Adobe: Generative AI Will Take a Star Turn in CX
New research from Adobe shows that most people feel positively toward generative AI and believe the technology will not only enhance their personal creativity but also improve their experience with brands. And individuals and brands are largely embracing the technology despite some early controversies and widely publicized mistakes, a trend that appears highly likely to continue growing for the foreseeable future.
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Among those who view generative AI favorably, the number rises as consumers get younger. For example, while 57% of all surveyed consumers believe generative AI will enhance their personal creativity, that sentiment is echoed by 75% of the Gen Z crowd. In another instance, 72% of global consumers say generative AI will improve their CX, but that optimism is expressed by 80% of millennials and an even higher 83% among Gen Z.
For consumers, the most important consideration for any company contemplating the use of generative AI is ethical use of the technology, ranked first by 19% of the respondents. Consumers also approved of using generative AI to make products better (17%), to make work easier and more efficient for employees (15%), and to make CX “awesome” (also 15%). At least 11% do not want companies to use generative AI at all, but that number sinks to just 6% for millennials and 3% for Gen Z consumers.
With marketing and CX leaders, 88-90% believe generative AI will help in a broad range of tasks, helping them to do more work, create more and better content, reach the right customers, better personalize CX, identify new customer journeys, enhance the ability to use creative tools, and identify new audiences.
These findings, first unveiled at this year’s Adobe Summit in late March, are from an Adobe survey of 13,000 consumers and 4,250 CX and marketing professionals in 14 countries, including the US, UK, Japan, India, Australia, and other countries in Europe, Asia, and Oceania.
CSG: New Report Uncovers Trending Areas for CX Strategy
A new report discussing current CX trends is meant to equip brands with a winning CX strategy in the digital era. The State of the Customer Experience 2023 Report from CSG, the Colorado-based provider of business support systems software and services, finds that business leaders feel the need to accelerate digital CX offerings from their organizations, but that they need help to kickstart their CX journeys.
The first trend says businesses are reorganizing from the top down to reinvigorate and unify CX efforts, a shift that starts with the adoption of sophisticated AI solutions for automation and CX technology. Even so, businesses cannot neglect traditional, non-digital processes, notes the second trend, which advises a hybrid approach to meet the needs of all customers.
In the third trend, businesses are gearing up for immersive digital experiences in virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and perhaps even the metaverse. This entails designing a virtual presence with CX at its heart, the report notes, and companies must consider IT infrastructure readiness to support transactions in a virtual, decentralized world. In the fourth and final trend, security checkpoints are paramount to delivering extraordinary CX, with security, transparency, and privacy all serving to drive the critical element of trust.
“This year’s findings illustrate a clear runway for the future of customer experience,” says Mark Smith, senior vice president of CX at CSG. “Once you lay this solid foundation, the horizon for digital innovations in CX is limitless.”
Talkdesk Advice: Invest in Conversational AI
Companies looking to adopt AI tools to improve customer support would do well to invest in conversational AI, the technology behind speech-enabled applications for machines to understand and respond to human language, asserts a new report from Talkdesk, the San Francisco-based provider of a contact center platform for the enterprise.
And as organizations continue to reduce staff and freeze hiring to cut down on costs, companies should consider investing in well-designed automated solutions to streamline CX, mitigate customer frustration, and drive customer loyalty, the report notes further.
To this end, conversational AI has massive potential when designed properly, with studies showing that consumers prefer to engage with customer service through phone connections (47%) or live chat (31%). The preference for human agents persists, the report explains, because despite significant advancements in AI, many companies still miss the mark and deliver poor CX by using either older technology or inadequate conversational design, leaving customers unsatisfied and losing them altogether as a result.
To realize AI’s potential in the contact center, the report says CX teams must optimize new AI tools with good conversational design, continuously improve virtual agents through testing and training, and reimagine virtual agents with GPT and large language models. CX teams should also implement a fallback mechanism in virtual agents, and provide a way for customers to opt out and connect with a human agent.
SAS: Companies in EMEA Struggle to Come Up with Meaningful CX Strategies
Just 40% of marketing executives in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region are very confident that their company’s current CX strategies are capable of winning and retaining customers, as high-quality products and affordability are considered to be more important drivers of loyalty, reveal the findings from Cracking Tomorrow’s CX Code, an international research study from global analytics firm SAS, carried out in partnership with the CMO Council, a worldwide group of senior marketing executives banding together for high-level networking and knowledge exchange.
But while CX advocates say that more must be done to lift the customer journey experience, orchestrating a CX that hits all the right notes is difficult to pull off, the study maintains. To do so, one must cull together the various ingredients that make for a memorable CX. By most accounts, such a mix would include the elements of digital self-service, personalization, privacy and trust, omnichannel access and availability, and a hybrid blend of physical and digital experiences.
Yet instead of formulating or implementing a viable CX, the majority of businesses in EMEA are working on other issues, such as accommodating existing digital and physical engagement models (87%), balancing the appeal of personalization against the need for privacy (87%), adjusting to supply chain issues (81%), reacting to customers in real time with personalized interactions (73%), and managing the frequency and volume of customer interactions (70%).
For many, the biggest problem with implementing CX strategies remains the spotty coordination among departments. Just 11% of EMEA marketing executives believe their company is well-positioned in this area, while just as few study participants (11%) believe that the companies they work for is sufficiently mature to execute CX measures against the backdrop of a completely transformed digital infrastructure.
Sprinklr: For Their Customer Service, Brands Struggle with Ineffective AI
A new study from enterprise platform provider Sprinklr finds companies struggling with significant challenges throughout the customer service journey, extending from basic data collection to deploying advanced solutions like AI. More than half of all respondents say they wrestle to even capture meaningful data about customers, while more than 6 in 10 are saddled with ineffective AI solutions.
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In the area of digital and AI deficiencies, 62% of brands acknowledge inconsistencies in their digital customer communication, admitting to not communicating the same information or to not staying true to their brand voice. The majority of companies also struggle with ineffective AI solutions (60%) and insufficient resourcing (54%).
A second problem area, disconnected customer experiences, shows that only 22% of customer service leaders could attest to their organizations having completely unified their customer data. In the third area of impersonal interactions, a “non-trivial” 11% of respondents concede that they make no efforts at all to personalize interactions; those that proactively tailor interactions number barely above a notch, at a scant 12%.
For the final area in question, insufficient insights, 51% of brands struggle to capture any customer data of importance, 67% face difficulty in analyzing customer data, and 64% grapple with unifying data.
“Providing digital, personalized service is essential for companies to meet consumer expectations,” says Ragy Thomas, founder and CEO of Sprinklr. “The challenges uncovered go beyond customer experience and contact center teams. Insufficient intelligence hurts the entire business. Unified insight about what customers need and how they behave, can dramatically improve how every customer-facing function operates.”
Author Information
Alex is responsible for writing about trends and changes that are impacting the customer experience market. He had served as Principal Editor at Village Intelligence, a Los Angeles-based consultancy on technology impacting healthcare and healthcare-related industries. Alex was also Associate Director for Content Management at Omdia and Informa Tech, where he produced white papers, executive summaries, market insights, blogs, and other key content assets. His areas of coverage spanned the sectors grouped under the technology vertical, including semiconductors, smart technologies, enterprise & IT, media, displays, mobile, power, healthcare, China research, industrial and IoT, automotive, and transformative technologies.
At IHS Markit, he was Managing Editor of the company’s flagship IHS Quarterly, covering aerospace & defense, economics & country risk, chemicals, oil & gas, and other IHS verticals. He was Principal Editor of analyst output at iSuppli Corp. and Managing Editor of Market Watch, a fortnightly newsletter highlighting significant analyst report findings for pitching to the media. He started his career in writing as an Editor-Reporter for The Associated Press.
