, secret shop yourself, your brand with an AI agent. Now, Muse is the one that is most accessible right now. Some of you may have others, and I know Muse right now, as of when I'm recording this, is only available in the US. That is probably going to change pretty soon, but right now that's the reality. So ask an AI assistant to cancel, pause, or return something with your brand. Time it, you know, look at the bloopers, look at what they're getting right, look at what they're getting wrong. When are they creating fiction? And is there friction that they're creating as well? So think about this in the terms of what do your customers do today that is cumbersome? What are some of the things that they're looking to do, but maybe don't do as often? What are some of the ways that you can make that easier for them through using an agent? Now, in B2B, this will also become a thing. We're going to have to look for ways to really make sure that things like invoicing and procurement and all those things that can be a little challenging, that we are making those agent friendly as well. So go ahead and mystery shop what you can with an agent and just see what's happening today. See where those gaps are because people will start doing this. They are not going to ask for your permission. They're not going to make sure you're ready. They're going to just start doing this. So let's find out what that looks like before our customers do. If you do have some sort of renewal or cancel, go ahead and add a pause option or consider that at least. Consider some of the different options you can give so that instead of just a yes or no, a black or white option, we're giving different things that the agent could consider and present to their customer. And then, of course, we need to start briefing the front line on what they could start seeing and interact with in the very near future. Agent-assisted customers. What do those people look like? How do they show up? What information do they have in hand? And then test the handoffs, test what that looks like for the customer from that customer's perspective. This is where things like micro mapping can be really, really helpful. We have information on that on our site at experienceinvestigators.com. And of course, there's also information about that in the book, Experience is Everything by me, Jeannie Walters. So what are you doing with this? Are you even aware of it? Are you concerned about it? Let us know. I want to hear what your group is considering. We are in, and I keep saying this, but we are in interesting times,

Workshops Membership And Closing Asks

Jeannie Walters 18:23

right? And some of that means we have to at least share with our teams what we're thinking about. None of us have the crystal ball, none of us have the roadmap. I'm not claiming to show you the exact path of the future because I don't think any of us can know that right now. I mean, including the people who are even making these tools, right? So when we are thinking about what we can do for our teams, how can we make sure people are at least thinking of this? One of the best ways is to simply talk about it, make sure we are talking about it. We have keynotes built around understanding the future of customer experience. We want everybody in the organization to have similar language and definitions and communicate and be aligned around those things. Keynotes and workshops right now we're finding are really compelling because people want that hands-on, cross-functional, eye-to-eye communication. So if you want that for your team, please reach out to us at experienceinvestigators.com. We would love to serve you in that way. And we would love to hear about what you're doing. Don't forget, you can always leave me a message at askjeannie.vip. And if this was useful to you, please subscribe and share this with people you think should hear it. We love your ratings and reviews, of course. And you are helping me live our mission of creating fewer ruined days for customers, because that's really our goal, right? We want to create fewer ruined days for customers, even when those customers might be robots. Thanks for being here. I'll see you next week. If you're ready to turn insights into action, join CXI Membership, our community for customer experience investigators just like you. Get the tools, support, and inspiration to move from ideas to true impact. And don't miss my book, Experience is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations. A USA Today bestseller. And if you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Until next time, keep asking questions, keep improving, and keep leading with experience.