Dive Brief: 

• Medallia, an experience management software platform, launched four generative AI-powered tools designed to help employees deliver better customer experiences last week.
• Ask Athena is a virtual assistant that can help workers gather information about customers, and Intelligent Summaries offers information relevant to customer interactions.
• Smart Response generates personalized, conversational responses to customer inquiries, and Themes helps employees identify and track issues that may be causing customers problems.

Dive Insight:

Medallia’s new tools arrive as companies begin to experiment with generative AI internally ahead of potential customer-facing applications.

A recent Gartner survey of 246 customer service and support leaders found more than 9 in 10 leaders whose organizations are planning to make generative AI investments are at least “exploring” employee-facing virtual assistants. 

While generative AI has potential for powering consumer-facing experiences, the technology is still immature and potentially risky, according to Kim Hedlin, senior principal researcher at Gartner. This makes internal applications safer while still providing some benefits. 

“Companies are using employee-facing virtual assistants to learn what the technology can and can’t do,” Hedlin said in an email to CX Dive. “With an employee-facing virtual assistant, there is still a ‘human in the loop’ — a person who can check AI-generated content before a customer sees it.”

Deploying generative AI for employees first creates a testing ground to experiment with its use, according to Amelia Dunlop, CXO at Deloitte Digital. 

It can be tempting to find problems for generative AI to solve, but that’s often a case of investing first and justifying the cost later, Dunlop said. Instead, companies should think about what customers are actually asking for, then deploy employee-facing solutions to help them better fulfill those needs. 

"We now have another tool, another hammer that we can use, but ultimately what our customers want are better experiences,” Dunlop told CX Dive. “We can't deliver better experiences if our employees don't also know how to use the tools."

Leaders shouldn’t shy away from the ways generative AI can also improve employee experiences, according to Hedlin. Assisting workers can ultimately enable them to offer better assistance to customers as well as discover the ways it can be applied in customer-facing roles.

Deploying generative AI internally can help companies discover where their infrastructure and data management practices can be improved, where operational changes are needed, and which stakeholders need to be involved in the decision-making process.

“These conversations pave the way for the company’s future GenAI ambitions,” Hedlin said.