With AI, the future of CX is simplicity

The theme of the recent Enterprise Connect 2024 conference was experience transformation — moving quickly toward more personalized, seamless interactions for customers and employees. While it’s important to know where we’re at with artificial intelligence (AI) in CX, it’s even more critical to understand where we’re going.??

We asked several industry analysts and consultants for their views on how customer experience is changing, what role AI plays in those shifts and what that really means for your agents.?

Imagine customer experience in five years. What does it look like???

With a lot of service interactions, especially in industries like healthcare, organizations are putting much of administrative burden on customers.??

So, when I envision the customer experience five years out, I would hope that it’s an easy experience.??

I hope that whatever automation, whatever AI tools, or whatever people are presenting to the customer, is almost invisible.??

Being able to recognize the customer and their intent would be the ideal. It would enable organizations to deliver a perfect experience to know what customers want, know who they are, and then be able to serve them quickly.?

– Robert Lee Harris, President and Principal Consultant, Communications Advantage Inc.?

In five years, organizations will be much better at supporting the voice channel, but also any digital channel of their customers’ choice. And I think the customer journey will be tied together across those channels, so that once a customer gets to a point where they do have to talk to a live human, that agent has the information from all the previous interactions to be able to quickly and easily answer the customer’s questions.?

?– Melissa Swartz, Founder, Swartz Consulting, LLC?

?It’s obvious that AI is going to be in the mix. We’re in a hype cycle to the nth degree. But AI will definitely play a key role in the customer experience going forward.??

?I also think — especially now that “customer experience” is front and center — the word contact center is going away. Now it’s all about CX.?

Also, customer expectations are going to continue to increase. Why? Because we’re always asking customers to fill out feedback forms on their experiences. So, in five years, it’s going to be all about having enough staff and smart AI built into the process to meet those customer expectations.?

?– Steve Leaden, President, Leaden Associates?

How about 2030? What does the state of AI in CX look like then??

?Over the next several years, we’ll see a gradual exploration and integration of AI into the customer experience for most organizations. As AI — especially generative AI — gets better and there’s less risk and more success stories, it will take on a bigger role across both the agent and customer experience.?

?– Kyle Leaden, Consultant, Leaden Associates?

?I greatly hope that AI will turn humans into super humans and agents into super agents — in the sense that it’s empowering people without replacing them.?

?I also think that the easy stuff — the tasks that are easy to do — AI will handle those. But the important interactions, where there’s complexity or emotional issues as there might be in a healthcare situation, the agents will still be there to provide the empathy and the human interaction that’s needed. And, in those situations, the AI is behind them empowering them with the right answers.?

?– Melissa Swartz, Founder, Swartz Consulting, LLC?

?I think there will still be live agents and they will be fully empowered to manage first-call resolution with AI as an assistant. I hope that it doesn’t replace them.??

There are plenty of good uses cases for AI to handle basic inquiries and provide basic agent assistance right now. In the future, I hope AI tools like agent assist are so advanced on recognizing the questions and queries that they also help agents learn their jobs better and become more valuable to the company.?

?I envision AI empowering agents to be better employees and to provide better customer service.?

?– Robert Lee Harris, President and Principal Consultant, Communications Advantage Inc.?

?There’s plenty of speculation on where AI is headed within the customer experience. Some say that AI is going to take over service interactions and there’ll be no more agents. I don’t believe it. I believe that agents will get smarter with AI tools. We’ve proven that already today.??

?There are plenty of hurdles that we have to go through as an industry as we move forward with AI — especially with generative AI. But in 2030, you’re going to see AI as very much a part of the CX landscape.?

?It won’t replace agents. It will be another way to improve and measure the entire customer experience. AI is just the next generation of the contact center.??

?So, we need to look forward to it. We need to embrace AI and not be afraid of it. But we do need to be cautious to make sure it’s accurate.??

?– Steve Leaden, President, Leaden Associates?

?For more on integrating AI into the customer experience, read “Preparing Your Contact Center Workforce for the AI Revolution .”?

?

?