How AI will change CX
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Friend of the newsletter Peter asks:
“I'd like help cutting through the hype and share your thoughts on the role AI will play in CX in the next 24 months”
Well Peter, that is a great topic. I think there are some real, significant benefits of artificial intelligence (AI). I’ve seen some helpful products, and also exaggerated claims.
If I look at the Gartner hype cycle, I would place AI in late Peak of inflated expectations. We’ve seen some examples of where generalised AI can be fun, interesting, valuable and exciting. However, the cracks are showing, as is the reality of implementing AI. That ranges from Air Canada’s chatbot making up refund policies, customers calling out over-promising vendors, or remembering that the human experience that just can’t be replaced (and that would feel uncomfortable coming from a computer).
I do suspect that the (over)promise of AI is contributing to the chaos of the job market. Anecdotally, CX professionals, marketing professionals and product managers (eg the Product Growth newsletter seeing a 91% drop PM jobs on LinkedIn between September 2022 and May 2024) may be particularly impacted by this. Those roles may also be most affected by companies holding off on hiring, in case AI magically solves all of their problems instead.
Now, there are some great examples of where you can use AI, most of which are from niched-down applications. As two examples:
SolidRoad is a conversation simulator (both chat and phone) for training CX employees. I’d recommend giving it a test drive, it’s a cool product.
Cleft, an AI-driven transcription tool, allows you to talk out loud have your thoughts summarised into readable wording (it’s how I prepared the first version of notes for my interview on the Epochal Growth podcast).
So, just as people are starting conversations in the writing space around when, why and how to use AI, we’ll see conversations about when, why and how to use AI in CX.
As an example, Buffer have been testing AI tools to scale their customer support experience. According to Åsa Nyström, VP of Customer Advocacy at Buffer “We have not found these tools to work perfectly, but we're invested and excited to be part of the journey as AI keeps improving. Done well, I think AI is an awesome co-pilot for customer support to help deliver a stand-out customer support experience.”
If a company that’s as full of compassionate humans as Buffer can introduce AI, I think we’ll see every company use a form of AI.
But if anything you read, listen to or watch, could have been created by a GPT (eg, a company adds an AI agent for prospecting), then trust gets eroded in everything apart from in-person interactions and live video calls (which, for now, are easy to differentiate between humans and AI).
In all other cases, are you creating a relationship with Tanya from sales, or are you just chatting to a bot? Who knows - unless you’re looking at them.
So overall, I think we'll see:
Almost no human involvement in tier 1 Support, because of improved chatbot resolution based on existing documentation.
That also means “bye-bye” to where most of us cut our teeth and learn our core CX skills. Potentially, that creates a “pipeline” issue for the more advanced CX roles
Less of a focus on solving those low-lying product issues that create easily resolvable problems for customers (after all, the chatbot will solve these instantly - why spend the engineering effort on it?). So, mildly shittier products.
But hey, what do I know, I’m just a Luddite who thinks maybe we shouldn’t tear apart our entire economic model without working ahead a few steps first.
What do you think?
Conor
ps: As of writing, I’ve sold out my first coaching slots. If you know someone interested in unblocking their career growth, they can join the waiting list for when I reopen, most likely in August.