As generative AI continues to take the world by storm, Kevin McGachy,
Head of AI Solutions at Sabio, predicts the impact it will have on the world of CX.
With the ability to generate human-like content such as text, speech, images and video, this groundbreaking technology will revolutionise customer experience (CX) like never before.
As explained in Sabio’s new ebook – entitled ‘Revolutionising the Customer Experience’ – Generative AI represents an exciting “second wave” of AI advancement, building on earlier innovations in machine learning focused purely on understanding language.
Now, AI can actually see, hear, speak and create – not just understand.
The immense capability of the technology AI has, understandably, attracted global attention thanks mainly to ChatGPT, the influential AI chatbot from OpenAI used by over 100 million people worldwide.
Although that’s just one example of this burgeoning technology, ChatGPT – which celebrated just its first birthday last year, (itself highlighting the progress the technology has made in a short space of time) – provides a glimpse into the vast potential impact of Generative AI across countless industries. In fact, the broader Generative AI market is forecast to grow at a staggering 42% CAGR over the next decade.
And it’s easy to see why, given its incredible ability to produce exciting human-like output by leveraging deep learning techniques. This positions the technology to be hugely disruptive going forward.
Revolutionising Customer Experience and the Contact Centre
So, what does this all mean for CX? In a word – everything.
As Generative AI tools and other AI innovations become more ubiquitous, they promise to enhance CX in three key areas:
- Sophisticated Automation: The technology makes it far easier to create incredibly detailed, nuanced and personalised automated customer journeys. This reduces the effort needed to build truly intelligent CX automation to new levels.
- Human Augmentation: By training Generative AI models on previous customer conversations and interactions, they can then assist human agents in real-time via chat or voice. This is next-level augmentation set to take CX to new heights.
- Advanced Insights: While traditional search just returns lists, Generative AI provides specific, tailored answers. This powerful capability can be leveraged to unlock deep customer insights and supercharge the design of successful CX journeys.
Exciting Use Cases
The key is to have an aspirational mindset when developing your AI strategies, what might not be available today will most certainly be available in the not-too-distant future. Gen AI technology already shows immense promise across several high-value CX use cases – and is evolving fast.
For example:
- Interaction & Voice Summarisation – Going beyond only summarising the conversation to reduce the agent workload – using AI to identify themes, actions agreed on the call and uncover insights in agent training and performance.
- Agent Assist – deliver predictive responses, personalised suggestions and added value to complex customer issues in real-time.
- Content Creation – automatically generate scripts, email templates, knowledge articles and more customised content.
- Coding – speed up development of chatbots, surveys, text recognition and other technical CX activities.
Overcoming the Challenges
However, organisations must thoughtfully navigate various challenges before deploying any form of Generative AI technology across CX channels. Things to consider include:
- Data privacy and security risks from exposing sensitive customer information
- Commoditisation of early innovation advantages as the tech matures
- Potential errors or hallucinations causing brand reputation damage
- Customer concerns over responsible use of their data
- Liability for faulty or misleading content
- Reskilling staff to maximise value from Generative AI
- Explainability issues in regulated industries
The way forward lies in responsibly harnessing the immense power of the technology to enable next-generation CX.
With careful planning, strong governance and visionary leadership, the opportunities to inject new levels of automation, augmentation and insight across CX operations are game-changing.
The AI revolution has begun and it’s picking up speed – the question is, will you be among the leaders?
Discover more in Sabio’s new ebook – ‘Revolutionising the Customer Experience’.
About the Author
Kevin McGachy is Head of AI Solutions at Sabio Group.
Sabio Group is a global digital customer experience (CX) transformation specialist with major operations in the UK (England and Scotland), Spain, France, Netherlands, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa and India.
The Group, which includes ‘makepositive’, delivers solutions and services that seamlessly combine digital and human interactions to support exceptional customer experiences.
Through its own technology, and that of world-class technology leaders such as Avaya, Genesys, Verint, Twilio, Google, Amazon and Salesforce, Sabio helps organisations optimise their customer journeys by making better decisions across their multiple contact channels.
The Group works with major brands worldwide, including Aegon, AXA Assistance, Bankia, BBVA, BGL, Caixabank, DHL, loveholidays, Marks & Spencer, Rentokil, Essent, GovTech, HomeServe, Sainsbury’s Argos, Telefónica, Think Money and Transcom Worldwide.
