{"id":514655,"date":"2024-04-16T04:08:26","date_gmt":"2024-04-16T11:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.genesys.com\/blog\/post\/cx-leaders-now-is-the-time-to-adapt-and-embrace-ai"},"modified":"2024-04-16T04:10:30","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T11:10:30","slug":"cx-leaders-now-is-the-time-to-adapt-and-embrace-ai","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.genesys.com\/en-gb\/blog\/post\/cx-leaders-now-is-the-time-to-adapt-and-embrace-ai","title":{"rendered":"CX Leaders: Now Is the Time to Adapt and Embrace AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_section full_width=”stretch_row”][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text][\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Experience transformation: Moving continuously toward more personalised, empathetic interactions for customers and employees. That was the theme of Enterprise Connect 2024<\/a>. And the most prevalent topic was how to use artificial intelligence (AI)<\/a> to make that happen.<\/p>\n

Experts at the show agreed that the opportunity to use AI for experience transformation makes it an exciting \u2014 and rewarding \u2014 time to be in the customer experience (CX) business. Everyone from contact centre leaders to CIOs were excited to get a better understanding of the technology and learn some best practices for using AI<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Industry growth projections show major gains for the technology. And attendees were gleaning all the insight they could on how to weave AI into their plans to build or optimise their tech stacks.<\/p>\n

During the breakout session \u201cContact Centre\/CX 2027: What Will Drive the Market,\u201d David Myron, Principal Analyst at Omdia<\/a>, shared findings from the firm\u2019s recent research on customer experience industry growth. The research firm predicts that global Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) sales will reach $12.7 billion in 2027, up from $7.7 billion in 2023. It\u2019s projected to hit $9.5 billion this year. You can\u2019t have AI without the cloud \u2014 and both offer big benefits for businesses.<\/p>\n

Harnessing AI Starts in the Cloud<\/h2>\n

While some attendees were eager to learn how to get started with AI for customer and employee experience, others were focused on enhancing or extending how they use it. Experts advised the first step is to evolve CX platforms to the cloud<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cA cloud solution allows you to have a push-pull model to share data across your entire CX tech stack, which is critical today\u201d said Nathalie DeChellis, Senior Director, Product Marketing at Genesys, during an interview for the CX Green Room show livestreamed<\/a> from the conference. The cloud provides the agility organisations need today to orchestrate and optimise experiences in real time, she added. And it enables businesses to keep pace with AI\u2019s continual innovation.<\/p>\n

A cloud-based CX platform also allows organisations to deliver the personalised, seamless journeys that customers expect. As with any experience transformation initiative, migrating to the cloud isn\u2019t just about technology, noted Elizabeth English, Founder and Principal, EE & Associates<\/a>, in the session \u201cKeeping Major Contact Centre Projects on Track.\u201d Creating a seamless experience requires budget, a detailed plan, supporting resources, training, user adoption and go-live support, she said.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1712244844344{margin-top: 1.5em !important;margin-bottom: 1.5em !important;}”]<\/p>\n

\u201cAI is a magic trick\u2026 [but] we\u2019re not all magicians.\u201d<\/strong>
\n\u2014 David Michels, Lead Analyst, TalkingPointz <\/em><\/h6>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]The other must-have for personalised experiences \u2014 especially those powered by AI \u2014 is data. Every discussion of AI included a conversation about data.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI is a magic trick\u2026 [but] we\u2019re not all magicians,\u201d said David Michels, Lead Analyst, TalkingPointz<\/a> during the \u201cLocknote\u201d session. AI needs data, he noted, but many organizations don\u2019t have the data, or data quality, that\u2019s needed to get the most from AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe magical experience we want is personalised but most of us don\u2019t have the data ready for this either. It\u2019s going to take time to get there,\u201d added Michels.<\/p>\n

DeChellis also emphasised the importance of having robust quality data for AI. \u201cYour AI is only as good as your data,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The opportunity lies in an organisation\u2019s \u201cpush\/pull of data\u201d across its full ecosystem \u2014 from CRM systems and behavior data to channel and partner data. Data needs to see the end-to-end journey and the individual interactions within them, she said.<\/p>\n

Feeding that journey data back into the system helps organisations balance what customers say they want with what their digital behaviors show, said Brett Weigl<\/a>, GM, Digital, AI and Journey Analytics during the session \u201cIs Gen AI Already Delivering Business Value to Enterprise CX?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCompanies want to ground what they\u2019re doing with the data they already have in their system,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just what a business pulls from those integrated systems, said DeChellis. It\u2019s also what that organisation generates through service interactions in its contact centre and in other channels that can help improve its data pool.<\/p>\n

\u201cContinuously evolving the data enables organisations to continuously optimise the experience,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Generative AI Is the Generating the Most Buzz<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Optimising experiences with generative AI was another main topic at the conference. \u201cGen AI is now AI<\/a> on steroids. It\u2019s amazing how it\u2019s matured over the past 12 months,\u201d said Steve Leaden, President and Principal Consultant, Leaden & Associates<\/a>, during the \u201cLocknote\u201d session.<\/p>\n

Myron of Omdia said the top five generative AI<\/a> technologies that contact centres plan to deploy over the next 12\u201318 months are document creation for knowledge bases, text chat response, agent assist, post-call notes\/summarisation, and email responses.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1712244909391{margin-top: 1.5em !important;margin-bottom: 1.5em !important;}”]<\/p>\n

\u201cGen AI is AI on steroids. It\u2019s amazing how it\u2019s matured over the past 12 months.\u201d<\/strong>
\n\u2014 Steve Leaden, President and Principal Consultant, Leaden & Associates<\/em><\/h6>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Robin Gareiss, CEO and Principal Analyst, Metrigy<\/a>, shared similar findings during the session \u201cAgent Assist and Virtual Assistants: How Are Companies Supercharging Their Agents?\u201d CX leaders who responded to a recent Metrigy survey said generative AI is extremely valuable for productivity-related activities, such as interaction summaries, composing email or chats, content creation for self-service, and generating articles and content for agents to use during customer interactions.<\/p>\n

Although it\u2019s still mostly early adopters who are using generative AI for CX and EX, these organisations are seeing good successes, said Blair Pleasant, President and Principal Analyst, COMMfusion<\/a>, during the \u201cLocknote\u201d session. \u201cIncredible productivity gains are possible if you have a strategy and use cases \u2014 and aren\u2019t just using AI for AI\u2019s sake,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAuto-summarisation is one area where organisations are seeing big gains. They\u2019re saving two to five minutes per call,\u201d said DeChellis.<\/p>\n

Gen AI will enable organisations to build better self-service apps and can make deployments of conversational AI and other tools that use it \u201can order of magnitude faster,\u201d said Max Ball, Principal Analyst at Forrester<\/a>, during the session \u201cThey\u2019re Heeeere: Generative AI Self-Service Applications\u2026 Are You Ready?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe opportunity is amazing,\u201d he said, adding that the safest place to start with generative AI is interaction summarisation<\/a>, where there\u2019s a human in the loop.<\/p>\n

Better Experiences Are Within Reach<\/h2>\n

The opportunity to provide better customer and employee experiences is amazing. And integrating artificial intelligence into customer experience strategies<\/a> puts innovation within reach for organisations.<\/p>\n

Metrigy research found that the AI applications in broad use right now include (in order):<\/p>\n