Almost half (49%) of CX and contact center leaders worldwide are confident that artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will be instrumental in enhancing efficiency and optimizing CX strategies, especially during financially challenging times, revealed the latest report by CallMiner. Furthermore, one-third (33%) of these decision-makers believe that the adoption of AI will play a crucial role in shaping their organization's future CX approach.
“In a year where most industries faced evolving economic pressures and rapid technology adoption, organizations have had to adapt their CX strategies accordingly. CallMiner’s annual CX Landscape Report captures how contact center and CX leaders are navigating this shift, the challenges they face in collecting data and meeting customer expectations, and what more they can be doing to drive value across their organizations,” said Paul Bernard, President and CEO, CallMiner
The 2023 CX Landscape Report delves into how modern organizations strategically utilize customer data to effectively tackle challenges such as inflation and the global cost-of-living crisis, and elevate the customer experience.
The report reveals that 45% of senior CX and contact center leaders who were surveyed strongly express their desire for their organizations to achieve more with limited resources in the current economic climate.
Despite some progress, most organizations primarily focus on collecting feedback from customers they actively seek out (71% in 2023, compared to 79% in 2022), as opposed to unsolicited feedback. Solicited feedback includes conventional methods such as customer surveys, while unsolicited feedback can be found in sources like contact center conversations and social media interactions.
Furthermore, 45% of organizations still rely heavily on manual analysis of this customer data. This represents a missed opportunity, especially when considering that automated analysis enables organizations to make more data-driven business decisions, a capability that only 51% of organizations primarily relying on manual processes possess, compared to 61% of those leveraging automation.
Future investment plans
Organizations are increasingly turning to AI solutions to gain insights into their customers but are also mindful of the potential risks involved. Survey respondents revealed their intentions to invest in AI-powered solutions to improve the customer experience (CX) in the next 12 months. These include generative AI solutions (43%) and conversation intelligence solutions (34%). However, among those planning to implement AI, 44% are uncertain about which specific AI technology will best align with their business needs for gathering and analyzing CX data.
Main AI concerns
Regarding the main concerns, organizations are actively considering the risks associated with AI adoption in the CX and customer service domains. The top three concerns regarding the use of AI technology for these purposes are the possibility of exposing the company to security and compliance risks (45%), the potential for spreading misinformation (43%), and the risk of providing biased, discriminatory, or inappropriate responses to customers (41%).
Although digital transformation has provided CX teams with a wealth of data, 47% of respondents strongly agree that this data often goes underutilized within their organizations, as reported by more than two-thirds (68%) of respondents.
The report indicates that organizations are not effectively leveraging the insights gained from customer data collection and analysis. For instance, only about 35% of surveyed organizations provide regular group training and retraining for their employees, and less than 18% offer personalized one-on-one coaching.
In addition, organizations are facing challenges in interdepartmental communication. Half of the organizations (50%) lack efficient communication between departments when it comes to aligning on CX data and feedback, which hinders the effective utilization of CX data. Furthermore, 43% note a lack of clarity on how to act on data insights. Despite regularly sharing CX and satisfaction metric reports with their boards, 84% of respondents believe there is room for improvement in how leadership utilizes this data.
In other news, CallMiner announced new functionality in its real-time agent guidance product, RealTime, that supports agent onboarding, drives faster time to resolution, and provides advanced machine learning and generative AI.
