The Elephant in the Room: No One Wants to Admit What They Don’t Know About AI
Come along to an awkward dance with me. You’re at a get together – maybe work, maybe social – and there it is, an elephant in the room. No one mentions what’s going on, everyone steps gingerly around it. And in today’s world, no one wants to admit they know very little about AI. This knowledge gap is the elephant in the room.
I spent part of last week at a conference that attracted a wide swath of contact center experts and IT administrators that support them. Most topics were demonstrating what you need to know about AI, what the promise of AI is, and what new capabilities are about to launch for contact centers. Attendees listened eagerly to glossy explanations about how to use AI-powered features for new and existing software platforms.
Conference attendees soaked up insights, largely tactical. Both presenters and attendees tended to frame things in two ways: (1) what can we expect to gain in terms of self-service? and (2) how much labor can be eliminated or repurposed in the new world?
These are valid points, and yet they miss the truly juicy opportunities for generative AI to transform our platforms, tools, processes, and culture.
Generative AI Is About Making Service More Human, Not Less
Self-service is a feature that has been harvested for at least 10 years by most organizations and amped up during the recent labor shortage. Labor reduction also makes for a terrific business case, which is what gets technology funded. While it is a useful technique, it shouldn’t be the end game by itself for most companies.
The real opportunity here is fundamentally about something different. How can we reimagine what delights customers and generates both loyalty and profit in the most optimal way? While protecting data privacy. While empowering the people that serve those customers.
Once we implement self-service for the simplest use cases across channels using part of this technology (and a lot of existing technology), we are left with the challenging calls and questions that still need to be resolved by people. This happens because processes and systems are not foolproof even when they are perfectly designed (and they’re usually not). The vision of the future needs to include how ChatGPT, Bard, and similar tools can drive a better, more authentic, more human experience by making it easier for people to solve problems with people.
Imagination and Unpredictability
I enjoy a good AI demo as much as the next person. Indeed, I attended the conference specifically to see some of the demos that were presented. Even still, I was hoping for so much more in terms of a dialogue about imagination and unpredictability. How can we make the human side of service more visible, more compelling, and easier to achieve for customers and employees?
Imagination comes from people doing the strategic thinking and determining how to harness the tactics that AI delivers.
Unpredictability is the soul of great service – finding the people and tools that can make the difficult easier to navigate and create smooth experiences out of endless combinations.
This is often referred to as either customer effort or the slightly different customer delight. AI will play an instrumental role in achieving both more often than you typically see today, either as a consumer or as a provider of services.
The best demos I saw with immediate impact were AI summarization of conversations in real time; accurate and to the point, eliminating both errors and saving time posting the summary to the system of record for future reference. Amazing.
Equally impressive were the Agent Assist demos that could make the most complex questions and look ups far easier for agents to work through by using speech recognition to provide real time insights and AI to provide answers to questions using an organization’s own knowledge base or data. Well done.
Now, too few people asked these key questions:
1. How many tools, APIs or integrations do I need to purchase in order to make this happen?
(Answer: it depends today, but likely within 6-12 months, fewer)
2. Is it just going to show up in my cloud-based applications by itself?
(Answer: definitely unclear)
3. Can I “control” or limit the information that the platform provides back to ensure it’s in keeping with my values and guidelines?
(Answer: yes, but you still need to check it)
4. Where EXACTLY is my data during transactions – is it leaving a secure network? (Answer: it’s complicated, so you better ask a lot of questions if you are in healthcare, insurance, and other industries in which there are significant regulations)
5. What are the best practices in data privacy?
(Answer: unknown right now but coming soon to a screen near you)
6. What do I have to do to train and maintain these applications?
(Answer: a lot less that even versions from last year when using the generative AI approach)
For those willing to push for explanations and illustrations of the gory details, there is an amazing opportunity to figure out the fit and the limits to achieve new heights of service. Plus, you are not necessarily locked into the platform you have already purchased. There are a number of over-the-top options that can sit over any platform to provide these services. The AI tools provide a fresh way to enable organizations to deliver against the element of surprise that often is the heart of service triumphs and disasters. Efficiency, accuracy, better use of resources – all great applications, but they stop short of the real end game.
AI tools challenge our imaginations about how we can use them not as harnesses within IT or contact centers, but as a pathway to empowerment. It’s a revolutionary technology on-ramp for those who will embrace it and re-think how we engage with each other.
If you feel like noodling through how this applies to your organization and what tools would work for you, please reach out. New visions of service are waiting. They will change how we work and how we delight our customers moving forward.
If any of this resonates with you or your organization, take a moment to share this newsletter with your colleagues who may be struggling with similar challenges.
Blue Orbit Consulting guides you through methods that will transform your IT team and contact center’s operations into a world-class experience.
______________
I founded Blue Orbit Consulting in 2014 after running staff organizations in contact centers and building consulting practices in customer service, process improvement, complex program management, and channel operations. My approach – and my firm’s approach – is fundamentally pragmatic, and our clients often achieve benefits in excess of 10x their investment. We develop and deliver world-class customer interactions for our clients, whether it is troubleshooting and optimizing what they already have in place or creating strategic transformations to deliver outstanding customer interactions every time.