Technology

In a bid to improve efficiency and quality in its customer support, streaming services company Brightcove became an early adopter of Amazon Q, a generative AI–powered assistant for its in-house “Expert Bot.”

When approached by Amazon, Brightcove executives immediately saw the potential to better handle technical queries from its diverse range of global clients that include the SXSW conference, Consumer Technology Association, Cancer Treatment Centers of America and the Academy Awards.

Brightcove support agents field thousands of queries, from simple instructions to reset a password to more complex help like embedding video in a WordPress site that can require significant time.

“In the past, answering this question would require a support agent to manually search through documentation and provide a detailed response,” said Scott Levine, chief product officer at Brightcove.

With the new tool, the company says it is saving time and improving its already highly regarded customer service.

“The starting point for us was ‘Can we make it easier for us to answer every single one of those questions and make ourselves do better?’” Levine said.

Delivering value in the rush to adopt generative AI tools

The Brightcove example reflects a wider trend of organizations adopting generative AI across a range of business functions, showing they can deliver real business value, a 2024 McKinsey survey found.

To gain a genuine competitive advantage, however, businesses should focus on helping people do their current jobs better and lift productivity, according to the research firm.

If generative AI tools improve the way employees provide customer service and support, it can have a real impact on the business, according to some experts.

“How you service and support customers, whether your business offers a product or an interaction, is becoming more of a differentiator,” said Melissa Copeland, founder and principal of Blue Orbit Consulting, which specializes in customer experience design and technology adoption.

The challenge is applying the technology where it delivers a dividend, not just for automation or cost cutting.

“Organizations must find the opportunity to use technology to reduce friction for customers and reduce friction for agents,” Copeland said.

Copeland cites examples of businesses that have seen a minimum 25% to 35% return on investment in the form of decreased handling time or first call resolution when deploying generative AI customer support tools. The gains could expand beyond, too.

“Then there’s thinking about new metrics beyond the traditional ways. That’s what’s really exciting about the possibilities of these tools,” she said.

Build generative AI tools with guardrails to foster trust

To deliver on the promises of generative AI, organizations must ensure the accuracy of the model to build trust, according to McKinsey.

In Brightcove’s case, it took a cautious approach, setting well-defined guardrails around the use of customer information that require permissions, rigorously testing the system, and having in-house technical experts scrutinizing the output.

“It's not one person looking at it; it's 50 people looking at it,” Levine said.

The Amazon team worked closely with Brightcove staff, teaching them how to craft questions to get the most suitable answers and taking time to train the bot on its extensive library of documentation as the source for responses.

“Streaming is complex, and that creates a lot of information about how to do it the best way across thousands of customers,” Levine said.

The bot-generated answers also include citations that link to the Brightcove source information so if the answer doesn’t look right, human experts can verify the response and feed that back to the tool. It adds an important layer of trust and teaches the model to help improve its output as it processes more queries.

“We have a lot of very technical people here at Brightcove, and when we see answers that aren’t right, we call it on it,” he said.

The end result is that the bot provides customer and product support teams with responses to customer questions. Brightcove has found it’s not only reduced the response time but also improved the overall efficiency of the support team.

“It’s about giving our customers the information they need quickly and accurately, and continuously improving that process,” he said.

Avoiding the trap of one-off tools

To maximize the potential of generative AI, McKinsey recommends that organizations avoid one-off solutions and invest the time and resources into tools that will scale.

Copeland cautioned that organizations must think through the longevity of the platform they’ll be working with.

“Use as your base platform a known entity, such as a large outfit that already offers customer experience tools you’re using across the business,” Copeland said.

While organizations might want to experiment, they also need to avoid different internal groups building their own tools independently to ensure widest application of new tools.

“If you get one-off customizations, it’s difficult to pull together, and when things are done in bits and pieces without any kind of central coordination, it becomes a nightmare to centralize and scale,” Copeland said.

In the case of Brightcove, Levine sees ways to expand the company’s use of generative AI to address more complex tasks such as enhancing metadata management on video streams or automating translation services to convert a video into multiple languages.

“Our customers have footprints all around the world, and if we can enable them to translate content on the fly, that's another use case for generative AI,” Levine said.

Above all, Brightcove’s use of Amazon Q is meant to not only improving operational efficiency but also add value to its service for customers.

“Everything we do starts with that mindset and driving business value,” he said.

Nearly 3 in 5 consumers say they would be more likely to try a brand that incorporates voice technology in their customer service, according to a Telus Digital Experience survey of 1,000 people released in October. 

The top benefits of a voice-driven experience are speed, efficiency and convenience. More than one-third of respondents said speaking is faster than typing, and nearly one-third said voice commands are simpler than navigating menus.

Voice technology still has room for improvement, however. Two-thirds of respondents said their voice assistant has misunderstood their commands, and more than half want to see improved accuracy in responses.

The future of voice technology could see it blended into a unified customer service experience that spans websites, apps and live agents. More than two-thirds of consumers say they increased their use of voice tech, from assistants to smart speakers, in the past year.

Voice technology is best suited for resolving simple, uncontroversial issues like rescheduling appointments or paying bills, according to Thomas Randall, director of AI market research at Info-Tech Research Group. More complicated problems are better addressed by humans.

“Customers calling for service are often already emotionally charged, and having a voice option to tell them ‘they understand’ leads to an inauthentic experience and demand for a human agent, which defeats the purpose of investing in the voice option,” Randall told CX Dive in an email.

Companies may not want to discount the opportunities for an automation-to-human handoff, however.

For example, a customer seeking to change their airline ticket may start with an automated voice assistant on the airline’s app, said Tobias Dengel, president of Telus Digital Solutions. If any problems arise the conversation could continue with a live representative who is prepared to continue the conversation from where it left off.

“The primary shift that companies and brands need to make is to view the entire customer journey as a cohesive multimodal voice experience, rather than segmenting it into apps, bots and human interactions,” Dengel told CX Dive in an email. 

Another area where voice technology is falling short is accent recognition. Nearly half of respondents said voice tech should have a better understanding and interpretation of accents and dialects, according to Telus Digital Experience.

Generative AI is improving the power of voice technology when it comes to accent recognition, as well as other customer frustrations, according to Dengel and Randall.

“A sticking point for voice technology is the lag time in responses or misunderstanding accents or key phrases,” Randall said. “With larger datasets to draw on and quicker response times, voice technology can reach real-time performance for a seamless customer experience.”

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In today's uncertain environment, maintaining a strong customer and employee experience is crucial, but often challenging. This has led many organizations to turn to outsourcing as a solution.

Valued at $280B in 2023, the global BPO market size is expected to rise at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.4% from 2023 to 2030 due to its ability to reduce operating, labor and overhead costs. In an uncertain market, companies can expand their workforce in key areas to support their shifting business and customer needs. 

Despite the many benefits, outsourcing does have its risks, as confidential business and customer data is often shared. With recent history showing an uptick in financial related criminal activity, understanding a provider’s security standards and protocols is especially critical. 

Here are 6 things to look for:

Ensure industry compliance standards

A provider should follow the standards and compliance measures your industry requires. Most adhere to the ISO and HIPAA standards, but what else is important to your industry?

If outsourcing travel or retail service support, for instance, you want assurance the provider locks up sensitive PII and financial data.

Review potential concerns or violations from the company’s past. If anything is amiss,  look elsewhere. At the very least, see how the provider has rectified past situations.

Verify prevention technologies

Cyber-attacks cost an estimated $11.5B in 2023, with projections to jump to $13.82B in 2028. No company is immune. As such, you might have some trepidation when considering outsourcing — especially since the average cost of a data breach in the United States is $4.45 million.

Providers must protect customer data, and, in the event of a leak, quickly prevent any  monetary loss. Before inking a deal, check the prevention technologies they use.

Ensure they have the tech to control data flow, including protecting sensitive information  from being emailed or copied to removable sources. Some companies even use screen  monitoring software to track activities, offering peace of mind the partner takes  prevention seriously.  

Understand risk mitigation protocols

As hackers make a living stealing sensitive information, it’s crucial that a provider has thorough risk mitigation procedures and plans in place outlining how it identifies,  assesses, prioritizes, and monitors risks.

Its protocols should come with a robust reporting system with features such as automated incident reporting, compliance/audit reporting, and performance monitoring and reporting. These tools enable employees to convey issues as they happen, as well as provide a framework for navigating potential perils and the practices employees must follow. 

Providers should also demonstrate how they collect data and insights to assess their effectiveness and explain how they generate reports from inspections. Lastly, they should have automated equipment monitoring to identify and catch issues as they occur.

Know the company’s position (and security) on remote work

Since remote work is the norm for many organizations, consult with a prospective organization to see if it has a hybrid/remote workplace and, if so, what standards ensure the security of your data.

This should include firewall-protected networks, encrypted servers, virtual private networks (VPNs), password-protected systems and anti-viral and anti-spam solutions. Ensure employees are prohibited from using personal devices to manage your company’s data.

Inquire about employee vetting and training processes

Given the sensitive nature of your data, ask prospective organizations to explain their employee vetting and training processes.

Discuss ongoing employee training programs to understand how workers are developed and stay ahead of security threats. Since they are an extension of your workforce, you need to trust they know industry best practices to increase the likelihood they won’t fall for phishing, smishing and other schemes.

Confirm they won’t give away the keys

Your outsourcing partner should use best practices to limit access to only what is needed to perform their work. Find out whether the company enables just-in-time access, which allows certain users to tap into privileged accounts on a temporary, as-needed basis. The practice of giving minimal access to files extends beyond humans and can be applied to applications, systems and connected devices, too.

Remember that not all partners are created equal

In an era where data security is increasingly paramount, choosing a business solutions provider who prioritizes robust security measures is not just advisable—it's essential. By carefully evaluating potential partners across these six areas, companies can safeguard their operations while reaping the benefits of outsourcing.

Wedding planning can be a complicated, stressful experience that often spans more than a year and involves coordinating multiple merchants. In recognition, David’s Bridal has shifted its CX strategy to extend its services beyond dress shopping and into the entire planning process.

The average bride hires 14 different vendors for her wedding day, according to Elina Vilk, chief business officer at David's Bridal. Brides will likely meet with three times that number of vendors during the leadup as they try to find the best provider for their needs.

David’s Bridal aims to smooth out the experience through Pearl by David’s, an app that helps brides plan their wedding with a digital checklist to keep dates and deadlines in order. The company launched the app in January 2023 as an all-in-one planning tool.

Vilk, who joined David’s Bridal in September, is upgrading the app to do even more, with new features slated to go live in 2025. Vilk was charged with leading the growth and development of Pearl as the retailer continues to rebuild its business following its April 2023 bankruptcy.

Vilk said Pearl, and by extension David’s Bridal, can create better experiences for brides by evolving beyond a planning tool to become a digital assistant that offers inspiration, simplifies scheduling and provides timely reminders.

“The way we're enhancing the experience is moving from being a checklist to being a copilot,” Vilk told CX Dive.

What is Pearl?

Pearl, a mobile app for wedding planning, delivers four major features. Brides can start using the app by answering a few questions about the kind of wedding they want. Pearl uses this information to create a vision board that offers advice on topics from dresses to floral arrangements.

From there, brides can create a checklist to help track what needs to be done and when. The app has options to design a wedding registry, including room-by-room inspiration for gift ideas, as well as templates for building a wedding website.

Pearl also ties directly into David’s Bridal’s loyalty program, Diamond. The two apps share login information to make swapping between the two easy, according to Vilk. Many vendors on Pearl also offer discounts for Diamond members.

Making booking vendors as easy as restaurant reservations

One of the most important considerations when upgrading a piece of software like Pearl is understanding how new technology impacts customers, according to Vilk, who comes from a B2B background, with more than 25 years spent at roles in tech companies including Hootsuite, WooCommerce and Meta. New tech that just looks more elegant isn’t very useful — it needs to improve the actual user experience.

With this in mind, the first thing Vilk did after joining David’s Bridal was map out the customer journey to understand the pain points brides face during the planning process. From there, Vilk pinpointed the biggest points of friction and began thinking about how Pearl could help.

“What are the different things she does at different points in time, and how do we enhance that experience from A to Z?” Vilk said.

One of these pain points was vendor booking. While Pearl can currently help brides find vendors and track meetings, Vilk sees room for improvement. 

Appointment bookings are one of the upgrades slated to launch in 2025, according to Vilk. The goal is that brides can not only discover vendors through Pearl, but also use the app to set up meetings and add them to the calendar. 

“It really shouldn't be any different than getting a reservation for a restaurant,” Vilk said.

Improving the local experience

Pearl aims to improve customer experience for third-party vendors, too.

Weddings are very personal and usually very local. A bride in Florida may be thinking about beaches and seek out vendors ready to cater to a sandy wedding, while a Midwestern bride likely has a completely different aesthetic in mind.

“National appeal is important, but it's also about the local and distinct thing I'm doing in a specific city,” Vilk said. “There's going to be local restaurants, local businesses, local photographers, etc., that understand that city better than anyone else does.”

However, many of these local businesses lack the budget to offer their clients a great experience from discovery to the wedding day. Pearl wants to fill that gap, according to Vilk.

“I think when looking at the pain points for the brides, I'm also looking at the pain points for the businesses,” Vilk said. “How can we start to connect the two dots? How do we become the Match.com for brides and businesses?”

Wedding planning involves far more than finding and meeting with vendors, and there are other ways Pearl aims to assist brides.

David’s Bridal is exploring using AI to suggest due dates for different tasks, adding features to help brides manage their budgets, and expanding its digital marketplace. For now, Vilk is prioritizing solutions for the biggest pain points David’s Bridal customers are facing.

“There are so many things I want to solve that I see in the process,” Vilk said. “I'll think, ‘I wish I could just tackle this right now,’ but you have to prioritize, and you have to say ‘no’ to a lot of really good ideas.”

Nearly 2 in 5 senior contact center and CX decision-makers would like to see organizational leadership use customer experience data to make better, data-led decisions around the adoption of new technologies, according to a survey of 700 senior leaders released by CallMiner in September.

However, nearly half of respondents said there is lack of communication between departments, and 2 in 5 said there is a lack of clarity on how to act on data insights when aligning CX feedback across the business.

It’s up to CX leaders to fix this gap in communication, according to Deborah Alvord, VP analyst with Gartner's global customer service and support research group. Cross-department coordination breaks down when CX teams aren't collecting or conveying the data other teams need.

Customer experience teams can influence the rest of the company by learning to communicate how their data can assist other business leaders.

CX teams can start by understanding the priorities of different functions within the organization, according to Alvord. Aspects to look at include the outcomes other teams are held accountable for, the performance metrics they track, and the basis for their bonus pay.

From there, the CX department can examine its data and find where it aligns with other teams’ needs. They can pay special attention to any gaps in the data that CX metrics can fill.

“You collect the CX data that aligns to their priorities and their needs, that aligns to the gaps that they have, and you present that to them,” Alvord said. “Then you follow up to ensure that action was taken on the data.”

The result of this process is a tangible measurement of how the CX team’s data impacted other departments, from marketing to supply chain, according to Alvord. Leaders need to present results, including the return on investment for the data presented, to help others understand what CX teams need and can provide in return.

For example, product teams tend to be more focused on getting a new item out of the door than collecting sales data. They may not think about the “gold mine” of feedback the customer service team is collecting from Voice of the Customer data, according to Alvord.

“Many times the product team is so focused they’ve got blinders on, and they don't think about it,” Alvord said. “They’re just on the receiving end of the data.”

Product teams aren’t unique. The onus is on CX teams to reach out to other departments and learn about their needs. Customer experience is a valuable source of feedback and insight — provided leaders can help the rest of the business understand its value.

The 2024 Olympic Games blew its engagement targets out of the water in the first week of the Paris games, surpassing Tokyo’s engagement metrics in just five days, the International Olympic Committee announced in August.

The IOC credits a new customer data platform, created in unison with Converge by Deloitte for Sports, for the digital transformation. The customer data platform — or in this case, fan data platform — allowed the IOC to segment audiences and personalize content. 

“When I give you a personalized experience, you engage more,” Michelle McGuire Christian, chief commercial officer and principal of Converge by Deloitte, told CX Dive.

The numbers back it up. The IOC registered 32 million fans in its database and achieved 8.5 billion social media engagements in the first week alone.

Three years ago, the Olympic committee didn’t have the customer data platform to back up those gains. The Tokyo games had information about their fans and an existing data lake, but it wasn’t connected on the back end and integrated across platforms. The resulting issue was Olympic outreach was generic.

“You might get an email from them about a sport that you may or may not care about,” Christian said.

The other problem? The Olympics were able to engage audiences during the Summer and Winter Games, but in between games, engagement plummeted, and the IOC had to start fresh engaging audiences. 

“We need to keep audiences engaged throughout the whole period between games, from flame to flame,” Leandro Larrosa, IOC director of digital engagement and marketing, said during a LinkedIn panel in August.

Unveiling the IOC’s customer data platform

The IOC began its digital transformation in 2020 by consolidating its website and social media handles into one, and making the IOC the official Olympics site and app. Two years ago, it brought on Deloitte as an official Olympic sponsor and digital transformation partner to refresh its strategy.

Together with the IOC’s digital engagement team, Deloitte spent two years defining and implementing the strategy of the CDP. The IOC rolled out the CDP in February for the Winter Youth Olympic Games in Gangwon, South Korea, and used it for the first time for the Paris Olympics.

The CDP acts as a landing page for fan information. That information is gathered as first-party data when a fan sets up an Olympic ID via Olympics.com, the Olympic app or a sponsor and is compliant with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, Christian said.

“What a CDP does effectively is it enables you to combine the information, put data science, AI-machine learning on top of it in order to create audiences and serve those audiences the content that they care about. And that content is personalized to you as the fan,” Christian.

The tool can gather information based on interest in sports, countries or athletes as well as viewing mode — whether that's in-person, cable or streaming.

“Are you a fan of soccer/football? Are you a fan of Simone Biles? Are you a fan of Team USA? All of that information looks a little different when I send you a message. And it looks different if I send you a message via the app or I send it to you via SMS or I send it to you via email,” Christian said. “My tone of voice is different. My approach to you in terms of ‘tune in now’ versus ‘stream it live on Peacock,’ is very different than it was back at those games in Beijing or Tokyo.”

Segmenting audiences

With generative AI, the platform can take all of that individual data and engagement strategies to create hundreds of thousands different, personalized messages, informing fans about events happening of interest to them. But these segmentations also avoid pigeon-holing fans.

“The power of data science, generative AI-machine learning, is the machine knows that you can be a member of as many cohorts as you have the highest propensity to engage,” Christian said.

During the LinkedIn panel, Larrosa also stressed the bigger picture the CDP was able to provide. 

“Now with the CDP that we developed, we have concrete data we can analyze,” Larrosa said during the panel. “One important thing we have done is this segmentation of our audience. So now we know why people connect to us.”

The IOC identified four broad categories of why fans connect: performance, inspiration, community and entertainment. “So now we know this, thanks to the work we’ve done together, we can create the right content for the right people,” Larrosa said.

Those findings help inform future digital engagement strategies for the 2026 Milan Winter Games and 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games, he said.

LAS VEGAS — Happy agents can help create better customer service outcomes, especially when it comes to introducing new technology to the contact center. 

A happy frontline team can smooth over rollouts and help leaders perfect new experiences, call center leaders said during Customer Contact Week 2024 in Las Vegas in June.

Agents should be involved with new technology from the start, according to Pete Wheelhouse, senior business architect and VP at PNC. Early adopters on the frontlines can serve as “change champions” who evangelize new technology or uncover problems before they impact customer service. 

"You can have the best technology in the world, and if the adoption sucks or the execution sucks, it doesn't matter," Wheelhouse said. "Nothing else will matter at all."

Frontline managers need to feel engaged as well, according to Wheelhouse. If agents are excited about new technology, but their direct manager doesn’t share that enthusiasm, that can impede execution. The entire frontline team needs to buy in.

Engaged workers are also more likely to contribute helpful feedback that helps leaders continuously refine processes and technology, according to Brian Cantor, principal analyst and director of CCW Digital. 

“Buy-in is key because, obviously, bought-in agents are better at wanting to talk to your customers, but bought-in agents are also curious," Cantor said. "They will tell you what's working with the tech, what customers are asking for, what they're not getting."

New hires also benefit from a strong sense of engagement and empowerment. Processes that reduce the time to serve customers improve customer and employee experiences alike, helping new hires get over the initial hump of a new job as well.

The right technology makes those workers feel comfortable during their early time on the job, according to Josh Bulgin, SVP of CX technologies and transformation at Concentrix. If a worker can feel comfortable during their first month, they’re more likely to stay for the long term.

“How do you delight the agent, the game changer, and give them the information they need?” Bulgin asked. “Not in six screens but in one screen.”

The ideal self-checkout experience eliminates lines and lets customers pay for their purchase without making it feel like they’re doing the work of a cashier.

The answer, for some, is RFID, which uses electronic tags to track individual items. Historically, retailers have used this technology to track inventory, but today companies like Uniqlo and Amazon are putting it in a customer-facing role in an attempt to help self-checkout live up to its initial promises.

RFID’s primary use at checkout is straightforward. Sensors can ring up entire baskets of tagged items at once, letting shoppers simply pay, pack their purchases and leave. 

“That's what anyone in self-checkout should be aiming for,” Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData told CX Dive. “They should be aiming for a very friction-free process because the moment you introduce friction, you reduce customer satisfaction.”

Advancements in RFID hold the potential to help retailers circumvent the common pitfalls of older self-checkout applications. However, the technology has its limitations — namely, cost — and it doesn’t present a one-size-fits-all solution to improve every store experience.

RFID offers high accuracy, too, according to John Harmon, managing director of technology research at Coresight Research. Customers using RFID don’t have to figure out how to scan an item without a clear barcode or worry that their regular peach will ring up as organic. 

RFID’s connection to store inventory can carry over beyond self-checkout to improve the general browsing experience, Harmon said. 

He noted that the technology enables systems to immediately and accurately determine what has been purchased to better direct associates’ stocking activities. RFID can also track popular items over time to ensure the hottest merchandise is always in-stock.

Weigh the costs of RFID

While RFID can solve some of the biggest problems facing self-checkout, the cost of RFID tags is a serious consideration. 

Apparel retailers like Uniqlo have high margins and relatively small product selections, making the extra cost of tags well worth the improved customer experience, Saunders said. A grocery store, in contrast, operates on razor thin margins.

Adding just an extra cent or two in cost to each item can be “very damaging,” he said. The fact that manufacturers need to place the tags can prove challenging for complicated grocery supply chains as well.

Modern self-checkout tech won’t lead to labor savings,  according to Harmon. While retailers may be able to cut back on cashiers, businesses still rely on workers to deter shoplifters, answer questions and solve any problems that may crop up.

"The thinking is that the self-checkout terminals replace associates,” Harmon said. “I think in reality you may need more than before, because you need associates to show consumers how to use the devices and be there for support if they're having a problem.”

Cashierless checkout also introduces friction

RFID is one of the most common, though not the only, technology powering cashierless stores. Sensors and cameras are also enabling these shops, but all approaches share the same goal — creating an almost human- and friction-free experience.

The most common implementations of cashierless technology require customers to check in at the door, and perhaps scan something on the way out, according to Saunders. Beyond that, they are free to shop as they please.

However, the freedom of this experience can present a significant downside. 

“There's also a very strange psychological friction,” he said. “Because there's no register at all, a lot of people — especially those who are new to it — find it quite difficult to get their head around the fact that you can just pick something off the shelf and walk out of the store.”

People will likely become more comfortable with cashierless experiences over time, according to Saunders. There will be a period of acclimatization, but as the technology expands it could eventually become the norm.

Even as people become used to cashierless stores, these experiences are unlikely to crowd out traditional shops. Harmon noted that associates are an important element of retail, and cutting them out can negatively impact the customer experience.

"That's the key advantage of physical stores over online: that you have human beings that can help you and give you advice,” Harmon said.