LAS VEGAS — Customer service leaders agreed at Customer Contact Week Las Vegas this week that AI is the future. Where they differed was on how the technology is creating challenges for businesses.
If not handled carefully, AI can make tired workers feel even more weight while creating discomfort in their work flows. And without careful education and a backbone of clean, organized data, investments may end up underperforming and feeling overhyped.
CX Dive spoke to a number of CX leaders and analysts at CCW to get their views on how technology is shaping customer service. Here is a look at what four of them had to say about the challenges they or their clients are seeing with their AI investments.
InfoPay worries leaders can lose sight of practical applications
Everyone needs to be educated on what AI can and cannot do for the contact center, according to Jessica Gupta, COO at InfoPay.
This isn’t just important for the frontline employees who will be working directly with AI agents, according to Gupta. AI education is a group effort that is important at every level of the enterprise, right up to the top leaders.
“The higher you go in the C-suite, sometimes the less connection you have to the practical application of a tool,” Gupta told CX Dive. “That's true of literally every tool, and so really working together to educate, to be on the same page, and to understand what you're going to do.”
It has been challenging for CX teams to communicate realistic expectations about what can be achieved this quarter or the next or explain how costs and customer journeys are changing, according to Gupta. However, those teams need to keep the lines of communication open.
The combination of education and clear expectations helps teams explain when the risk is too great or an implementation simply isn’t possible, which can prevent investing in use cases that lead to unhappy outcomes or need to be redone altogether, according to Gupta.
TalkDesk sees AI amplifying fatigue
Companies have been asking people to do more with less since COVID, according to Neville Letzerich, CMO at Talkdesk. For many employees, the introduction of AI has only amplified their fatigue.
“People are feeling overwhelmed, feeling left behind,” Letzerich told CX Dive. “Even for people who love AI, trying to stay on top of it can be a 24-hours-a-day job.”
The way to combat this problem is by setting goals and guardrails not just for the AI, but for how teams will implement it, according to Letzerich. The key is transparency around how much workers are expected to take on, how far the company is going to go with AI, and what implementations need to remain off the table for now.
It falls on leadership teams to set expectations and deliver them for the team, according to Letzerich. CX leaders are under pressure to go faster and do more with less, but they need to be thoughtful about how they will achieve this without burning out their employees.
“I think you're going to see companies blow apart when they're just trying to throw AI at everything and go so fast that they lose their way,” Letzerich said. “And so I think that we're going to see some wonderful success stories, but I think we'll see some sad ones as well.”
CMP finds that teams still don’t have their data in order
There are plenty of great customer analytics and insights tools available, according to Nicole Kyle, managing director and co-founder of CMP Research. The problem is many customer contact organizations don’t have their data in a place where they can leverage it.
“It sounds so boring, but I think data governance is so important and knowledge management is so important,” Kyle told CX Dive. “Those are not the sexy topics in CX operations and customer service, but they are the root cause of slow time to ROI and poor customer experiences with new tech investments.”
Businesses need to get their data in order, whether through better use of existing tools or investments in new tools, according to Kyle. Data needs to be configured in such a way that their operations can properly utilize it.
This isn’t just a mandate for the CX team, according to Kyle. Functions across the business, including sales and marketing, all produce plenty of data as well. Getting all these teams to work together can be hard, but it presents a real opportunity to mature the customer contact function.
The first AI implementation can be scary, according to RingCentral
Currently, not every company is comfortable with implementing AI, according to John Finch, global VP of product marketing at RingCentral.
While it can be tempting to rush, it’s important to develop a level of comfort by going through a proof of concept phase where the AI is only used internally before they make it “the front door of their organization,” Finch said.
“Turning something on live and handing it over, and suddenly not having calls come through, not having sales come through, and not having inquiries come through is a little bit scary for some people,” Finch told CX Dive.
These teams need to develop a blueprint for how the solution will work from end to end before putting AI into motion, according to Finch. Mapping out the customer journey and expectations can help develop an understanding of where AI will fit in.
