How Generative AI Transforms Information Access and the Customer Journey

Hello. I'm Kodama, head of "AI MIRAI," which promotes AI utilization within the Dentsu Group. Generative AI is currently a hot topic everywhere. In this series, we will explain the impact of generative AI on marketing over three installments.

In Part 2, we'll explore how chat search and other conversational AI are changing consumer behavior.

What is Chat Search?

In the previous article, we highlighted chat search as one technology with the potential to significantly impact marketing.

Simply put, unlike traditional search engines that present relevant websites, chat search is a service that crawls the web in response to your query, gathers information, connects it, and returns only the answer to your question.

Example of Chat Search (Microsoft Bing)

This service allows users to obtain necessary information immediately without having to navigate and browse websites. As of March 2023, Microsoft Bing is the leading example, but Google has also announced a similar chat search service called Bard. Several other startup services are also emerging, signaling the start of competition.

What makes chat search convenient?

I use chat search daily and find it offers distinct advantages over traditional search. Here are some benefits:

Fewer steps required.
Traditional search required several steps to reach the needed information: "formulating a search query (search words)", "selecting the appropriate site from a list of results", and "finding the information within the site".

Chat search, however, simply presents the information you need when you ask for it. It requires significantly fewer steps.

Significantly fewer steps are required to obtain information.

Compare multiple sites with a single action.
Whereas before you had to visit multiple websites to gather information, now you can collect it all with a single action. While it's not yet perfect, gathering information is becoming increasingly easier.

You can search across multiple information sources and display results in tabular format.

Less noise.
Traditional search interfaces and websites often include numerous results unrelated to the desired information, links to other pages, and advertisements. In contrast, chat search (at least currently) lacks these elements, reducing cognitive load during viewing.

Personally, I find it convenient when I need to search while multitasking—like during meetings or while working—because I can get information without interrupting conversations or tasks.

Weaknesses of chat search.
On the other hand, the biggest weakness is the lack of information accuracy. Like other language generation AI such as ChatGPT, due to its technical nature, there is a possibility it may present misinformation. Although version updates seem to be happening daily even now, the possibility of presenting misinformation has not been reduced to zero, and it is likely that it will never be reduced to zero.

Does conventional search never present misinformation? Not at all. Information on the internet includes correct, incorrect, and outdated content all mixed together. We modern users have developed techniques, known as "search techniques," to distinguish between them. Eventually, techniques to identify or reduce misinformation in chat search will likely be established too.

While the service still appears somewhat rough around the edges, at least at this point, it possesses distinct characteristics different from traditional search and seems to be receiving a certain level of recognition.

How will chat search change how we encounter information?

So, if these chat search services gain a significant market share, what will change in how people access information?

Decreased website visits
There's a possibility that information access could be completed entirely through chat search, eliminating the need to visit websites. Chat search can handle the entire customer journey within the chat interface: presenting recommended products in response to queries (awareness), delving into detailed information (interest), comparing with other products (consideration), and ultimately driving purchase.

This is quite shocking, isn't it? The traditional steps of information exposure—searching, landing on a page, and then encouraging conversion—may be completely rewritten. Furthermore, the behavioral data collected from these sequential actions may become impossible to capture.

The entire customer journey is now completed within chat search

Centralizing the point of contact for companies and brands
On the other hand, the evolution of chatbot technology also presents a significant opportunity for companies. As chatbots capable of freely manipulating diverse information become feasible, it may be possible to consolidate previously separate customer touchpoints—such as catalogs, sales, tutorials, and after-sales service—into a single chatbot.

Furthermore, chatbots can be given a "personality." Companies could deploy chatbots tailored to their brand, enabling them to handle customer service, sales, and support using a conversational style true to that brand.

Separation of Information and Experience
Through chat search, AI can extract simple "information." This means that no matter how attractively a company presents information on its website, users may simply stop reading it. Optimization techniques (equivalent to current SEO) to make information easily readable by AI may also emerge in the future.

On the other hand, as mentioned earlier, consolidating the point of contact and giving it a distinct character transforms its value into what we might call "experience" and "service."

In other words, we can expect a "separation of information and experience" to occur: information will circulate via chat search, while experience and service will be established through chatbots. Put another way, this could be described as a shift "from websites to web services."

The separation of "information" and "experience"

The customer journey continues to evolve

This article explored potential shifts in the customer journey, but chat search and chatbots aren't the only factors transforming customer experiences. We must also anticipate the emergence of unexpected new technologies and services that could lead to entirely different scenarios. Marketers must remain constantly attuned to advancements in technology and consumer behavior.

In the next article, I'd like to explore the theme of how marketers and creators will evolve in an era where generative AI is commonplace.

The customer journey continues to evolve