Genesys, Salesforce Share AI Insights for Combining Empathy and Efficiency

Companies are more readily integrating AI into the contact center to improve both customer and employee experiences. What are you seeing as the biggest wins for organizations when using AI for CX?  

Jack Nichols: I’m seeing many companies getting immediate value out of agent copilots. The interesting part is the areas where copilots (knowledge, wrap-up and summarization, transfer summaries, etc.) bring the most value seems to differ between companies. Every contact center is unique; so, it makes sense, but it makes it really important to understand where your pain points are and lean into AI functionality targeted at these points. 

I’ve talked to customers who didn’t go into their projects with an understanding of what to expect and clear, targeted goals. They see improvements, but they don’t know why.

So sometimes they’re paying for all these features but they’re really using one feature the most — so that’s seeing all the value. And there might be another feature that no one is using. They need to be able to track that to make sure they’re using the tool to its full potential and can account for the ROI

Tony Flores: Companies are embedding AI into their contact centers to enhance both the customer journey and employee experience, driving efficiency and satisfaction on both fronts. The most significant benefits customers realize from deploying AI in their service operations are increased service rep productivity and enhanced customer satisfaction. Greater productivity — answering more questions with AI agents, reduced average handle time and improved first-call resolution — translates directly into cost savings.

With AI embedded directly into the service rep workflow, representatives have instant access to the tools, insights and context needed to deliver fast, personalized service. Instead of taking months to ramp up, service reps can become fully effective from Day One.

One major known benefit of AI is improved efficiency. But that’s only part of the value prop. AI allows companies to scale and prepare for growth in the future. Can you talk a bit about that? What are we missing when it comes to AI’s benefits?   

Nichols: There are so many benefits, but in the context of the CX space, one benefit that can get overlooked for the immediate tactical gains is the long-term value of AI around data. The ability to utilize AI to capture better data, keep data updated and help identify information in the vast ocean of data is going to be a huge benefit in the future. 

A great personal example of this is when I was recently working with my insurance service rep. My son is turning 16 years old, and I wanted to know if we needed to put him on my insurance while he has his learner’s permit.

I provided all the information to the insurance company via email, SMS and voice conversations. I thought this was all they would need to fully automate the experience of getting my son car insurance at the right time.

But what I learned was that none of that data was being captured unless the service rep specifically went into the CRM system and entered it. So, they didn’t know to contact me when he turns 17 and needs insurance as a licensed driver in our state. There was no proactive outreach that happened.  

I also recently spoke with another insurance company that has 6,000 independent service reps. Their customers are giving so much good information that’s valuable to the corporate brand and could be used to automate offers. They could automate cross-brand capabilities for customers and offer incentives. But that data isn’t being captured. If we think about AI being able to listen to every customer service conversation and pull out entities and build out a customer profile more effectively — there’s an immense unidentified mountain of value that they can unlock over time.

Flores: By integrating AI-driven agents across customer touchpoints, companies are enabling around-the-clock service while ensuring seamless transitions to human experts when empathy or complex problem-solving is required.

As customer satisfaction improves, it becomes a powerful driver of long-term loyalty. Satisfied customers are more likely to stay with a brand, engage more frequently and become advocates — creating a strong foundation for sustained growth.

This trust not only reduces churn but also opens the door to increased revenue through more frequent purchases, as well as higher conversion rates on up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.

From an operations standpoint, what are the major considerations in implementing AI? What are the obstacles? And what do teams overlook when adding AI into their contact center and customer experience strategies? 

Nichols: One of the biggest misunderstandings or expectation gaps I encounter with customers looking to implement new functionality powered by AI is around the need to treat it like any other system. They think you’ll need resources to provide setup, but ongoing monitoring, performance tuning and process reengineering can be overlooked.

Additionally, companies should spend more time upfront in their AI journey thinking about their service rep community: How does this change their career progression? How should they utilize the tools?

They also need to think about organization change management models. In some cases, I’ve heard about deployments being impacted by service reps either not adopting the tools or, in some cases, intentionally confusing the system due to the fear of being replaced. 

So, companies need to make it clear about what’s in it for the service reps and how this technology is going to be better for them in the long term. Stakeholders need to explain what AI means to the service reps’ jobs and help them understand its value for them — show how they can progress and do other more interesting things for the company once AI is being used.

Flores: First and foremost, service organizations must clearly identify their highest impact use cases. The core jobs to be done that, if improved, would deliver meaningful value to both the business and the customer. This means prioritizing scenarios that drive efficiency, elevate customer experience or unlock new opportunities for growth.

Equally important is understanding where critical data and knowledge reside across the organization. Whether housed in CRM systems, knowledge bases, product documentation or customer interaction history, this information is often siloed. To empower both service reps and AI to operate at their full potential, businesses must ensure seamless access to the full breadth of their data ecosystem. This foundational step enables AI to surface relevant insights in real time and allows service reps to deliver faster, more accurate and more personalized service.

While AI is a critical role in developing a contact center of the future, there are other important considerations for businesses that want to streamline processes and drive efficiency. What impact does a unified tech stack like CX Cloud for Genesys and Salesforce have on the employee experience?

Nichols: I think it’s important to understand that even in a world of AI, companies will need an ecosystem of systems coordinating users, data, information and activities to build the CX experiences of the future. No one system/solution will do everything.

This ecosystem continues to get more complex the larger the organization is. With this complexity, organizations are moving from the idea they need large internal teams to solve the integration of the ecosystem. Instead, they are expecting the vendors to be working together to fully integrate in a way that brings more value to their employees, customers and business. 

The agent workspace in CX Cloud from Genesys and Salesforce is a great example. It has been integrated in an intentional way to bring more value to the employee by giving them the tools in a single pane of glass that reduces their cognitive load and speeds up their ability to service customer interactions. 

Flores: The impact and benefits for the employees, including the service reps, supervisors and business owners are huge due to the deeply integrated and native omnichannel experience that provides a fully consistent and cohesive employee workflow across every channel.

Customers can easily mix and match their service channels from Genesys and Salesforce, as needed, to best serve their customers. For example, they could choose to use voice and chat from Genesys, and WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat, and Email to a Case from Salesforce. And, regardless of whether they choose a Genesys or Salesforce channel, the employee CRM workflow, as well as the AI, automation and analytics tools within their flow of work that help drive efficiency, can be exactly the same.

This enables customers to more easily streamline their processes by implementing innovations once and deploying them everywhere to provide an employee workflow that minimizes swivel chairing, screen toggling and manual tasks. Employees can also be onboarded and trained much more quickly, increasing resolution rates and CSATs, while also lowering service costs.

For example, one leading HR tech firm has seen a 20% reduction in average resolution time and 17% reduction in TCO using CX Cloud. And we’re seeing these benefits across customers.

As organizations strive to unify their tech stacks, how can they ensure that data from various customer touchpoints is leveraged effectively to create a cohesive customer journey? What best practices should be implemented to enhance data integration and accessibility across different systems? 

Nichols: I know it’s easy to say this from a vendor perspective, but having a corporate data strategy and governance is the first step. We have been doing this same change process at Genesys as we realized no one tool is going to “fix” the core data problem, it had to start at the corporate level. Once you have an internal data strategy and governance, it becomes easier to work with your vendors to ensure they can fit into that strategy and be part of the long-term solution. 

Flores: One of the most important considerations is to make sure that all service channels are deeply integrated into the CRM using a single unified data layer. This will enable a consistent and comprehensive customer 360 data set and profile to be leveraged across every touch point. It will also enable those interactions to automatically further enhance and refine the data.

AI and automation are only as good as your data. Without data that is accurate and comprehensive, the AI won’t be able to provide relevant and tailored responses and take appropriate action for your customers.

Fortunately, with CX Cloud from Genesys and Salesforce, this unified data layer is provided out of the box so that it can be leveraged across the customer journey and across every channel, and power AI and automation at scale that is in the flow of work.

In your opinion, what makes this partnership and joint solution special? What does it mean for the customer that no other CCaaS and CRM integration can deliver? 

Nichols: I know I will sound like a broken record, but I truly believe that this partnership is special because of the way it was approached by both companies from the start. We started from a customer and product perspective from the start of the partnership.

And to the credit of the leadership of both Genesys and Salesforce, we were given the luxury to spend time with customers and explore their needs as a joint team — not as two different companies. This started things on the right path, and we were able to take this same customer-first approach and expand it to sales, marketing and events teams as we took this from idea to an in-market product. 

Flores: CX Cloud brings together the best from leading CCaaS and CRM providers into one best-in-class and deeply integrated contact center solution. Both companies are fully invested in this integration as our recommended solution for all joint customers, and we’ve aligned our teams, roadmaps and vision accordingly.

CX Cloud also provides the most comprehensive CCaaS integration into Salesforce on the market and deeply integrates all key Genesys Cloud platform capabilities so that customers can handle all workflow activities from a unified CRM console. This includes routing and orchestration, all Genesys service channels, workforce engagement, campaign management, and AI and automation.

Meeting the Future with AI from Genesys and Salesforce

Implementing AI is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s a strategic imperative for companies to remain competitive as customer expectations continue to evolve. To realize the value of AI, adoption can’t happen in silos.

Teams across the org need to understand long-term goals in order to drive efficiency and unlock new opportunities for innovation and growth. With CX Cloud from Genesys and Salesforce, companies can power smarter, more contextualized self-service and customer engagements to eliminate data blind spots and improve personalization. Organizations are empowered to meet their customer and employee expectations today and prepare for what the future holds — in and beyond the contact center.