Feature
The Gist
- Building community for success. Angie Bastian of BoomChickaPop attributes their global success to fostering strong, trustworthy relationships and creating a supportive community.
- Data fuels AI in CX. Lori Bradshaw and Edna Murphy emphasized that real-time data is essential for enhancing customer experiences through AI.
- Thoughtful AI implementation. Steve Blood and Lori Bradshaw stressed the importance of strategic planning and stakeholder involvement in AI integration.
LAS VEGAS — It’s day three at Customer Contact Week (CCW) at Caesar's Forum here in Las Vegas, and about 5,000 customer experience and customer contact pros are out in full force to share their insights, learn actionable tips and get a little more insight into the explosive power of artificial intelligence.
What’s behind the growth of a global popcorn brand? What’s one thing AI in customer experience needs to succeed? What should you look for in the right AI platform provider? Find out all the answers — and more — from today’s leading practitioners, some of whom stepped onto the keynote stage in the desert this morning.
1. The Secret Ingredient to Success
Angie Bastian, along with her husband Dan, started their company in their garage in Minnesota. Today, BoomChickaPop is a globally recognized popcorn brand available at nearly any food retailer.
The key to their success, according to Bastian? They didn’t do it alone. It was their “ability to build strong, trustworthy relationships that created community.”
Part of building that community was creating a positive, welcoming environment for employees. “We wanted to see our employees as people first, employees second,” she explained. And, she added, if they cared about their employees, they knew those employees would in turn take care of the business. Talk about the connection between employee experience and customer experience, right?
The goal was to give workers the tools, opportunities and autonomy to make decisions and make mistakes — but learn how to fix them. That’s where growth happens, said Bastian. As a result, their workers could be empowered, dynamic and accountable to each other.
BoomChickaPop also prioritized building community outside the organization — with consumers, stakeholders, vendors and the society around them. And that happens, according to Bastian, with giving. Giving time, energy, resources. Supporting others, elevating peers, colleagues and employees. Mentoring the next generation of leadership and creating community beyond the walls of a business.
“Find a way to bring joy into the world, build trustworthy relationships in every way possible and challenge yourself to grow,” said Bastian.
Related Article: Online Communities for Customer Retention and Engagement
2. The Answer to AI-Enhanced CX
From EX and CX to AI and CX ....
AI is wonderful for CX, said Lori Bradshaw, managing director, Guest CARE, at Alaska Airlines, because it allows you to infuse care into the customer experience at every touchpoint. It’s about meeting customers where they’re at in the journey and finding the right way to interact with them.
“Data for us is really important,” she said. It paints a collective picture of the guest and what’s going on in their experience. And with AI, they can glean insights from that data to drive the customer experience and make it better.
Enda Murphy, CTO at US Radiology Specialists, added that with the right data, AI can identify a customer before they call, understand their background and maybe even know why they’re calling.
For example, he said, say one of their radiologists calls in for help. In one instance, the agent might say good morning and ask how they can help. But with AI backed by real-time data, they can see that the radiologist opened a ticket in the morning due to a slow-running network. And, they can find an answer to the solution — such as the network provider saying the network will be fixed within the hour — before the caller has to ask.
The experience of that second interaction, said Murphy, vastly outweighs the first. And the key is data.
3. Mastering AI With Strategic Goals
Generative AI has huge opportunities to make change, said Steve Blood, VP of market intelligence and evangelism at Five9. But we need to do it very carefully, and think about what we really want to do with it. “Look at data to understand: what do customers connect with us about, what are their concerns?”
We must be mindful about how we go about implementing AI, added Bradshaw — from both an employee perspective and a customer perspective. Thinking through the end-to-end journey is really important, she continued, as well as being open to the learning experience along the way.
It’s a misconception that you can plug in AI and turn on the light, said Bradshaw. “It takes coordination and calibration and really thoughtfully rolling out these capabilities. Level-setting expectations in the organization, who needs to be involved, who are the points-of-view that need to weigh in on technical components and how it gets rolled out to employees and guests.”
Whoever interacts with this technology needs to have a seat at the table, she explained. “We all need to come along on this journey together.”
It’s important for everyone to wrap their heads around the technology, understand the opportunities and what is possible and what components need to be aligned to make sure it’s done right, she said.
Related Article: AI in Customer Experience: The Impact on Customer Journeys
4. How to Pick the Right AI Partner
According to Blood, you’ve got to think about who is the right AI partner to work with. You need to work with a company that truly understands what you’re trying to do and that will listen to your requirements.
Post-sale, he added, the CX message needs to extend further for platform providers. For practitioners, Blood recommended looking for references or finding peers that will recommend a company.
He also pointed toward CSAT ratings and NPS. “These are all relevant measures that will give you some warm feeling that you’re going to get a good set of service once you sign on the dotted line and start going live.”
Murphy explained that algorithms are going to change very rapidly, and next year might mean a completely separate set of tools. He recommended picking a platform that makes it easy to change out AI algorithms without a lot of coding and large expenses.
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"We’re at the start of a very interesting journey," he said, “but rest assured, what we’re using today, we won’t be using next year.”
Nicole Kyle, managing director and co-founder of CMP Research, told CMSWire that she believes things are moving toward a no-code or low-code model. “It’s wonderful, because it makes these tools more accessible to more people. It also allows people with the skill set for coding to work on high-value projects.”
Ultimately, said Kyle, AI isn’t going anywhere. “More and more people are going to be using it in their day-to-day. We’ve already seen an explosion in that, and I just think the universe of what’s possible is going to keep expanding.”
5. Empowering Employees for AI Change
One big theme for attendees at CCW, according to Kyle? They want to know how to manage their employees' feelings and sentiment and attitudes around all these buzzwords about AI investments. Because frontline employees, especially in CX and customer contact, can feel quite demoralized when new AI tools are rolled out.
When asked how companies can prepare employees for AI change, Blood said that part of it is getting employees to have a level of intellectual curiosity — listening and thinking about the questions customers ask.
Employees need to be prepared and open to using new technology, he added. To expect that the job will change — but for the better, not necessarily for the worse.
Bradshaw added that if your company makes a mistake along the way, it’s important to own it and talk through it with employees. “We’re all going to learn, we’re all going to make mistakes along the way.” It’s important, she added, to be mindful, think it through and be diligent.
