At worst, the introduction of artificial intelligence can mean that companies disconnect from their customers’ everyday lives even more than at present, if they are only looking for efficiency. At best, well-planned and implemented AI utilisation allows more time and empathy for customers.

Today, artificial intelligence is increasingly present in the operations of companies and organisations. It offers countless opportunities for developing and improving customer experience. When we talk about artificial intelligence from a CX point of view, however, it is important to remember that technology does not deliver value by itself. The key factor is the smooth and seamless cooperation between people and technology.

Empathy, the ability to understand and share another person’s feelings, is an essential part of a genuine and meaningful customer experience. Customers want to feel heard, understood and valued. Artificial intelligence has huge potential to help organisations create more empathetic customer experiences. It can analyse huge amounts of data and identify customer needs, preferences and emotions better than ever before.

How can artificial intelligence bring empathy to customer experiences? Artificial intelligence opens up new opportunities to identify customers’ emotions and reactions through, for example, speech recognition, text analysis and image recognition. Utilising these technologies, organisations can respond immediately to customer needs and offer them personalised solutions.

Does artificial intelligence have the ability to create truly personalised customer experiences? How can artificial intelligence know the customer’s individual needs and wants? The ability of artificial intelligence to learn and analyse data plays an important role in this. With the help of AI, information about customers can be collected automatically from different channels and source materials, and individual recommendations and offers can be created based on this information. This allows organisations to provide customers with customised experiences that meet their needs and expectations.

And how can artificial intelligence help organisations develop employee experiences and increase employee empathy? Although artificial intelligence is often connected to customer experience, its application to improve the employee experience should not be overlooked. Employees’ satisfaction and well-being directly affect their ability to provide high-quality customer service and memorable customer experiences. Artificial intelligence can support organisations, for example, in optimising the workload and working conditions of employees. It can free up time and resources for employees to focus on understanding and satisfying customer needs.

How can we ensure that AI works fairly and equitably towards all customers? The use of artificial intelligence may involve ethical challenges in the context of customer experience. Exploitation can raise questions about, for example, information privacy, the risk of algorithmic distortion and the possibility of discrimination. That is why it is so important to develop ethical guidelines and responsible practices so that artificial intelligence can improve the customer experience without possible adverse effects.

How can AI help organisations recognise and process customer emotions that they themselves cannot recognise or express? People can often be unaware of their own feelings or unable to explain them in words. As AI develops and learns more and more, it can recognise subtle emotions from customers’ tone of voice, facial expressions or gestures. This opens up new opportunities to understand customers more deeply and offer them better experiences.

Combining artificial intelligence, customer experience, and empathy offers enormous potential for companies and organisations. However, it is important to keep in mind that artificial intelligence does not replace human interaction but complements it. Humans have a unique ability to feel empathy – machines still have a long way to go to reach that level.

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Do you want to hear more about artificial intelligence as “support intelligence” for customer experience professionals? Join us when we discuss the topic in our webinar, brought to you by CXPA Finland and Shirute, on Tuesday, June 13th at 15-16.

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Sirte Pihlaja (Certified Customer Experience Professional, Trained Lego® Serious Play® Facilitator) is the CEO of Finland’s first customer experience design agency, Shirute (www.shirute.fi) and the Head of Team of the Finnish network (www.cxpa.fi) of the international Customer Experience Professional Association (CXPA). At Shirute, Sirte helps management, leadership teams and decision-makers to improve returns by developing the customer and employee experiences they offer through creative means and technology.

A world-renowned expert in her field, Sirte has been awarded internationally for her life’s work in promoting customer experience and CX professionals. She has also been selected as a TOP 150 Global Customer Experience Thought Leader and in 33 Women in CX to Follow. Sirte has written three books on customer experience, two of which are global best-sellers (http://bit.ly/cx2book and http://bit.ly/cx3book). She has been invited to several international conferences to speak about AI as a tool for CX professionals this year. Sirte is also currently preparing a new book on artificial intelligence from the point of view of a CX professional.

“Customer experience professionals cannot fall behind in the developments of AI. The time is now for Finland to become a model for other countries to follow, and stand out as a pioneer in artificial intelligence. However, fully embracing the benefits of AI requires time, ingenuity and dedication.”
– Sirte Pihlaja, CEO, Customer Experience Optimiser, Lego® Serious Play® Trained Facilitator