WiCX Talk Trends: How AI and Technology are Redefining CX
Brought to you by Zendesk
Last month, Women in CX hosted a panel discussion in collaboration with Zendesk, delving into some of the key trends shaping the customer experience industry. Focused on Zendesk's 2024 Trends Report, the panel brought together industry-leading women to explore the intersection of AI, technology, and CX. If you missed the panel discussion, you can catch the replay here.
The brilliant Lead User Researcher Natasha den Dekker (Santander), Head of Customer Experience Agnes So (HotDoc), Director of Value Consulting Emily Freeland (Zendesk), and Empathy Expert Sandra Thompson (Ei Evolution) drew from their diverse industry backgrounds to share firsthand experiences, explore best practices, highlight common pitfalls, and provide actionable, practical insights for our audience. In this article, we delve deeper into their perspectives.
Key Takeaways from the Panel
Sandra Thompson, Empathy Expert at Ei Evolution, emphasised the importance of ethical AI deployment. For her, a key takeaway from the panel discussion was the necessity of keeping an eye on AI's societal impacts. She urged organisations to prioritise ethical considerations. “This technology is bringing out the best and the worst in our society, and it's critical to see what is happening in the courts. We must consider where injustices are taking place and debate how we can learn from the case being made and what we can do to ensure that AI is used for good,” Sandra notes.
“This technology is bringing out the best and the worst in our society.”
“There is a lot of risk for truly personalised and inclusive AI experiences. Conscious, inclusive, safe and monitored bot development needs to be front of mind," says Zendesk’s Director of Value Consulting, Emily Freeland, echoing Sandra's views.
Agnes So, Head of Customer Experience at HotDoc, advises always making sure the exchange you're providing is actually valuable and not just used as a deflection. “Most consumers are quite happy with interacting with AI as long as their effort and outcomes are worthy of the interaction. If you're designing AI to be a blocker or a hindrance to save money, rethink your strategy,” she advises.
“We’re still learning about how we implement AI into our organisations in different places [...], and you definitely need some sort of human oversight to keep it in check,” says Natasha Den Dekker, Lead UX Researcher at Santander UK.
What are the Biggest Hurdles?
The integration of AI and technology into CX presents organisations with great challenges. Agnes So pinpointed the hurdle of knowing where to begin. “Start experimenting with low-risk opportunities (non-customer facing problem statements), start with training your team on AI literacy and making sure you have key security and privacy guiding principles to follow that match the values of your company,” she advises.
Natasha Den Dekker outlined the challenges faced by organisations in implementing AI effectively for both employees and customers: “For employees, this means how to implement AI in a way that can boost productivity and offer space for growth and personal development. For customers, how AI affects their experience with a brand and how AI shapes their expectations of the types of services they should expect.” She recommends building ethics boards and ensuring data readiness to address these challenges.
Sandra Thompson talks about the internal battle within organisations regarding AI integration between “those in the organisation who (a) want to do the right thing resetting much of the data collection, data interpretation and use of data to ensure that we consciously and with intent create the most ethical and the best future view - a solid foundation fit for the longer term versus (b) those who want to bolt AI onto the shaky, biased and sometimes rotten datasets because it will save money and make them look good during their tenure.” This highlights the importance of aligning organisational values with ethical AI practices.
Emily Freeland emphasises the importance of considering the end-user experience first, advocating this is “key in understanding how we can create successful AI experiences.” She advises that this approach is likely to open avenues for improved and expanded bot usage.
Another challenge Emily highlights is hiring the right skills. She notes that there is an opportunity to grow further internal roles and responsibilities around AI for those who already understand your organisation. “Creating awareness and education business-wide on AI, bots, challenges, and uses can bring more diverse internal talent into key new roles,” she says.
How is AI Shaping the Future of CX?
When looking to the future, Sandra Thompson explains she has both a wish list and what she envisions as a more realistic picture. “The wish list is that we can build the most incredible, valuable, intuitive partner in customer experience who will add meaning to my experiences because they are a reliable friend to the incredible humans I can still interact with if I want to.”
On the other hand, she does foresee that big businesses might manipulate customer behaviours, with customers becoming less conscious that they are buying things they do not need or want. “That's a bit dark - but I do think that it's that serious. The way we accommodate our 'partnership' with AI now will shape more than customer experience in the future.”
Emily Freeland likes to think the future has an improved focus on human experiences and interactions, focusing on quality, person-to-person service, saving money in meaningful ways, and allowing businesses to serve with quality at scale. She believes this will create “a more conscious service world, where employee experience is deeply considered, as is creating moments of connection and true support in a sustainable way, with AI supporting and elevating human interactions.”
“Other than being really effective in normalising automation in low-level enquiries, I'm also interested in how AI tools will force us to revisit our current data hygiene,” says Agnes So. She’s especially interested in how we organise, write and keep knowledge. “The flow-on effect is that it becomes easier to not just have these tools ingest our data and give us accurate responses, but that the core data will be easier for humans to read themselves even without AI. I'm interested in how that will allow us to surface insights quicker than ever before or how it will really supercharge self-service.”
Natasha Den Dekker sees AI as a positive. “It’s a tool to help ingest large amounts of data that will help us do certain tasks a lot quicker—managing our tasks, providing accurate help and support, assessing large reams of content with summaries to inform better decision-making.”
“If AI does all the heavy lifting, we’re free to engage in innovative and creative problem-solving.”
From Natasha’s perspective, this means that the time from contact with customers to insights gathered becomes more efficient, leading to new features being developed more quickly. “If AI does all the heavy lifting, we’re free to engage in innovative and creative problem-solving that will enable better outcomes for our customers,” she notes.
For those interested in delving deeper into the trends shaping CX, Zendesk's 2024 Trends Report offers further exploration into the evolving role of AI and technology in customer experience.
If you're curious to uncover more about the trends shaping CX in 2024 and beyond, catch the panel replay and settle in. After all, the future of CX is not just about keeping pace—it's about leading the way.
Thankfully, we have the perfect community to help you do that.
