With our AI Briefing in Atlanta just weeks away, it’s a good time to reflect back on our February Briefing in Boston. It was an illuminating deep dive into artificial intelligence and its impact on customer experience.
Our panel of experts fielded questions from our community of corporate executives. The brands’ experiences with AI ranged from taking the first baby steps to mature projects looking to take the next big leap.
The themes that emerged revealed an area of CX that is very much in its infancy. The applications of AI and the strategic decisions it requires were top-of-mind for corporate brands.
“Machines and Humans Have to Work Together”
One of the central questions of the Briefing was how AI and service reps would (or wouldn’t) interact. Will AI replace employees entirely? How can AI provide good or excellent customer service without the empathy of a person?
The service providers agreed that AI won’t necessarily replace employees. AI can make an impact on the bottom line by completing simple and rote tasks, which frees up representatives to deal with more complex issues. Employees are happier, because they’re not working on repetitive cases. Customers are happier, because reps can devote more time to their complex cases.
AI can also work to streamline service processes for customers. Deflecting cases or just getting cases to the right person reduces customer frustration. Customer problems are solved faster, creating efficiencies that also reduce costs. Used correctly, machines can give humans more capacity to do the things only a person can do.
AI Use Cases
Some of the most exciting content came from the service providers’ experience with clients. Their real-world examples included visual recognition and machine learning. One company in the insurance field uses visual recognition to give customers a way to send photos for claims and get feedback. A consumer products organization asks expert users in their community to answer questions about their product. For the questions that appear over and over again, the expert users “teach” the AI to answer.
Machine Learning Implementation
Machine learning is an area many of the brands were interested in exploring. The service providers shared best practices to make machine learning work for CX. One panelist suggested thinking of machine learning as a smart, inexperienced apprentice who doesn’t know anything about your business but can learn. If you give it a large enough set of examples, it learns patterns well. Our service partners emphasized machine learning’s success greatly depends on the data set it uses. If the data set’s quality is questionable, corporate executives are likely to be frustrated with the outcome.
AI Briefing in Atlanta
Each Briefing is unique, with different attendees, panelists, and agendas. Our AI Boston Briefing started off with a panel of expert service providers answering questions from the audience of corporate executives. The AI Briefing in Atlanta (May 3, 2018), will be kicked off with a stellar presentation from UPS’ Technology and Process Senior Manager, Gil Pongetti. Register today to hear Gil’s perspective on AI, quiz a panel of service providers on best practices and use cases, collaborate with your peers in a corporate-only session, and see on-demand demos of the best CX solutions.
