Happy Friday! ‘This week in CX’ brings you the latest roundup of industry news.
This week, we’re looking at conflicting consumer opinions on AI, shoppers saying their favourite essential brands don’t know them well at all, and the costs of having to repeat sentences in contact centre calls. There’s also thoughts on the EU’s AI laws.
Key news
- DNB Bank has partnered with Boost.ai to transform operational efficiency through its internal virtual agent ‘Juno’, that interacted with 1200 users daily in 2022. In March 2020, DNB launched the virtual agent Juno to assist its customer service agents and advisors in quickly and easily accessing the various routines they need to follow when assisting customers. The bot also enables agents to locate key information they need, accelerating their response times when dealing with an inquiry.
- Only 8% of customers used a chatbot during their most recent customer service experience, according to a survey by Gartner. Of those, just 25% said they would use that chatbot again in the future.
- The World Economic Forum has launched the AI Governance Alliance. It is a dedicated initiative focused on responsible generative AI. This initiative expands on the existing framework and builds on the recommendations from the Responsible AI Leadership: A Global Summit on Generative AI.
- The European Commission has informed Google that they have breached EU antitrust rules. Google have distorted competition in the advertising technology industry (‘adtech’). The Commission takes issue with Google favouring its own online display advertising technology services to the detriment of competing providers of advertising technology services, advertisers and online publishers.
Commentary share: EU AI laws
The EU has taken a major step towards passing one of the world’s first laws governing artificial intelligence after its main legislative branch approved the text of draft legislation that includes a blanket ban on police use of live facial recognition technology in public places.
“Whether it’s the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA), United States’ Algorithmic Accountability Act or China’s Algorithmic Management Regulations, they all act as a double-edged sword for marketing firms and professionals.
“On the one hand, they foster trust and accountability, providing clear guidelines on how AI should be designed and utilised. This transparency can enhance customer trust, vital in an era where data privacy and ethical use of AI is a growing concern. In this respect, these acts could bolster the reputation of tech firms and foster a closer relationship between consumers and AI-driven technologies.
“On the other hand, they could hamper innovation. The pace of technology is rapid and constantly evolving. While legislation is necessary, it must also be adaptive or it risks becoming a straitjacket that stifles industry creativity and slows down technological advances. It’s crucial regulation evolves in lockstep with the technology it governs to make the most of its vast potential.”
–Flavia Colombo, Country Manager, UK and Ireland at HubSpot
Consumers still conflicted on the use of AI
Pegasystems Inc. surveyed 5,000 consumers worldwide on their views around AI, its continued evolution, and the ways in which they interact with the technology.
It found a general acceptance of AI in areas relating to CX. 67% of respondents agree AI has the potential to improve the customer service of businesses they interact with. 54% say companies using AI will be more likely to offer better benefits to customers compared to businesses that do not. Meanwhile, 47% indicated they are comfortable interacting with well-tested AI services from businesses. 64% said they expect most major departments within organisations will be run using AI and automation within the next ten years.
Despite this, the research also highlighted a major lack of trust in AI in several areas, including:
- A preference for people: Despite demonstrating an appetite for the use of AI in customer engagement, 71% of respondents said they still prefer to interact with a human being than the AI itself. 68% also said they would trust a human bank employee to make an objective, unbiased decision about whether to give a bank loan more than an AI solution. 74% admitted they would trust a medical diagnosis from a human doctor than one made by AI with a better track record of being right, but which could not demonstrate or explain how it arrived at its decision.
- The rise of the machines: 86% of respondents said they feel AI is capable of evolving itself to behave amorally. 27% say they think this has already happened. 48% said it was likely that generative AI will eventually become sentient or self-conscious. 30% said they were concerned about AI enslaving humanity. Only 16% said they had no concerns over AI whatsoever.
- Reality check: While the study points to an increased general awareness of AI as a tool for everyday use, concerns are building over how challenging it is to tell what’s real from what’s fake. The majority are indicating some level of difficulty in determining whether content has been generated by humans or AI. 63% indicated they couldn’t tell whether a long-form article had been generated by AI or a human. while a similar number said the same about photos (59%) and videos (58%). 56% said it was difficult to tell if AI had generated TV reports they consume.
How can brands give recommendations if they don’t know their customers well?
A survey by Red Ant reveals that 74% of today’s beauty shoppers say brands don’t know them well enough to make the right recommendations. 74% of consumers said that they agree that retailers don’t seem to have access to enough information about them and what they like. 18% of that number state that they believe retailers are focused on selling products rather than finding out what they need.
The increasing value of cosmetics within everyday lives are shown in the survey findings. 53% of the beauty customers surveyed buy products at least once a month. 51% see them as a necessity that they can’t do without. This means that it’s essential that brands truly understand their beauty customers – how they shop, how they feel and what they want from their experience.
The research also highlights customers’ desire for personalisation, ranking the top 5 things that beauty brands should know about them to be able to offer relevant and budget-related deals:
- Skin type and problem areas to be recommended the right product
- Budget and usual spend to be recommended offers and products within the price range
- Previous purchase history, to receive reminders of products on offer/back in stock
- Suitable colour preferences and palettes
- My customer history, to benefit from any loyalty offers
With annual revenue exceeding £75 billion worldwide and market growth at over 16%, beauty and cosmetics continue to be big business, bucking the trends for slower growth experienced by other industries. Post-pandemic investments in luxury in-store beauty are driving the need for more immersive experiences. Such as clienteling – store associates guide consumers through their browsing and buying experiences online and in-store, alerting them to new product launches and events, and making data-driven recommendations based on previous purchases.
Mishearing on customer calls is costing contact centres £246m a year
The inaugural report, ‘Exceeding UK Customer Expectations 2023-24’ comes from ContactBabel and IRIS Audio Technologies. It found that of the 5bn+ inbound calls handled by agents across retail, utilities, banks, insurance providers, telecoms and transport contact centres each year, 21% (1.13bn calls) require at least one sentence to be repeated. With the average call duration topping 7 minutes, 12 seconds, this means 3.5% of calls is wasted on repeating information.
The mean cost per inbound call to a contact centre comes to £6.26. The average cost of time spent on repetition totals 21.7p per call. When extrapolated across the 1.13bn calls where agents and customers are forced to repeat themselves, this amounts to a staggering £246m that contact centres are unnecessarily spending each year.
With more people than ever using mobile telephony to speak with organisations to solve their queries, both agents and customers have to concentrate very hard on the conversation. This is particularly stressful for agents who may handle 80-100 calls each day and customers who are concerned with today’s challenging economic landscape. And while the report research assumes a single mishearing experience on each call, for conversations with noisier environments the cost could be even higher.
The report also reveals that it’s not just older customers that regularly mishear what is being said on calls. Out of 1,000 customers surveyed, 60% of the youngest cohort also experience problems with hearing an agent, or the agent asking them to repeat something ‘very often’ or ‘fairly often’. Over-65s are most likely to report the severest issues, with 29% ‘very often’ having problems with audio quality on calls to contact centres.
Thanks for tuning into CXM’s weekly roundup of industry news. Check back next Friday for the latest updates of the week!