13 hours Ago
Bhadresh Patel is Chief Operating Officer of global professional services firm RGP . getty AI has been in the midst of a massive hype cycle for some time, but it’s difficult to say that any single enterprise AI technology has gone mainstream. Meanwhile, business leaders are tasked with navigating a target-rich environment, uncertain measures of ROI and competing priorities to identify the tools that will have the biggest impact on their organization’s productivity, revenue or cost efficiency.
While this makes for a difficult balancing act, business leaders cannot overlook the importance of using AI to improve customer experience. According to Forrester, consumer perceptions of customer experience quality reached their lowest point since the firm launched its annual CX Index in 2016. Research from Twilio shows a significant gap between how companies view their customer engagement and the reality of customer sentiment.
My company’s Q1 Transformation Barometer found that 82% of financial decision-makers believe AI will have a significant positive impact on customer experience within their organization in the next 12 months. In fact, the leaders we surveyed expect customer service to be the function most impacted by their organization’s AI investments over the next 12 months. But for this to happen, organizations must change the way they think about the experience their business is creating for its end customers, employees and third-party partners.
For example, in a recent interview with my company’s newsletter, Brian Solis, head of global innovation at ServiceNow, suggests that leaders must shift the narrative around AI from fear to wonder to lead the transformation from strategy and not just view AI as a tool. As AI causes organizations to evolve their business models, for instance, many are expanding their C-suites with roles that support the CIO, including the emergence of chief experience officers (CXOs). Regardless of where customer experience strategy sits within an organization’s hierarchy, every C-suite leader must embrace a CXO mindset for their technology investments to impact customer engagement and perceptions.
Mike Nash, CXO at HP, points out that customer experience is part of everyone’s job, telling Forbes that helping everyone at HP understand their role in the customer journey is key to becoming more customer-focused as an organization. Organizations must also create greater linkage between digital projects to maximize the impact their AI investments can have on CX. AI shouldn’t be thought of as a stand-alone function or treated as an initiative that’s solely driven by one member of the C-suite.
Every functional leader must understand how automation can impact the experience the organization is creating for its customers. This requires leaders to understand how their organization’s technology overlaps in terms of existing capabilities, training and user knowledge. Every business leader wants to use AI, and every business function can benefit from the promise of AI.
While there may be thousands of use cases for many organizations, I think AI will have an incredible impact on customer experience in the next 12 months. We will see organizations change the way they have traditionally managed customer experience and driven CX strategy, but it has to start with a mindset change around the art of the possible and moments that matter for customers. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives.
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