3 things everyone should know about implementing AI in customer experience

Anjana Singh
3 min readAug 14, 2019
AI in customer experience

Artificial intelligence (AI) is giving customer experience a shot in the arm. Organizations are increasingly adopting conversational chatbots for providing customer service. Airports around the world are investing in mobile androids that help travelers with directions. Hotels are experimenting with voice-assisted in-room controls.1 A Microsoft social chatbot in China, “Xaiolce,” already has over 200 million users, with 600,000 calls made in the first ten months since its launch.

To understand AI’s impact on customer experience, in particular, my team conducted this worldwide, cross-sector research, and we came up with these 3 major things that everyone especially Product designers should know about AI.

Consumers know and want artificial intelligence, but one that is informed by human intelligence.

An increasing number of consumers are what we call “AI-aware:” close to three-quarters (73%) say they are aware of having interactions enabled by artificial intelligence. Examples include chatbots for customer service, facial recognition for consumer identification, voice conversation via a smart speaker or a smartphone, etc.Consumers are increasingly clear on what they want from AI. Consumers are reassured by human-like attributes, with 64% wanting AI to be more human-like, and 62% comfortable with human-like voice and intellect; in other words, the ability to hold a sensible conversation, respond to follow up questions, contribute additional information, etc

Consumers want transparency in AI by design.

While consumers want AI to be human-like in terms of interaction, they want to know when they are talking to an AI-enabled system and not a human. We found that two- thirds of consumers (66%) would like to be made aware when companies are enabling interactions via AI. This is especially true for the Financial Services sector, where over 71% of consumers would like to be informed. Organizations should be clear whether it’s a computer or a real person that we are interacting with. Otherwise there’s no trust if you think you were speaking to a real person the whole time or, if you found out later, then you feel foolish

Ensure that consumer concerns form the basis for AI initiatives

Front-Runners keep their consumers at the center of their AI initiatives, as opposed to the other organizations that are more focused on factors such as cost and RoI. Front-Runners are more likely than others to focus on areas such as the impact on the customer experience and the applications consumers prefer. We are in a very competitive environment. We need to compete on creating the most compelling value proposition and not only on cost. AI can be of monumental help in enhancing this value proposition by􏰈eing 􏰃er􏰅 s􏰊ecific to 􏰏hat our customers e􏰌􏰊ect

Front-Runners prioritize consumer preference and experiences over cost and RoI
Front-Runners prioritize consumer preference and experiences over cost and RoI

An AI-first approach makes AI a core part of a service and not an afterthought. Or as technology giant Google sees it, it takes the organization’s role beyond informing and into executing and assisting. Google has, in recent years, made a shift from being mobile-first to being AI-first. At a recent event, CEO Sundar Pichai said that AI is more important than fire or electricity and it recently rebranded its research arm from Google Research to Google AI. Traditional organizations are also playing their part. Singapore-based OCBC Bank recently set up a dedicated AI unit with the objective of making the organization AI-first.

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