AI Tools for Creating, Organizing, and Applying Customer Knowledge within the B2B Marketing and Sales Process

  • Kristina Sommer

Student thesis: Master's Thesis

Abstract

This master thesis explores the significance of Artificial Intelligence in aiding companies within the B2B sector to embed customer knowledge throughout the marketing and sales process. More precisely, it examines the role AI plays in supporting the initial stages of the marketing and sales process. The study begins by establishing a fundamental understanding of how customer knowledge is generated, organized, stored, and applied. This foundational knowledge is then expanded upon by investigating how AI contributes to the overall process of collecting and providing the necessary data or information, with a particular focus on the initial stages of the marketing and sales process. Therefore, certain more traditional tasks typically performed at this stage are identified and described together with the ways AI can enhance these tasks. To achieve this, this research employs a combination of theoretical and empirical research. Initially, a literature review is conducted to establish a theoretical foundation. This is followed by a qualitative research involving nine in-depth, semi-structured interviews for the comparing of the theoretical insights with current practices in selected B2B companies. The findings of this research imply that customer knowledge is still predominantly generated, stored, and shared in a very traditional and classical way, with some enhancements upcoming i.e. some CRMs will be replaced or improved to have more capacities and capabilities. Furthermore, the findings suggest that AI integration in the respective B2B companies is still at an early stage. However, this can be attributed to the fact that some companies are more traditional or investment-heavy, or are very strict with the integration of AI tools due to ethical, GDPR, and cybersecurity concerns. Especially as AI and customer knowledge represent one of the biggest current challenges in the field of data protection. Nonetheless, companies are already putting in some effort in order to increase the level of knowledge and familiarity with AI and are developing strategies and goals for the integration of AI in the future. Additionally, AI tools are already being utilized for specific activities or tasks such as content creation, idea and code generation, while in other areas, their application remains relatively limited. In addition, interviewees are not aware whether there are specific tools used at the respective company specifically for working with customer knowledge. Nevertheless, great potential is seen for the use of AI in the future to collect and generate customer information, with the capability to automatically transfer this data into the CRM systems in order to obtain better and more comprehensive customers insights.
Date of Award2024
Original languageEnglish
SupervisorPavel Strach (Supervisor)

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