How to predict your customers' demands

There’s a growing disconnect in customer experience: people want faster, smarter, and more intuitive support - but organisations are often stuck in reactive mode. For today’s customers, it’s no longer enough for organisations to meet their needs, now they’ve got to predict them.

Vonage research shows 75% of consumers will stop buying from a brand after repeated customer service issues, and nearly half (48%) will walk away after just one or two slip ups. Standards are higher than ever, and customers are voting with their feet. The key to meeting these impossibly high standards? Intent-based automation.

The old CX playbook doesn’t cut it

Good customer experience used to be about listening to what a customer wanted and delivering it well and on-time. If a customer called with a question, businesses aimed to provide a smooth, human response.

But today, customers expect every brand to know their communication preferences, understand what they are asking for, and solve their problem before they’ve even asked. 

Enter Intent-Based Automation

Intent-based Automation (IBA) is a new approach to customer experience, combining real-time data, AI, and network-level awareness to predict and fulfill customer needs before they even voice them. Think of IBA like your local barista remembering your coffee order before you even get to the till. IBA brings intuitive, anticipatory customer service into the digital world, at scale.

Part of what makes IBA so powerful is that it gives organisations an opportunity to act on non-verbal communication cues. For instance, if a support agent hears frustration in a customer’s tone during a difficult phone call, the system could flag the account, marking it as high priority, and alert the marketing team automatically. The marketing team can then offer the customer a retention perk - like a discount on their next order - before the customer complains. 

IBA isn’t just there to help organisations recover from negative customer interactions - it also facilitates positive relationship building and creates sales opportunities. Take the retail industry for example. When a frequent customer enters the store, a salesperson’s wearable glasses will recognise the individual as a regular shopper and automatically bring up conversation history. The salesperson can then suggest items a customer might like, based on their last visit. Outside of the retail industry, smart glasses can also be used by salespeople and managers, to display conversation history or client data during meetings - helping them build rapport, understand clients better, and convert sales.

The advantage for employees

IBA doesn’t just benefit customers, it helps employees do their jobs more easily and efficiently. Instead of filling out forms or wrangling complex systems, staff can simply flag a particular customer as high priority. They’re also given much more data about each customer, making it easier to deliver personalised, thoughtful service with every interaction.

In environments like contact centres, IBA tools like real-time transcription, intent detection, and virtual assistants work alongside human agents, acting as co-pilots. These tools can suggest next-best-actions, flag emotional warning signs, and provide training as human agents are working. These systems also benefit managers, who can view operations as they are taking place and see where agents are struggling or might need additional support.

Building the right foundations

IBA can’t just be bolted onto a business overnight - it will only work for organisations that have solid foundations and intelligent systems already in place. It requires an intelligent contact centre that can handle complex interactions, AI systems that understand customer behaviour, autonomous 5G standalone networks that provide the speed and flexibility to respond in real time, and low-code APIs that connect everything together. Without all of these elements working in harmony, IBA is likely to become a disconnected layer, rather than integrating into existing systems.

Trust is also a key part of nailing IBA implementation. IBA involves collecting huge amounts of information from customers - including chat, email, and messaging conversations, data from smart glasses, watches, and fitness trackers, purchase history, and data from mobile networks. But with great data comes great responsibility. Organisations must be clear about the way they are safeguarding customers’ data, or they risk damaging relationships and even losing business: 71% of consumers say they feel more comfortable dealing with companies that use visible security measures. Any IBA system must prioritise a ‘trust layer’, with built-in privacy controls that allow customers to opt in or out of their data being collected, and encrypt information end-to-end.

Empowering the contact centre

As IBA evolves, it will turn the contact centre into the nervous system of the business. With IBA capabilities, contact centres will be able to gather data from multiple sources, interpret them in real time, and coordinate responses across different teams and channels. This shift will be a cultural one, empowering the contact centre and encouraging businesses to become more proactive, rather than reactive.