Collaborative Artificial Intelligence as A Catalyst for the Relational Footprint: Toward A New Era of Customer Relationship Management

The digital transformation of companies has profoundly reshaped customer relationship management (CRM) paradigms over the past decades. The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and more specifically Collaborative Artificial Intelligence, represents a new decisive step in this evolution. While the first waves of digitalization mainly led to automation and standardization of interactions, we are now witnessing the emergence of a more sophisticated approach in which AI does not replace humans but collaborates with them to enrich the customer experience. In this context, the concept of relational footprint acquires renewed strategic significance, arousing keen interest among professionals in the field of customer relationship management. The relational footprint can be defined as the set of traces left with a customer after an interaction and connection, which gradually form between a company and its clients over time. This “footprint” goes beyond simple customer satisfaction to encompass the lasting emotional and memory impact of an experience (Pine & Gilmore, 1998).