AI and robotics: today’s face of CX
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There’s a reason why Robotics and AI are one of the top three trends in the customer experience (CX) spotlight. Robotics is helping reduce customer waiting times by handling routine tasks, while AI is behind the many amazing things most of us experience every day: from customised Google searches to personalised recommendations when you’re shopping online.
As most organisations ramp up their efforts to enhance their CX through technology, service automation through robotics and AI is set to be a huge focus area over the next two years. That’s according to a sneak preview results from the latest 2019 Global Customer Experience Benchmarking report, coming soon in January 2019.
The move to AI and robotics
AI technology is, at its core, the ability for machines to carry out certain tasks that usually need human intelligence. It’s this capability, to imitate intelligent behaviour through a computer, which can help businesses enhance productivity and focus employee efforts where they need it most.
While a powerful force in any CX strategy, robotics and AI (or machine learning) comes with its own set of challenges. With robotic automation and AI set to surge by 2020, almost half of the CX teams surveyed in the Report are worried about cybersecurity, along with costs and negative feedback.
The AI and Robotics experience
As businesses look to deliver service through automated channels, the Report confirms that the number of average channels is expected to rise from seven to 12 to harness the benefits of:
- An improved customer experience
- Lower costs to serve
- Improved insight through detailed customer data
As automation gives agents a chance to focus on more complex queries, there’s the added benefit of an improved employee experience, where agents become more empowered to make decisions as they focus their efforts on higher value service.
Addressing the AI and Robotics challenges
With AI and automation on the rise, organisations will need to find a way to measure their return on investment. It’s why CX teams need to examine data analytics to understand where appropriate automation can help transform the customer experience.
By using this market intelligence, organisations will be able to prove the business case for automation, and harness its power. It will also mean ensuring consistency across all automated channels, especially when it comes to reviewing the processes behind them.
As we see growth in areas such as chatbots, web chat and virtual assistants, organisations will need to understand their risk profile. This means they’ll need to balance the improvement in risk management with the introduction of new – and potentially harmful – threats as they remove the more routine human element of error.
Above all, as organisations ensure their business and security strategies align, it’s worth remembering that digital isn’t always better than human interactions.