While businesses look to fend off competition by upgrading their customer experience, not everyone is sold on the idea that AI is inherently the way forward. While a majority of leaders are “confident” in the technology’s ability to improve things, they expect data management technologies to be much more effective in the long-term.
Pricing pressures and decreased consumer confidence impact the bottom lines of businesses across the board. Finding operational savings to safeguard profits has therefore become vital to a business’ survival. Customer experience (CX) is an aggregate of a customer’s A-Z experience with a brand, and it is increasingly crucial in holding on to customers. Companies which fail to maintain customer relevance could forfeit crucial revenue opportunities in the coming years. But this is no longer confined just to the customer-facing economy.
In today’s competitive market, customer expectations in the B2B market are rising in line with new levels of consumer-facing levels of B2C customer service, meaning professional services companies need to provide quality service where projects are not only delivered on-time and on-budget but also exceed client expectations. For the 80% of the market that still relies on insufficient spreadsheets, however, it will be a struggle to deliver the level of CX that customers now expect without future assistance from digital technologies – and increasingly, this is where companies believe AI comes into the equation.
Source: Vision, Protiviti
Protiviti and the University of Oxford have conducted a global survey of more than 250 board members, C-suite executives and other business leaders in 20 countries in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific representing more than 25 industries about the future of the customer experience. And according to the findings, customer experience is seen as an area that is a core priority – though there is a widening gap between strategy and execution.
More than three-quarters of the businesses polled said that they felt CX was very important – with 47% saying it was “extremely important” to their business success. However, a tiny 17% said their company was similarly “extremely effective” at optimising performance around CX. Even more concerningly, four-in-ten executives said they were “somewhat effective” or worse – with 2% saying they were not effective at all.
AI and emerging technologies
The majority of firms are looking for AI to help bridge this gap. When it comes to AI’s impact on their organisation’s overall customer experience strategies, 40% expected to be “impactful over the coming two years, and 33% said “extremely impactful”. There are gaps in this optimism, however – and not everyone agrees it is the silver-bullet it is often portrayed as.
Source: Vision, Protiviti
Though 57% of business leaders reported feeling confident or extremely confident AI will improve the efficiency of their company’s CX journey, this was disproportionate among older leaders. While 64% of those over 50 years of age were bullish on AI, only 46% younger leaders under the age of 50, including the latest ‘tech-native’ generations of business operators said the same. The more reserved attitude towards the hype to AI from that younger cohort may also explain why the technology isn’t actually top of the list for improving CX management.
When Protiviti’s study asked about the impacts of other emerging technologies, global business leaders ranked data management technologies – software designed to help organisations collect, store, manage and utilise data efficiently and securely – as the leading priority. A 56% majority said they expected it to be “extremely impactful” in this regard, well-ahead of AI and machine learning at 33% – as well as the Internet of Things on 27%.
“Although AI is shaping the future of customer experience, global leaders recognize that efficient data management is the foundation to successful CX innovation,” said Joe Kornik, senior director and editor-in-chief of the study by Protiviti. “They understand the need to manage data securely and transparently to build long-term trust that creates strong, strategic CX value.”