Dive Brief:
- Accenture believes that customer experience is ripe for generative AI-powered transformation, Chair and CEO Julie Sweet said during a Q2 2024 earnings call last week.
- The firm is helping Best Buy reimagine its customer experience and upgrade its contact center operations, according to Sweet. The retailer will leverage data and generative AI to improve both customer and employee experiences.
- Sweet also emphasized the importance of cloud solutions in CX. Accenture is working with airline Riyadh Air to create more personalized travel experiences and with Indo Count Industries Limited, a textile producer, to create better experiences and maximize its e-commerce potential.
Dive Insight:
CX leaders are turning toward generative AI to enhance their customer experiences. However, Accenture sees companies struggling to scale generative AI — and many lack the modern tech stacks and data foundation necessary.
“An enterprise-wide AI rotation requires a strong data foundation,” Sweet said during the call. “You can’t just jump to the great data foundation. You need to be in the cloud. You’ve got to have modern platforms.”
CX Dive’s sister publication CIO Dive noted that generative AI’s potential is trapped in the data needed to power large language models. This has led to vendors and service providers investing heavily in expertise and data modernization solutions.
Accenture is aiming to help companies achieve the necessary data transformation with its recent investments. The company has partnered with AWS and Anthropic to expand its AI solutions and ease adoption of the technology, and it announced its planned acquisition of professional services firm Udacity earlier this month as part of a wider $1 billion effort to expand its AI skill training services.
