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 analyt6 THE CHANNEL MANAGER’S PLAYBOOK
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