A PLACE FOR AI By Martin Vilaboy AI & automation close contact center ‘soft skills’ disconnect According to McKinsey & Company senior partner Eric Lamarre, current conversations around AI all too often “make it feel like a technology in search of a problem.” For a transformational technology such as AI, perhaps that’s not so surprising. After all, it’s understandable for the mind to go to “Where else could I apply this?”, continued Lamarre. A better way to begin a conversation around implementing AI, for both the seller and the buyer, is to “always start with the business problem you want to solve,” advised Lamarre, in a recent McKinsey podcast. “When business leaders say, ‘That’s the problem I want to solve with technology,’ it becomes easier to develop the technology road map to solve that problem.” One brooding problem that contact center managers currently face – and AI is increasingly being applied toward – is inadequate quality management of the all-important customer experience (CX). Legacy analytics can limit contact center agent monitoring to experiences that are solely reactive, one-size-fits-all and stuck in single or siloed channels, say proponents of infusing AI into contact center operations. That’s opposed to a scenario in which AI instantly informs interactions, enabling businesses to be more proactive, personalized and optimized for the types of cross-channel, digitally centered conversations that today’s consumers increasingly expect. It’s why a recent survey of 400 decision-makers who work in customer care, customer service or the contact center department found that nearly all (99 percent) of companies have plans to invest in AI analyt14 CHANNELVISION | JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2024 EMERGENT
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