How CX leverages AI and Automation to meet customer expectations

In today’s AI-first world, customer experience (CX) has undergone a transformative shift to personalised recommendations and instant support. Technologies like Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning enable chatbots and virtual assistants to deliver highly personalised customer experiences in real time. AI and automation are becoming essential drivers of customer loyalty and business growth.

Building a robust relationship based on a deep understanding of the customer's challenges, objectives, and goals is at the heart of this transformation. Customer experience teams demonstrate a truly valued relationship when they meet the following three core customer expectations.

• Empathy and Personalisation: Understand customer issues deeply to provide a tailored experience that maximises product value, simplicity, and ease of use. 
• Intelligence and Proactivity: Be intuitive and proactive in swiftly resolving issues. Ideally, anticipate potential problems and prevent them before they occur. 
• In-depth business and network expertise: Possess unmatched knowledge of the customer's business and network to offer guidance that supports their business objectives. 

With rapid technological advancements and escalating cyber threats, organisations are increasingly willing to invest in premium solutions to prevent potential issues. According to the Cisco Cybersecurity Readiness Index 2024, 74% of organisations surveyed in India faced a cybersecurity incident last year, and 82% anticipate potential disruptions in the next 12-24 months. These numbers underscore the growing need for customer experience teams to provide deep product knowledge and personalised guidance to organisations seeking intuitive advice to navigate these challenges effectively. 

As enterprise environments become increasingly complex, the deployment process can be lengthy before organisations begin to reap the benefits. By automating routines, enterprises can aim for cost efficiencies and expedite the process. The journey of customer experience teams starts after the product is deployed, as customers need to learn how to use the product or solution effectively. Without AI, engineers would need to handle training and deployment tasks manually. However, with AI, much of the training can be done intuitively on demand, with AI-enabled products assisting with deployment understanding and simple configurations. 

For more complex designs and architectures, engineers can leverage AI to expedite processes and automate deployment, enabling customers to realise value faster. AI DevOps, in particular, is gaining traction in large-scale deployment scenarios, facilitating ongoing deployment efforts. For instance, in the case of a service provider, AI DevOps has significantly accelerated the onboarding of new subscribers, reducing the time needed for service preference and profile creation and simplifying the backend process.

Imagine a scenario where the product has been deployed and an unexpected technical issue occurs. The enterprise approaches the CX team of their technology partner for resolution. The troubleshooting time will vary with and without adopting AI/Gen AI. Sometimes, Agentic AI (or AI assistant) can help solve the problem through troubleshooting without human intervention. With the required permissions, CX teams can analyse the collected data from the customer environment, detect anomalies, and proactively fix them before they occur. This is particularly crucial when enterprises run complex environments like the stock exchange, banks, etc., where even a nanosecond of downtime can significantly impact losses and business reputation.  

Across industries, customers, whether individuals or enterprises, value personalised experience, even at a premium. A simple example would be the varying personal and customer service experience as a first-class, business, premium economy, and economy customer. This starts at the ticket counter right through the journey. With AI and automation, enterprises receive unparalleled personalised experience. For example, customer experience teams can use AI and automation to analyse a retail customer’s consumer data for the Black Friday sale season to ensure the retailer is well prepared to manage the demand influx. Additionally, AI and automation can also be implemented to provide on-standby support. 

Ultimately, artificial intelligence and automation are key levers that customer experience teams can leverage to deliver the promise of an extraordinary experience to enterprises. When harnessed effectively, the synergy between human intelligence, empathy, and artificial intelligence has the potential to unlock new possibilities and drive transformative results for businesses and customers alike.

Written By - Pallavi Arora, VP, Cisco Customer Experience (CX) Centers

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