When AI appeared like a knight in shining armor to streamline customer support experiences, CX leaders embraced the tech eagerly, speeding to deploy it throughout contact heart channels and remedy all their buyer interplay woes. That clearly hasn’t occurred, however these leaders apparently aren’t seeing the shortfalls of their chatbots, based on new analysis from buyer engagement options agency Waterfield Tech—and it might be fatally damaging any hopes that they had of constructing their buyer loyalty.
The agency’s new report, Rush to AI Adoption in Contact Facilities Generates Contrasting Reactions from Companies and Prospects, based mostly on a survey fielded by Regina Corso Consulting, spotlights this gaping disconnect between CX leaders and shoppers over satisfaction with present contact heart applied sciences. In line with the survey of greater than 200 CX leaders, practically 80 p.c report being very happy with their contact heart and supporting AI options. Nonetheless, the agency’s earlier Could 2023 survey of shoppers revealed that solely 36 p.c are absolutely happy with the totally different contact heart applied sciences that assist their customer support interactions.
The brand new survey of CX leaders discovered this disconnect exists even throughout the companies themselves in the case of sentiment round AI and cloud-based methods within the contact heart. Whereas senior executives had been very happy with their contact heart applied sciences total, the nearer the respondents had been to managing the contact facilities, the extra doubtless they had been to determine shortcomings of their options. For instance, 77 p.c of C-suite executives report total excessive ranges of satisfaction with their AI contact heart applied sciences—however solely 65 p.c of these within the trenches (e.g., vice chairman and director ranges) expressed satisfaction with their options.
AI adoption is rising—however at what value?
Waterfield Tech’s 2022 survey of CX leaders confirmed solely 56 p.c of respondents had been both creating an AI technique or starting to deploy AI in touch facilities. Now, greater than two-thirds (67 p.c) of CX leaders report having conversational AI (CAI) or generative AI options midway or absolutely carried out, whereas solely 30 p.c are within the early levels.
This fast improve could possibly be resulting in points. For instance, among the many 2,000 shoppers surveyed in Could, 83 p.c fear AI-powered chatbots don’t all the time perceive what they imply, 43 p.c say they really feel irritated once they work together with a chatbot, and 50 p.c really feel AI doesn’t enhance the client expertise. Nonetheless, shoppers do see the good thing about AI, with 60 p.c believing it could assist scale back the period of time they should spend interacting with customer support brokers to unravel an issue.
“With the advances made prior to now 12 months, easy and highly effective APIs at the moment are available and the adoption and deployment of LLM-powered AI in and across the contact heart is rising quick,” mentioned Michael Fisher, chief product officer at Waterfield Tech, in a information launch. “However organizations want to know the benefit of preliminary adoption can masks the issue of attending to the end line. There’s a final mile downside in getting LLM-powered AI manufacturing prepared. Profitable implementations require a customer-centric and data-driven strategy that mixes the best know-how, design, and AI coaching to assist organizations truly meet their enterprise targets, their compliance and safety wants—and their clients’ expectations.”
Further findings:
These nearer to the contact heart see the shortcomings
- 40 p.c of administrators/VPs reported their Contact Middle as a Service (CCaaS) options should not assembly all their expectations.
- These within the C-suite are extra doubtless than administrators/VPs to say their tech options throughout the contact heart “positively” are built-in (66 p.c vs. 45 p.c) whereas administrators/VPs usually tend to say they solely “most likely” are (52 p.c vs. 32 p.c).
- These within the C-suite are extra doubtless than administrators/VPs to say their worker expertise technique helps their CX technique as one can not exist with out the opposite (34 p.c vs. 16 p.c) whereas administrators/VPs usually tend to say it considerably helps it, however the two methods should not as built-in as they need to be (20 p.c vs. 6 p.c).
State of the contact heart within the cloud
- 60 p.c of CX leaders surveyed report their contact heart as being cloud-based.
- Of the 40 p.c not already within the cloud, 30 p.c of respondents anticipate emigrate their contact heart in 2024.
- Amongst those that should not all or nearly all cloud-based, knowledge safety issues was the first motive, with 29 p.c of survey respondents citing safety as the first motive they haven’t absolutely migrated, adopted by issues of excessive prices (18 p.c).
Trade deep dive
- These in Shopper Packaged Items (CPG) are extra doubtless than these in Banking/Finance/Insurance coverage, Retail/e-tail and Manufacturing to say they’re very happy with their present contact heart options (91 p.c vs. 67 p.c, 72 p.c and 75 p.c, respectively).
- When requested about their degree of satisfaction with their contact heart AI options, opinions various. Respondents from the CPG and Manufacturing industries had been most happy, with 78.1 p.c and 71.4 p.c saying they had been “very” happy, vs. solely 59 p.c of these in Banking and 58.3 p.c of these in Retail/e-tail.
- When requested what finest describes their targets for AI customer support initiatives within the coming 12 months, CX leaders in Manufacturing, Retail/e-tail and CPG reported “deploying buyer dealing with AI” (64.3 p.c, 61.1 p.c, 59.4 p.c) as their main purpose. The highest said purpose for these within the Banking sector was “Producing ROI on AI” initiatives (59 p.c).
Contact heart crystal ball: What does the long run maintain?
- Over half of respondents (53 p.c) say their main initiative for enhancing their contact heart is to enhance CAI whereas 48 p.c say it’s to enhance total contact heart effectivity and/or flexibility. Over two in 5 (44 p.c) say their main initiative is to get higher knowledge and/or analytics from their methods.
- Virtually three-quarters (73 p.c) say they see generative AI having a significant affect on customer support sooner or later whereas 70 p.c say voice recognition software program will. Fifty p.c say the metaverse will, and 48 p.c say avatars and/or 3D chatbots may have a significant affect on customer support sooner or later.
Obtain the survey graphic right here.
This on-line survey was fielded in October 2023. The survey collected responses from 203 senior leaders in customer support at corporations with no less than 100 staff.
