Generative AI is reshaping business and society, prompting leaders to rethink strategies. The IBM Institute for Business Value provides research-backed guides, spotlighting customer service.

Customer service has leapfrogged other functions to become CEOs’ #1 generative AI priority

Executives recognize the power of generative AI to deliver transformation in customer service. They anticipate a long list of benefits, with shortened response times and improved overall customer experience at the top.

Turn human agents into heroes by giving them generative AI tools

Freeing up human agents so they can pivot to more personalized customer engagement—where it matters most—is one of the most immediate ways organizations can offer enhanced value to customers, differentiate their brand, and begin transforming customer service from a cost center into a revenue accelerator.

• Prioritize use cases that improve the agent experience. Obviously, automate laborious manual tasks. And let agents tap generative AI to answer questions about products and services and offer recommendations. Give agents quick and easy access to call transcriptions and summaries. Use generative AI for instant translations. And enable agents to access the tech for coaching based on their personal analytics.

• Let generative AI manage the standard customer interactions and relay the more complex and sensitive queries to your human agents. Invest to create highly trained individuals and nurture them carefully. Along with empathy, ensure they have the business acumen to offer the white-glove service that can convert unhappy customers into brand loyalists.

• Don’t play “hide-and-seek” with your customers: Tell them when they are engaging with a generative-AI bot. And let them request human assistance at will, no questions asked.

85% of execs say generative AI will be interacting directly with customers in the next two years

It may be tempting to deploy generative AI with customers quickly, but it’s essential that leaders understand customer pain points generative AI can resolve best, and apply what they learn from agent interactions. Some concerns already top of mind for executives: Bot-based responses that are harmful or off-brand, issues with transparency or auditability, and compromised social responsibility goals.

Use generative AI to learn more about your customers than you ever thought possible

Use generative AI not just for interactions and engagement, but for driving innovation. Use it to mine new opportunities with customers and track customer service success to see how automated applications influence sales and customer loyalty across the customer lifecycle. Refocus efforts around data governance.

Because generative AI is as much about your people as it is about technology, the very visible realm of customer service will serve to motivate change across the enterprise.

• Re-orient customer service from problem resolver to innovation hub. Foster outcomes-based generative AI experimentation that can be measured, optimized, and scaled. And package specific learnings that might be readily applied across other areas.

• Shout-out generative AI successes and share exemplary outcomes at individual and functional levels. Demonstrate to employees in other areas how they can benefit from generative AI by highlighting the ways in which new AI capabilities improve not just customers’ experiences but employees’ circumstances.

• Challenge and motivate your workforce to explore how generative AI can help in their day-to-day work—beyond the initial use cases. Create gamified opportunities for individual contributors to pitch use cases that can spark new ideas and applications.

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