Dive Brief:
- Three-quarters of executives believe generative AI for customer service and chatbots is a key aspect of their company’s growth transformation, according to a Publicis Sapient global survey of 1,000 executives, released last month.
- Notably, the C-suite is more focused on the customer-facing elements of generative AI than their VP colleagues. More than half of C-suite respondents said that generative AI in customer service and customer experience would be “extremely important,” while just over one-third of VPs agreed.
- The gap stems from each group’s vantage point, according to Jackie Walker, retail experience strategy lead of North America at Publicis Sapient. “If you think about C-suites, and you think about the key considerations of a chief digital officer or chief customer officer, a chief marketing officer, they get the liberty of being macro focused on: Where do we need to go as an organization?” Walker said. “When you look at the VP tier, it's all about, what is my remit?”
Dive Insight:
There are two main ways in which the C-suite is thinking about AI in CX: how AI can increase efficiency and jumpstart innovation, Walker said.
“How do we do more with the people that we already have?” Walker told CX Dive. “How do we create more personalized experiences?”
AI can provide better visibility into what is happening with a business’ customers. This is particularly helpful for the contact center.
“If you are a customer service person, well, now I'm using generative AI to have a knowledge base,” Walker said. “Now I can kind of pull together a better storyline for that person in the call center or the person who's responding to a customer service complaint, and I can deliver better service.”
Such personalized service is also helpful for customer retention, Walker said. But where some businesses go wrong is when they take humans completely out of the equation with a generative AI tool that doesn’t solve a customer’s questions.
“Where customers get really frustrated is when you create something with the intent of making their lives easier, but actually make their lives harder,” Walker said. “So if I have a chatbot that is actually able to get me the information I need, route my inquiry in the right way, find the right things from the knowledge base, and I can solve my problem, that's a great experience. The problem as a consumer is when you put a chatbot up, and it basically becomes a brick wall.”
