AI for CX quick wins: Implement 5 strategies for rapid ROI
AI-driven triage agents, proactive outreach, agent assist, interaction analytics and automated coaching are five quick wins that organizations could implement now in CX.
Customer experience transformation often requires a massive, multi-year undertaking with prolonged time for realizing a return on investment. However, as Metrigy has learned in studying companies around the world, a large tech project is not required when implementing AI for CX.
By focusing on immediate, high-impact applications rather than an architectural overhaul, CX leaders can build momentum and prove rapid ROI.
Here are five AI-for-CX quick wins to implement right now.
1. Deploy AI triage agents to the front lines.
Companies can achieve an immediate win by placing AI at their contact center's front door. In a global Metrigy report that researched AI's role in CX, two-thirds of the 759 companies studied currently open at least some of their customer interactions with an AI triage agent. These AI triage agents typically replace traditional interactive voice response systems, enabling callers to speak in natural language rather than making a menu selection.
By allowing AI to handle basic triage and routine resolution, companies can drastically reduce wait times. This strategy enables highly skilled human agents to handle complex tasks where they truly excel, such as processing refunds, managing complaints and selling new products. Today, 36.3% of all customer interactions start with an AI triage agent.
Leading contact centers no longer wait for customers to contact them. Instead, high-performing centers reach out to customers proactively and get ahead of their needs. To secure a rapid win with proactive engagement, implement targeted AI-driven outreach, such as fraud alerts, appointment reminders and service outage notifications. Organizations consistently rank these specific use cases as the most valuable applications for proactive outreach.
Use AI to generate personalized messages and determine optimal times to call customers. But don't discount the role of human agents.
Additionally, use AI to handle the heavy lifting of customer segmentation, personalized message generation and determining the optimal time to call, ensuring campaigns hit the mark. But don't discount the role of human agents here. Metrigy's research shows that 62.9% of organizations achieve their best results in outbound campaigns when they combine AI and human interactions, as opposed to AI agent or human agent interactions exclusively. The combo approach blends AI efficiency with the empathy and complex problem-solving skills of human agents for optimal results.
3. Empower human teams with agent assist.
While pure self-service automation gets a lot of attention, 56.7% of organizations prioritize using AI to help human agents serve customers. Implementing AI for agent assist represents a significant operational quick win. When AI handles call transcription and note-taking, organizations can eliminate tedious post-call wrap-up work. Additionally, AI improves overall agent quality and acts as a powerful tool to increase sales. While using agent assist can sometimes increase average handle times, many organizations accept this trade-off because it enables agents to successfully upsell and ensures that customers have a positive interaction.
4. Use interaction analytics for instant insights.
Deploying interaction analytics provides instant visibility into operations, making it another critical quick win. Today, 82.8% of organizations consider customer interaction data to be a vital or important asset. Customer service and contact center teams remain the top users of this intelligence, followed closely by marketing and sales departments. Using interaction analytics to compare AI agent and human agent performance is particularly valuable. Such insights allow organizations to improve training, refine scripts and understand exactly what drives a successful interaction across all channels.
5. Automate agent coaching.
The best customer experiences rely on highly capable, confident agents. To achieve a rapid operational win, focus AI-for-CX transformation inward on contact center staff. Today, 65.2% of companies prioritize automated training and coaching as their top worker-focused transformation initiative. By implementing repetitive training sprints, organizations successfully accelerate the onboarding process for new hires, which cuts training time significantly. Furthermore, automated coaching drastically reduces the hours that supervisors must spend monitoring calls, returning that time back to the business for higher-level strategic planning.
AI adoption in the contact center no longer requires a complete rip-and-replace strategy. By focusing on targeted, measurable applications like triage, proactive outreach, agent assistance, interaction analytics and automated coaching, organizations can deliver immediate value to both their customers and their bottom lines.
Beth Schultz is vice president of research and principal analyst at Metrigy. She focuses her research on unified communications, collaboration and digital customer experience.
