Just as the modern customer expects personalised experiences tailored to their individual needs and preferences, so too do employees. All the talk around AI has mainly centred on its impact on CX. Its impact on personalising employee experience, however, is likely to be as significant.
According to Nick Martin, Senior Vice President, Medallia, International, “Personalisation is critical to delivering great service and the brand’s ability to differentiate itself from competitors. And if you want to provide personalisation you have to look at it through both the customer and employee lenses. A company that can empower its employees, as individuals, to solve customer problems, leads to a happier organisation and provides a better service. It’s a win-win scenario for customers and employees.”
“Fundamentally, customers want to feel that they are receiving personalised experiences, catered to their individual needs. If used in the right way, technology combined with the human touch can enable personalised experiences at scale. For example, we can use technology to automate tasks for intelligence gathering, and to disseminate actionable insights throughout the organisation.”
While AI holds immense potential, some factors have made organisations reluctant to adopt it fully regarding customer experience. There are concerns about data privacy, security, and potential bias in AI algorithms. Businesses worry that overly relying on AI and the unexpected results it can deliver, could lead to impersonal or even insensitive interactions, potentially damaging customer satisfaction and brand reputation.
While organisations might be cautious regarding customer-facing AI, 2024 is likely to see a significant shift towards the adoption of Generative AI for internal teams. This technology has the potential to significantly improve productivity and efficiency in various areas, such as:
- Automated note-taking, report generation and data analysis: AI can free up time for employees by automating routine tasks such as generating reports and analysing data, allowing them to focus on more strategic initiatives.
- Content creation and marketing materials: AI-powered tools can assist with tasks such as creating marketing copy, generating social media posts, and designing presentations, streamlining the content creation process.
- Personalised learning and development: Generative AI can create custom learning materials and personalised training programs based on individual employee needs and skill gaps, enhancing the effectiveness of professional development.
Jon Stone, Group Executive, Digital at Probe CX, comments, “Over the past 12 months, we have witnessed a rapid advancement and maturation of AI technologies, particularly with the emergence of Generative AI. This has led to a growing array of AI-driven capabilities designed to enhance the employee experience across the entire customer function”.
“At Probe CX, we consider these technologies into three primary areas: customer assist, agent assist and manager/coach assist. In the realm of agent assist, we are implementing AI capabilities to facilitate automated summarisation of calls or interactions. This eliminates note-taking and reducing wrap-up time, allowing employees to focus on the ongoing interaction”.
Enhancing agent efficiency and productivity
AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can offer round-the-clock support to employees, answering questions, resolving issues, and guiding them on company policies and procedures. “We are exploring ways to seamlessly integrate knowledge into the conversation flow in real-time as the conversation occurs. Through AI, knowledge becomes far more contextual than before, with specific information, policies or articles appearing dynamically based on the ongoing conversation. This not only supports the agent but also enhances and personalises the response to the customer”, says Stone.
AI can act as a support system for agents, suggesting relevant solutions, offering real-time guidance, and providing access to historical data to facilitate informed decision-making. “In the area of agent assist, AI is focused on augmenting the core activities of agents. This includes tasks like case or interaction summarisation, real-time contextual knowledge assistance and conversational support by identifying hidden insights and patterns from behavioural data”.
AI can automatically document resolutions, generate follow-up emails or surveys, and schedule appointments, freeing up agents’ time for more interactive tasks. “While the automation of lower-value, repetitive tasks has been underway for some time now, AI enables greater intelligence and personalisation of these workflows by enabling more context and awareness of the interaction or situation”, says Stone.
By freeing up their time it allows employees to undertake more engaging and interesting tasks. Martin comments, “Freeing employees from repetitive work allows them to focus on more engaging and stimulating tasks, allowing them to provide a more personal and elevated experience for customers. This fosters a sense of ownership, responsibility, and purpose, leading to increased job satisfaction and overall well-being. Freeing employees from these burdens not only boosts morale but also unlocks a cascade of positive outcomes, ultimately leading to elevated customer service”.
“The time saved from repetitive tasks can be invested in upskilling and development opportunities. This empowers employees to learn new skills, take on greater responsibilities, and grow within the organisation. Employees who are engaged, motivated, and equipped with the right skills are better positioned to deliver exceptional customer service. This translates to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and positive brand perception”, says Martin.
Supercharging your CX teams
AI-powered performance optimisation tools are revolutionising the way CX teams operate, equipping them with valuable insights and capabilities to continuously improve. AI can analyse vast amounts of call transcripts and interaction data, automatically identifying recurring issues, agent strengths and weaknesses, and areas for improvement across the entire CX team.
Stone advises, “The use of AI technologies and solutions within the CX space enables organisations to for the first time have an in-depth conversation with the data they have relating to their customers. This conversation enables teams to consistently mine and detect significant events and patterns. Utilising new summarisation and classification techniques help minimise the time required to understand the causation and interpretation of why something is occurring”.
With improved agent skills, efficient workflows, and proactive problem-solving, AI contributes to a more positive and personalised customer experience. By providing data-driven insights and actionable recommendations, AI helps CX teams identify areas for improvement and implement changes for better performance.
“Overall”, says Stone, “This impacts the experience for the customer by delivering a higher quality, tailored conversation. AI enables new types of metrics to be used to increase the responsiveness and productivity of teams, including more granular leading indicators such as emerging risks and opportunities in new markets, customer sentiment analysis on social media, or the influence of external economic and social factors.
AI can identify individual agent strengths and weaknesses and recommend personalized training programs or resources to support their development. This tailored approach can significantly improve agent skills and performance. “Deeper understanding of the team’s strengths, characteristics and ways-of-working through AI insights provides an opportunity to develop approaches to uplift the overall performance, and to utilise capabilities such as personalised micro-learning to enable tailored personal and professional development”, says Stone.
Employee feedback
Personalising the employee experience encompasses every aspect of the employee journey, from onboarding and training to ongoing development and feedback loops. Similar to customer interactions, employee feedback plays a crucial role in understanding their concerns, aspirations, and suggestions. That feedback can also be used to identify pain points in the customer experience. Martin advises, “Employee feedback can also be a valuable source of insights into potential customer experience (CX) issues. Often, employees are on the front lines, directly interacting with customers and witnessing their challenges”.
“Through an effective employee feedback program, customer issues can be captured, the root cause identified and addressed before they escalate”, adds Martin.
Personalised experiences for customers and employees
The focus on personalisation isn’t exclusive to the customer experience (CX) realm. Just as customers crave tailored interactions, employees increasingly expect the same. While the conversation around AI has largely revolved around its impact on CX, its potential to personalise the employee experience is equally significant.
While AI offers immense potential for personalisation, it is crucial to remember that it serves as a valuable tool, not a replacement for human interaction. The ideal scenario involves AI empowering human agents and employees. AI can handle routine tasks and provide initial support, while humans leverage their emotional intelligence and critical thinking skills to address complex situations and build meaningful connections.
As AI continues to evolve, ethical considerations around data privacy, bias mitigation, and responsible implementation must remain at the forefront. Stone highlights, “organisations need to establish an appropriate risk and control framework along with clear approaches and policies for responsible data use and AI. While incorporating a ‘human-in-the-loop’ is often the solution, teams should be aware of the inherent risks in relying on humans to validate AI outputs, particularly as operations scale up and accelerate”.
By leveraging AI for tasks like performance optimisation, knowledge management, and personalised learning, organisations can empower their workforce and cultivate a more engaged and productive environment. This human-AI synergy will be key to not only elevate the customer experience but also foster a thriving workplace where employees feel valued and supported.