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Plus: It’s time for the Great Customer Reset... and much more
Hi everyone, thanks for coming back to Customer Futures.
Each week I unpack the disruptive shifts around Empowerment Tech. Digital wallets, Personal AI and the future of the digital customer relationship.
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Are you curious about Personal AI, digital ID and digital wallets? Or are you already working on Empowerment Tech?
LONDON: Wednesday 10th December
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Hi folks,
Well, the starting gun just fired.
Apple just announced ‘Digital ID’ (I just love that clever marketing, must have taken them ages).
“A new way to create and present an ID in Apple Wallet”
One of the questions I get asked about most is who will win the wallet wars. Or more specifically, why would anyone ever use anything other than Apple, Google and Samsung?
Here’s where I’m at.
First, we have to remember that all these BigTech players used to call themselves payment wallets. Calling their products Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay.
But then they all rebranded. Now it’s Apple Wallet, Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet.
Why?
Because as most of us have known for a long time, soon these wallets will hold all sorts of verifiable information, not just payment methods.
So the question then becomes: what kind of other information? And where will you be able to use it?
Which is why asking the ‘Samsung-Apple-Google’ wallet question (let’s call them the SAGs) is important.
I hope it’s obvious to everyone by now that there will be lots of types of digital wallets, that will hold entire families of useful credentials. Well beyond payments and ‘who you are’.
For example, many different colours and flavours of ‘access’. Online. Offline. In store. In the office. Even on the phone. The ability to login, and the ability to get somewhere.
But also many different versions of ‘entitlements’ and ‘status’. Credentials given to you because of what you have done, where you have been, what you have bought, and evidence of past behaviour.
And of course a rainbow of certifications, qualifications and other proofs.
So where will the SAGs win? My bet is that it will be the ‘horizontal’ stuff. Things are useful every day, and everywhere.
Payments, loyalty, identity, tickets.
But that leaves wide open the Very Long Tail of other types of credentials, use cases, and importantly, the ‘vertical’ opportunities for portable data.
Proof of learning
Proof of insurance
Proof of purchase
Proof of health
Proof of passenger
Proof of ownership
And much more
But there’s one more horizontal play that I don’t think the SAGs will go after. It’s about provable relationships.
Because who we know, and proof of a real-world relationship, isn’t really held anywhere. Except by
LinkedIn - totally untrusted data, and certainly not an example of ‘work evidence’, and
Consumer social platforms - which are expressly designed NOT to verify who people are, and by most measures, are at least 11% fake accounts
Might a ‘verifiable relationship’ credential be a useful thing to have in a wallet? Proving things about each other? Maybe even proof that we have an account with a business?
And might that also be a neat way to verify ‘proof of human’, so we can do away with crappy Captcha, and clicking on boats and bridges and bicycles to prove we are not a bot?
But I digress.
The point is that the SAGs - Samsung, Apple, Google - are about to unleash a huge wave of smart new customer interactions. And I suspect a new wave of disruptive digital innovation within businesses, because customers can now finally hold and present a digital ID in a common way.
So let’s pay attention to two things:
Digital ID-adjacent innovation
What happens when you can now causally present your verified identity information as easily as Tap To Pay?
And beyond airports, who else might accept it? How does it change customer authentication? How does it change proof of age? And what happens to fraud when I can not only make a payment, but attach a verified ID to the transaction?
Good luck using my credit card details if you now must also present it from a ‘verified ID wallet’.
Domain-specific credentials
There are lots of use cases and data that won’t fit into - and won’t be accepted by - a SAG wallet.
Yet that customer innovation is bursting to get out.
We can unlock some pretty huge benefits if we can make data portable across domains (think hospitals, universities, gyms, retailers and banks just for starters).
So yes, the identity ‘wallets wars’ have truly started.
But remember that there’s a whole other set of games - more like a Wallet Olympics, with multiple sports and countries competing, not fighting - about to play out on another field.
Healthy competition for the customer relationship. And for portable, private, customer data that’s not held in an Apple Wallet.
As ever, I’ve never been more excited about the future of being a digital customer. So welcome back to the Customer Futures newsletter.
In this week’s edition:
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We’re back to square one with agentic identity
How ‘Identity for AI’ Builds Trust at Global Scale
Would you use an automated ‘planning application objection’ AI?
It’s time for the Great Customer Reset
… and much more
Stick the kettle on, grab a brew, and Let’s Go.
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We’ve all seen the disaster that is cookie consent flows.
And how UI and UX have been weaponised by businesses, to misdirect and deliberately miscommunicate what’s happening behind the scenes.
Words matter. Intent matters.
But more importantly, the user experience matters.
It’s why if a company says ‘military grade security’, I just walk by. Because it’s not about what you say. It’s about what you do.
Take a closer look. When you last signed up for a digital product, was the new joiner flow full of friction? Did they ask for more data than they really needed?
Or did they slow the experience down to make sure you understood what was going on?
Too often there is a moment where you have to stop yourself and think, “Wait, what was that last screen, and what did I just accept?”
Because it’s about how you make people feel.
Andrew Hughes recently asked for ideas about how digital wallet companies should notify people about what data they are sharing, or not.
About how to build trust.
I believe getting this right will become one of THE most important parts of the new digital economy. Of the wallet and AI agent economy. Where we are going to need digital ethics experts, psychologists and user experience leaders more than ever.
Why?
Because with the ‘Internet Of Things’, they grandly announced that “what can be connected, will be connected”.
MyPoV: once we all have digital wallets, flush with lovely credentials about all sorts of things, then “What can be asked for, will be asked for.”
We must be prepared for some pretty dark UX patterns to appear soon with digital wallets.
Which is why Andrew’s request comes at an important moment:
“This is a chance to influence what goes into the ISO standard - we have a blank slate and I want to try to be thoughtful in our approach”
Digital wallet UI and consent might be one of the most important topics of our time.
“Uncheck this box if you don’t want us to not message you.”
Customer Futures is working on that very topic at the moment. Get in touch if you’d like some help too.
Good luck everyone.
We’re back to square one with agentic identity
“What good are AI agents that can interact but aren’t strongly verifiable, other than for simple/menial tasks?
It’s a cracking line from Timothy Ruff. Who knows a thing or two about disrupting an identity market. He founded one of the very first Decentralised ID companies, Evernym, with a pioneering digital ID wallet back in 2014.
I nearly missed his post about Identity for AI agents. But it’s an important read, especially why we need to be careful about what ‘Identity for AI’ really means.
Here’s the headline:
“We’re back to square one with agentic identity: we still need strong digital identity for the people and orgs that give agents authority to represent something.
Because when you peel back all the layers of AI tech and fluff, there’s a very simple argument to make about how on earth we are going to trust all these new AI agents:
Timothy puts it like this:
”1. Of the 3 factors of authentication—something you know, something you have, something you are—only one can functionally apply to an AI agent: something you have.
“2. That ‘something’ should be a quantum-resistant, delegable, cryptographically verifiable credential.
“3. When an AI agent is performing some menial task, its identity and authority are irrelevant, but when an agent is doing something important, it is acting under some delegated authority, I cannot think of a situation where its credential contains only identity and not some assertion of delegated authority.
“4. To verify an agent’s delegated authority it requires verification of the grantor of that authority, the entity that signed and issued the credential—the “Signer”—otherwise the agent’s credential is useless.
”5. If the Signer is an organization, we’ll need strong organizational identity credentials to verify their identity and authority; if the Signer is an individual activating an agent for personal use, we’ll need strong verifiability of their personal identity.”
Put another way, AI Agents will be brilliant because they can act ‘On Behalf Of’ (OBO) a person or organisation. But we’re going to need trusted ways to identify either the Organisation behind the AI Agent, or the Person behind the AI Agent.
Sadly, today, we’re pretty bad at both.
Giving AI agents their own ID is great. But it’ll be pointless unless we can confirm who they are acting ‘on behalf of’ (OBO).
And that ‘who’ needs to have an identity too.
How ‘Identity for AI’ Builds Trust at Global Scale
While we’re at it, if you’re interested in ‘Identity for AI’, I’ll be moderating a conversation with Ping Identity’s Chief Product Officer on Wednesday next week.
It would be wonderful if you can join us. It’s going to be a brilliant conversation.
Would you use an automated ‘planning application objection’ AI?
It’s funny, it turns out that once you empower people with tech, they get empowered.
Exhibit B: I see that someone has now built ‘Objector AI’, an automated planning application bot.
You see, this stuff is going to be inevitable. And it’s going to be everywhere.
Just like when the web came along, we gave people the ability to publish anything online. And so they published anything online.
The questions then, just like when the web arrived, are now:
What is acceptable empowerment with AI?
How do we trust it?
How do we govern it?
It’s taken us 30 years, and we barely agree on how to trust and govern what’s online.
How long do you think it’s going to take to trust and govern AI agents in the hands of people?
It’s time for the Great Customer Reset
Because digital things are SO broken.
Just take a look at how businesses try to ‘engage’ us. How they design products. How they communicate with us.
Watch how they follow us around. Apparently, to improve their customer products and service. Email spam. One-time passwords. Missed notifications. Clumsy online forms. Repetitive questions on the phone with contact centres. And cold calls from robo-spammers.
Businesses are too busy trying to ‘acquire us’ and collect information about us that they’ve lost sight of their real purpose.
To create long-term customer value.
And with all the digital mess, businesses don’t even realise they are ruining our customer experiences. Accidentally destroying customer value.
It’s driving a collapse in customer trust. (That they do know. But they don’t know why).
The biggest challenge of all is that each company alone can’t solve it. When they try to, they just make things worse. More apps. More forms. More data.
So why can’t businesses see that this is a fundamental problem with the digital customer relationship?
Because it’s a blind spot. Companies are already being swirled around in a ‘perfect storm’ of digital disruption:
Unrelenting technology shifts, now accelerated by AI
Disruptive business models
Ever-new channels and digital expectations
Shifting regulatory pressures
Tensions around privacy and customer innovation
And much more.
Businesses are having a hard time knowing which way is up. Let alone seeing the systemic issues with their customer relationships.
And that’s all before AI Agents arrive.
Zoom out and you’ll see that this mess comes from thinking only about the business side.
Yes, companies have talked for years about being customer-centric. But in truth, their solutions are product-centric. Platform-centric. Business-centric.
And for decades, they’ve spent $bns optimising for their own needs, not the individual’s. It’s why we have hundreds of different accounts to manage, and digital identity is broken.
But things are about to change.
Because there’s a Great Customer Reset coming.
With new powerful tools emerging on the customer side.
Yes, AI agents. But also digital wallets. With portable proof of status and entitlements. And soon, portable context. Reusable customer ‘memory’ and data from other customer conversations, other business interactions, and other products.
So it’s time for a new category of customer technology. And a new $bn market.
It’s time for the Great Customer Reset.
Are you ready? Do you even know what’s coming?
Don’t worry. There’s a new way to get help. A new way to get started. And a new way to see the huge opportunities - not just the threats - around the ‘empowered customer’.
The ‘Trusted Agents Academy’. More details coming soon. Stay tuned.
Want to be the first to know? Sign up here.
Because the customer experience is about to be disrupted... by the customer themselves.
OTHER THINGS
There are far too many interesting and important Customer Futures things to include this week.
So here are some more links to chew on:
Post: ChatGPT will book your next hotel READ
Paper: The agentic commerce opportunity: How AI agents are ushering in a new era for consumers and merchants READ
Article: If You Tell ChatGPT Your Secrets, Will They Be Kept Safe? READ ($)
Idea: Beyond Human vs Machine: Me:chine — Two Sides Within the Self READ
Post: Agentic Commerce Ecosystem Map READ
And that’s a wrap. Stay tuned for more Customer Futures soon, both here and over at LinkedIn.
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