Smile, we're listening!
Nov. 15, 2019
You receive a call from a callcenter at 7:30 pm, and it's all the rage at home. You answer, very irritated, but against all odds, the salesman hooks you with a stunning promotional offer, to be redeemed against the sports club you've been dreaming of joining! Only a handful of seconds elapsed between the moment you were about to dismiss your contact and the fleeting moment when his offer caught your attention. During this very brief moment, your slight hesitation was analyzed by artificial intelligence software, and the salesperson was informed of your receptiveness. So the sale is not far off! Let's see how it all works...
Artificial and emotional intelligence... What are we talking about?
The termemotional intelligence "(EI) was proposed and defined in 1990 by Salovey and Mayer, two psychologists who had written a book on the subject. According to them, emotional intelligence is " a form of intelligence that involves the ability to control one's own feelings and emotions and those of others, to distinguish between them, and to use this information to guide one's thoughts and actions ".
This has become a real boon for communications and marketing teams the world over! It's hardly surprising, then, that this science has been put to work in the commercial world, with the genius of developers creating software with "artificial emotional intelligence ". Today, machines are capable of analyzing emotions and instantly translating them into marketing responses. Contact centers, for example, are able to analyze the emotions of their callers in real time, and then dictate the appropriate responses and behaviors to their agents or chatbots (also known as conversational assistants), in order to provide the best possible, most personalized response to customer issues...
Cutting-edge marketing or manipulation?
Inevitably, every scientific advance has its detractors, and the question of possible mass manipulation is a legitimate one. Is dissecting a consumer's emotions in order to better target the response to his or her complaint a question of total satisfaction, or does it respond to basic economic realities (i.e., of course, selling more and more...)? To which Michel Badoc, lecturer and neuromarketing specialist, replies: " Marketing in itself is manipulative. You have to look at the purpose for which these techniques are used. If a company uses them to communicate more intelligently and respond to consumer expectations, that's not a problem " ... It's a fact: consumers, since they're in it for themselves, will be the sole judges - and possibly the willing victims - of the use of artificial and emotional intelligence!
Last update: January 11, 2022
