Customer Strategy in the Age of AI with David Edelman (Outthinker Networks Roundtable)
Customers want more personalized experiences, but few companies are rising to the challenge. Those that succeed in personalization build trusted relationships with their customers and engage with them at every step throughout their journey. Through the power of AI, they rethink their operations and unleash the creativity of their teams to fine-tune every interaction, delighting customers in the process.
But most companies are not doing personalization well, leading to wasted money, squandered effort, and missed expectations. To be done effectively, personalization must be a critical element of your organization’s strategy.
In this roundtable, members will meet with Harvard Business School’s David Edelman to discuss why, in a world where consumers expect more–instantly and seamlessly–personalization is a strategic imperative. David will offer examples across industries and discuss how companies can use personalization to:
Understand each customer’s needs and how best to meet them.
Win customers’ trust and permission to use their data to improve their experience.
Reach the right customers, in the right channels, at the right time.
Tailor unique content to be relevant to each customer, enabled by generative AI.
Design new ways of working to ensure continuous improvement, so a customer’s experience feels magical.
Speaker Bio:
After 30 years as a Chief Marketing Officer (at Aetna/CVS) and building consultancy businesses in Digital and Marketing Transformation (with McKinsey, Digitas, and the Boston Consulting Group), David Edelman is now teaching at Harvard Business School and serving as an advisor to top executives in start-up, private equity, and larger enterprises. Having driven large-scale change from both the client and client-service side, he helps CXO's shape their strategic direction, build their teams' capabilities, and become more digitally agile.
Before Aetna, he held numerous leadership positions at premier management consulting firms and digital agencies. For eight years, he co-led McKinsey and Company's Global Digital Marketing and Sales Practice and served as Chief Marketing Officer for McKinsey's Marketing and Sales Practice. Prior to McKinsey, he was Executive Vice President for strategy and analysis at Digitas, and earlier was a partner with the Boston Consulting Group. He speaks frequently at industry conferences and events, and blogs on topics ranging from digital marketing to the Customer Decision Journey. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in economics from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.