by Heather Hughes
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform contact centers. It’s safe to say that we’re at an inflection point for AI in the contact center — AI innovations deployed in a myriad of ways, such as chatbots, intelligent routing, workforce management forecasting, and AI-driven interaction analytics, can add significant value to customer experiences and operational performance. That’s what we discovered upon completion of our 2019 NICE CXone CX Transformation Benchmark, business wave.
Contact center leaders agree and are confident in AI’s role in delivering exceptional customer experiences. But consumers are more cautious.
We surveyed more than 900 contact center leaders across the US, UK, and Australia, asking them their opinions about various aspects of the customer service experience, including AI. Then, we compared business responses with what more than 2,400 consumers told us about their actual service experiences in our 2018 study. This yielded some interesting results.
Businesses are confident in chatbots’ ability to make it easier for consumers to get their issues resolved, and consumers are less certain. Businesses are enthusiastic about consumer use of at-home virtual assistants for customer service, and consumers less so.
Taking a closer look at the results:
63% of businesses agree that chatbots and virtual assistants make it easier for consumers to get their issues resolved, while 33% of consumers agree.
68% of businesses agree that consumers want to use their virtual assistants (e.g., Amazon Echo) to interact with companies, while only 30% of consumers express an interest in this capability.
Forward-thinking businesses are leading the way with AI innovations, which are at their best when paired with the human touch and deployed to address targeted customer and agent experience opportunities.
To learn more about how businesses and consumers perceive AI, and many other CX topics, download our complimentary report: 2019 NICE CXone CX Transformation Benchmark.