DYK # 44: Did you know… AI can’t fix what your organisation refuses to talk about!
AI here, AI there, AI everywhere… Wherever you go, whatever you discuss, AI pops up in most discussions these days. Often for a good reason, but unfortunately just as often to push sales.
Late last year, we asked you what you want to hear more about this year, and of course, AI topped the charts. You may have noticed that it’s not the dominant message from my end though. While I think AI is a critical enabler to support us in enhancing the experiences we provide to customers, I also believe that we jump into the conversation too quickly. We talk about using agentic AI for CX to solve all the problems we’ve been grappling with for years (or maybe decades).
No matter the problem, AI is here to help. I’m not saying that’s not the case, but I do believe that we need to talk about what’s needed for you to actually be able to leverage AI as the hero it portrays to be.
Let’s start with some foundations. There’s AI = Artificial Intelligence, GenAI = Generative AI, AI Agents, and also Agentic AI. And they’re not the same thing.
Most CX tech you use these days includes some form of AI, and many have GenAI capabilities included. Think of summarising text or calls, coding calls, recommending next steps and actions, etc. Most CX leaders I speak with understand this, and started to use those functionalities.
Where the lines become blurred are when we talk about Agentic AI (because let’s be real, that’s the latest sales pitch), but actually refer to work AI Agents perform. I blame my vendor friends for this (sorry, I do greatly enjoy working with all my vendors, but you’re part of the problem here).
We hear promises of autonomous workflows, no more humans in the loop, fully automated and orchestrated action layers. We finally solved the decade long challenge of “acting on feedback at scale”, because now we have the tech to do this.
Firstly, while we hear those stories, what we get sold in reality are AI Agents. AI Agents automate small workflows, like triggering an alert or sending an email, automating a small process, usually contained within a particular department or set of systems. If you have multiple internal departments using their own AI Agents, often supplied by various tech vendors, the conversation about orchestration becomes a lot more interesting, and challenging.
Secondly, while much of what Agentic AI promises is possible from a technology perspective today, your organisation isn’t ready for it. Trust me.
Organisational readiness has become a key challenge, not just from a legacy tech or data challenge perspective, but more so from an internal perspective. Enabling autonomous workflows, and orchestrating work across several platforms doesn’t just require the data and tech to be ready for it, it requires you as an organisation to enable workflows across different departments. If you’ve been following AI conversations, you may have heard the discussion about AI exposing your underlying org challenges, rather than helping you solve them.
If today, you struggle to get your IT, Data or Analytics teams to share data access with you, why would they enable that for Agentic AI, when they don’t even trust you with it. Or would they trust autonomous AI more than your team?
You may have heard me speak about CX being a Team Sport (CXTS™). Which is not just a way to set up CX as an enterprise-wide practice in your organisation, but when it comes to agentic AI, it also highlights the importance of organisational readiness for AI. For agentic AI to work at its best, and deliver what it promises, it’s important for us (humans) to work together since the tech is tapping into different departmental data and tech stacks.
When we think about feedback coming through a VoC platform or your contact centre, the actions that may need to get triggered will likely sit in other systems. And those other systems are likely procured or owned by other departments. It changes the conversation from a data and tech conversation about how to orchestrate workflows, and it becomes a conversation about organisational change and readiness. Change and readiness to collaborate and work together to rally around the customer. Because CX is a collective effort (a Team Sport), it’s important that we break down data and tech silos, but also departmental silos for the greater good of the customer.
So before you jump on the latest AI band wagon, ask yourself, are you ready for it? Or would it be more beneficial to set the foundations, before rolling out AI at scale. I know, that’s not quite as sexy, and a lot more work. But it’ll be worth the effort.
I’d love to hear your experience and thoughts on this. Where are you at in your AI & CX journey?
Feel free to get in touch for any questions or support. We’re here to help.
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