More than 60% of customer experience leaders believe that Artificial Intelligence will offer them a competitive edge. To gain insight into AI's potential influence on their work, Qualtrics conducted a survey involving workers dedicated to customer experience (CX), including customer service and user experience.
The rapid progress of generative AI, especially with technologies like ChatGPT, has led to heightened expectations for AI to exhibit human-like capabilities. This has created a sense of urgency in organizations, prompting them to integrate AI into their operations to enhance business outcomes. Despite being a relatively new technology, as many as 75% of leaders feel compelled to include generative AI in their business strategies immediately.
“Historically, emerging technologies have elevated the human experience by allowing users to prioritize the skills that they uniquely possess. Incorporating AI gives customer experience teams a powerful way to reduce workloads and let people focus on the issues that humans are made for, without sacrificing insights that drive future improvements and innovations,” said Ellen Loeshelle, Director of AI Product Management, Qualtrics.
Organizations collect vast amounts of customer and interaction data, but accessing and utilizing this information efficiently often requires laborious manual efforts for analysis and decision-making. AI offers a solution by expediting and simplifying the process of extracting valuable insights and suggesting or automating appropriate responses. Around two-thirds of leaders (including senior managers and higher-ups) expect their companies to increase financial investments in technology tools and provide training for their customer experience (CX) teams in the coming year.
AI to reduce team workload
CX leaders have identified two primary focus areas for the upcoming year: enhancing customer satisfaction scores and refining sentiment measurement. They firmly believe that AI can play a significant role in directly addressing these priorities. The most commonly acknowledged benefit of AI, according to these leaders, is its ability to reduce the overall workload of teams. Additionally, AI is seen as valuable in helping customer service agents respond promptly to customers' needs and extracting valuable insights from various customer interactions.
AI has the potential to mitigate the risk of burnout among employees by streamlining inefficient processes and improving employee retention. Previous research conducted by Qualtrics revealed that frontline employees who perceive their teams as understaffed are twice as likely to contemplate quitting multiple times a month.
The rapid advancement of AI has left some employees unprepared for the potential impact it might have on their roles. Approximately 25% of individual contributors express skepticism about the benefits of AI for their team's work. In contrast, only a mere 6% of leaders, including senior managers and executives, share this sentiment.
Leaders are aware of this challenge and acknowledge that change management and the adoption of AI among their teams are significant concerns. Just over one-third of leaders identify this as the most common challenge they anticipate facing.
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