Aligning Your CX Team And AI Technology For Advancements In 2023

Alex Ross is cofounder & COO at Hire Horatio CX. Horatio CX manages the CX & other customer needs for today's fastest-growing brands.

Over the last few years, AI has revolutionized countless industries, a notable one being customer experience (CX). According to studies, including MIT’s Global AI Agenda, “customer care [is] one of the top use cases for AI.” These studies found that both business leaders and consumers alike believe AI will play a significant role in CX processes.

During the beginning of the Covid pandemic, many leaders found that using AI on a number of different platforms—from kiosks to traditional websites—helped address customer needs.

AI And CX: A Symbiotic Relationship

Ultimately, the goal of implementing AI for customer experience—whether in-house or outsourced—should be to make an existing CX plan more efficient. The key to this thought process is that AI is not a solution for CX alone; rather, it is used to support your CX team in the best-case scenarios. This allows your agents to solve problems that need a high level of empathy and the intangible “human touch” that no amount of AI can solve.

An example of this could be having situations arise with a customer who has recently experienced grief or trauma. In these instances, for example, if that customer is purchasing plane tickets, having to speak or deal solely with an automated response can be off-putting or jarring. That said, employee attrition is severely lessened by having the support of AI, and advanced AI can identify the initial problem a customer is having. These brief interactions can then lead to better outcomes when the human agent steps in to elevate the customer experience.

Transforming Digital Natives To AI Natives

In order to continue to build brand loyalty in 2023, DTC professionals, in particular, should consider making CX a top priority. This means having an ample amount of people on your CX team and making sure that proper training is part of the course so that your agents can feel comfortable with your AI systems rather than being intimidated by them.

According to MIT robotics professor Cynthia Breazeal, “the next generation [of CX workers] will have moved beyond being ‘digital natives’ [and] they will be ‘AI natives.’”

How AI Helps CX’s Seasonality

By employing sophisticated uses for AI, it can increase brand awareness and presence. A customer would likely prefer too many opportunities to be helped rather than the inverse scenario. AI can help this by making customer assistance accessible, especially during off-hours or during busy seasons like holidays.

During Black Friday, for example, the demand for CX support significantly increased as shoppers spent $8.9 billion online in 2021. While hiring extra hands during this time is highly recommended, it also behooves businesses to make sure they amplify their AI capabilities. This may mean having a more sophisticated plan but also employing new tactics such as voice technology. Having inclusive AI technology can help all your consumers feel seen and heard.

Aligning Your CX Team And AI Technology

In order to effectively make sure that AI is cohesive with your team’s overall CX strategy, it’s important to take several actionable steps. The first and perhaps most important task is to make sure your team has received the proper training to understand how your AI technology works. Even after introductory courses, it benefits teams to have monthly or bimonthly check-ins with the AI team or AI software providers to make sure your agents are aware of updates or changes.

Beyond training your CX team, it is also important to remember there will be a lot more data with AI capabilities. Therefore, building out customer data platforms (CDP) will be crucial for assessing feedback from consumers. When building out CDP, your business earning potential will undoubtedly increase as “CDPs help integrate data across those systems with the help of a unified ID used to define each unique customer,” according to Aberdeen Strategy and Research.

Another step to take is to make sure that your CX team can troubleshoot when AI goes awry. No AI program is infallible, and having your team recognize this will make sure the proper measures are taken to make sure your technology is being monitored accordingly.

2023 And Beyond

AI can be a wonderful resource to help CX professionals prepare for the unpredictable nature of the years ahead. As the pandemic taught us, businesses should always expect the unexpected.

The best training and support for your team is to stay at the forefront of AI and feel well-versed in the changes that are made almost daily. Rigorous training will help your team feel supported by technology rather than threatened by it, and it will ensure they are ready to take on customer challenges in the most efficient and empathetic ways possible.

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