GPT-5 will finally get personal, 212 Billion reasons to get better at digital ID and the shift from Chatbots to Connections
GPT-5 will finally get personal, 212 Billion reasons to get better at digital ID and the shift from Chatbots to Connections
Plus: Seizing the opportunity of eIDAS2, the Role of Blockchain in ID and what are smart student learner records
Hi everyone, thanks for coming back to Customer Futures. Each week I unpack the disruptive shifts around digital wallets, Personal AI and digital customer relationships.
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The biggest issue with advertising isn’t businesses tripping over the privacy line.
It’s worse than that.
It’s businesses tripping over the clumsy line.
Trying to sell me stuff I already have, don’t want, or is completely inappropriate. It’s much of why click-through ads only get 3% conversion. Chasing ‘relevance’.
How is that not a massive waste of time and effort? Supply has been completely disconnected from demand.
Here’s a better way to think about it:
Digital ads are just products. Information products.
Solving a problem in the consumer’s life. Solving a job-to-be-done. And like other digital products, they need to find ‘product market fit’. PMF is all about creating value, and solving customer pains.
So why are we so far away from advertising PMF?
I believe it’s all down to clumsy profiling.
Businesses have no idea who I am, what I like, my context, and my needs/wants. Not really. They think they do though. And that’s the big problem.
They have phantom PMF.
And it’s going to get worse with the ‘cookiepocalypse’ in Q4 this year. Chrome will be dropping 3rd party cookies. Leaving advertisers even more reliant on Google for targeting ads. More reliant on clumsy profiling.
The answer:
It’s time to reinvent Private Personal Profiles, but this time from the customer side. Ergo, Empowerment Tech. Some ET startups are already ahead on this. Stay tuned on that.
Over time, Private Personal Profiles will become part of the new Customer Stack. Along with digital wallets, verifiable credentials, verified messaging and Personal AI.
It’s all about the future of being a digital customer. So welcome back to the Customer Futures newsletter.
In this week’s edition:
GPT-5 will finally get personal
Making stuff no one wants to buy is dumb but everyone is doing it
It’s time to Personalise Me
What are smart student learner records?
The Future of Identity: The Role of Blockchain
212 Billion reasons to get better at identity
From chatbots to connections: How AI will change services
Facebook’s New Way to Track the Websites You Visit
… plus other links about the future of digital customers you don’t want to miss
Let’s Go.
GPT-5 will finally get personal
Sam Altman was recently interviewed by Bill Gates. It’s an important peek into some of what’s coming in GPT-5. Some massive new capabilities it seems, including Very Important Customer Futures-related stuff. Things like personalisation and use of your data.
“Customisation and personalisation will become important. People want very different things out of ChatGPT. Different styles, and different sets of assumptions. It will all become possible.
“GPT-5 will also be able to use your own data. The ability to know about you, your email, your calendar, appointments booked, connected to outside data sources…”
When you put three things together, you can see a gear shift coming for Empowerment Tech:
Powerful LLMs that can make sense of your own data, not just the open web or closed corporate systems
On-device privacy (and AI boundaries for security)
AgentID that can act on your behalf, interacting with businesses and others to get stuff done
I give it six months. Then in 18m it’s going to trigger a wave of 10x digital transformation. But only for those who are ready.
Making stuff no one wants to buy is dumb, but everyone is doing it
I’m a massive fan of David Hieatt. He’s known as a megabrain in branding (ex-Saatchi), and for starting a jeans factory in Wales.
But mostly, he’s a world-class writer. And his post this week on demand vs. supply is right on the money.
“This hit home when Alberto at Candiani Denim Mill told me that almost a third of all clothes made are burned or buried because no one wanted them.
“My head hurt. My heart sank. And I was part of the problem, too. This is why Hiut is shifting production to made-to-order.
“All time slots are sold out in January. February time slots are now available. And soon we will start selling March time slots.
“Guessing what people want is hard. If we want less waste, we will have to stop guessing. Supply and demand must talk to each other. Hope is not a precise sales forecast tool.
“The smart and brighter future will be about how you will get your customers to tell you what they want BEFORE you make it.”
It’s time for Empowerment Tech to help people express what they want, and to enable smart businesses to respond.
A version of ‘intent-casting’ is coming soon. I can see some very promising capabilities being developed already.
Here’s why it matters:
As far back as the 18th century, economists actually described the market as ‘demand and supply’, rather than ‘supply and demand’.
We have it backwards. It’s time to reboot commerce.
It’s time to Personalise Me
Graham Hill is on a mission to break down what it actually means for businesses to personalise things for customers.
His latest series of drawings and posts on LinkedIn is a delight.
He sums up the issue - and opportunity - perfectly in his latest post:
“Personalisation can be a powerful tool that drives marketing success. But to get the most out of it, communications need to be personalised around customers and their needs, not around marketers and theirs.
The takeaways:
Identify who your customers are, what jobs they want help getting done and when they contact you to get help.
Review your communications to see how well they are aligned with the interactions where customers come to you for help.
Rework personalised communications so that they help customers get their jobs done faster, easier and better.”
It’s part of a series - well worth your time.
What are smart student learner records?
This is a solid report on next-generation learner records from SmartResume. It’s about giving learner data back to the student and making it way more useful and portable.
“While there are over 150 logos represented in this report, we intentionally worked off a narrow definition of the “LER Ecosystem” as the companies and organizations that share, issue, and consume these data standards:
Verifiable Credentials from W3C
Open Badges 2.0 & 3.0 from 1EdTech
Comprehensive Learner Records 1.0 & 2.0 from 1EdTech
Learning and Employment Record - Resume Standard from HR Open Standards
These data standards enable records of learning and achievement to be mobilized to help individuals better understand their skills and qualifications, communicate those to interested parties, and to be discovered on their terms by organizations who can offer them earning or learning opportunities. The LER-Resume Standard will be released by HR Open Standards in 2024.”
The best thing about standards is that we have so many to choose from…
The Future of Identity: The Role of Blockchain
I recently hosted the first in a new webinar series on “The Future of Identity”, organised by Polygon ID and walt.id.
We had a brilliant time discussing “The role of blockchain for identity”. The wide-ranging conversation covered quite a bit, including the need for ID interoperability, user education and regulatory considerations.
This is going to be a fantastic series.
212 billion reasons to get better at identity
A new FinCEN report finds $212bn of identity-related suspicious activity. Woah.
Simon Taylor has a superb analysis of what’s going on:
“KYC is the most critical step in catching the bad guys. I saw a stat from NASDAQ today that estimated $3.1trn of illicit payments in 2022. The scale of this problem is staggering. That's more than the GDP of the United Kingdom.
“Nobody starts a Fintech company to deal with drug cartels, human trafficking or organized crime. But those groups exploit smaller companies because they know they're the weak spot in the system.
“KYC is not a checkbox process. Onboarding customers is the most critical step. If you treat it as a conversion optimization problem, you'll end up with customers that look legit but are actually commiting fraud. Let's be honest; much of the Fintech industry treated KYC solely as a conversion issue.
“All risk problems are data science problems. We don't have to add friction to get smarter at onboarding. We can reduce KYC costs by passively screening devices, behavior, and other data before customers start the KYC process. You can screen out more bad actors before collecting documents from a user.”
From Chatbots to Connections: How AI will change services
This paper from the excellent design agency IF is my article of the month.
It’s a MUST-read breakdown of how AI is going to completely transform services. But not through chatbots.
It’ll be through new connections.
It’s a paradigm shift IF calls “Learned Services”:
“Services are already becoming like Lego bricks
AI couples these components into services
People can create their own experiences
New user needs and design patterns become status quo
No two experiences will be the same
Learned services also create different demands of data
To be worthy of trust, AI needs wrappers”
Facebook’s New Way to Track the Websites You Visit
Ugh. Meta now asking users to accept sharing their browsing history.
Predictably, it’s pitched as a useful tool for consumers. Saying things like “your browsing activity saved in one place”, and “never lose a link again”.
Are those really big pains for consumers? Enough to get people to share their browsing history?
Naturally, it’s about More Tracking. Uncomfortably (but predictably), they seem to be pushing/nudging users to toggle it on. All. The. Time.
Zoom out and it’s about 1. Being forced (a la EU) to give control to users; and 2. Data Lust.
OTHER THINGS
There are far too many interesting and important Customer Futures things to include this week.
So here are some more links to chew on:
So what do we mean by 'Empowered Customers'? READ
How Verifiable Credentials Can Handle the Threat of Deepfakes in KYC READ
The serenity of acceptance READ
Google Contractor Pays Parents $50 to Scan Their Children's Faces READ
FTC says AI Companies: Uphold Your Privacy and Confidentiality Commitments READ
Predictions for the Digital Identity Landscape READ
Seizing the opportunity of eIDAS2: How Financial Institutions Can Reclaim Their Position In The Data Value Chain READ
Beware of BotShit: How to Manage The Epistemic Risks of Generative Chatbots READ
And that’s a wrap. Stay tuned for more Customer Futures soon, both here and over at LinkedIn.
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