DEC 2024 Congress. Generative AI, with the potential
DEC 2024 Congress. Generative AI, with the potential to transform Customer Experience
Generative AI has begun to form part of the CX operations of some companies, although to extend its use in the discipline, trust and more human components will be needed, such as those observed in behavioural economics.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and the way it can optimize companies' customer experience, both now and in the future, was the focus of the eleventh edition of the DEC Congress, held on October 1 at the Goya Theater in Madrid.
A technology that, as Fernando Polo , CEO of Good Rebels and president of Foro IA , recalled, has been around for a long time, although its classic form – machine learning and deep learning – has been little used by customer experience (CX). “A content recommender works with classical AI algorithms, an old technology, but recommenders are still a pending subject in customer experience,” and added that, in general, classical AI leaves twice the economic impact on a company compared to generative AI, as estimated by the consulting firm McKinsey.
However, “there are certain areas, such as marketing, sales, product development or customer operations, where generative AI will have a greater impact.” Because generative AI brings with it the “great revolution” of large language models (LLM), which will form part of the core of current devices and those to come. “The customer experience will change more with these new devices, just as it changed with the arrival of the smartphone,” Polo explained.
Lluís Quetglas , CEO of Vecdis , agreed : “Generative AI has the potential to become an interaction interface for the user, like Web 2.0 or apps,” citing the example of the American firm Instacart’s assistant, ‘Ask Instacart’, which allows users to make a purchase through the chatbot. “There will come a time when retail companies will be able to enable their entire operations in a generative AI app.”
Lack of trust in users and companies
With 75% of companies having as their main task to implement AI solutions to improve their CX strategy, 25% that have already incorporated them have experienced improvements in it, according to data shared by Quetglas. However, this technology will have to overcome the challenge of the lack of user confidence if it is to be implemented permanently in the future. Distrust generated by the limitations seen in applications that incorporate this type of artificial intelligence.
Namely, hallucinations, inconsistent results, biases, lack of explainability and threats to security, privacy and intellectual property, cited by María López , CEO of Bitbrain , which appear, according to the professional, because “generative AI is not aware of the meanings of language, but rather studies probabilities. One way to reduce them is to train them with humans,” she recommended.
In the development of these applications, elements of behavioural science, so widely used in the design of customer experiences by companies, have also been overlooked. According to Juan de Rus , director & partner of Neovantas , it has been observed, for example, how little expert these tools are at understanding the context; that they can have biases because data that does not represent reality has been chosen to train their models; or their limited capacity to 'think outside the box'. For this reason, Rus recommends “putting a face and eyes to the data”, going to the behavioural data. “If we want to use AI to improve CX, sales or marketing, let's take advantage of this data,” he emphasised.
The European Law on Artificial Intelligence, responsible for regulating the risks associated with it, will also help advance the field of generative AI. A regulation that, according to Carme Artigas , co-president of the United Nations AI advisory council , is designed to alleviate the lack of confidence shown by users, but also companies, as indicated by the fact that only 25% of European firms are already adopting this type of AI. “Security and transparency must be demanded from the software industry, just as it is demanded from the banking or pharmaceutical sector. The AI Act generates confidence to boost the market,” she explained.
Generative AI, a reality in companies
Offering context and transparency is part of the measures that brands can implement in their CX strategy to alleviate consumer concerns in the current BANI environment, whose acronym stands for fragility, anxiety, non-linearity and incomprehensibility and which has left behind the so-called VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity), as pointed out by Adela Balderas , professor at Deusto Business School and Basque Culinary Center, researcher at the University of Oxford and professor affiliated with MIT. “In times of change, we must be more digital and more human. With 47% of customers complaining about poor service, it is time to satisfy the customer,” she recalled.
In any case, there have already been companies that have implemented generative AI in their CX operations. At Securitas Direct , the solution developed by the team led by Karlina Silfa , head of artificial intelligence & advanced analytics , has improved customer satisfaction with the service offered by the Alarm Reception Center (CRA) as well as the happiness index of its employees, thanks to the fact that the implemented AI helps high and low risk teams to direct responses to customers. Or the generative AI assistant launched at Ferrovial to improve the work of the multinational's employees, since "we believe that in the coming years people will interact with bots, we have to get used to this new way of working," as Alberto Terol , head of digital change management at Ferrovial , pointed out .
News from the DEC Association
The DEC Association, organizers of the DEC Congress, took advantage of the seminar to announce new developments after having completed the cycle of activities celebrating the institution's tenth anniversary, such as a new image, the arrival of the entity in six new countries - Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Portugal -, the update of the Profitable Experience Manual or the collaboration agreement reached with The Truth.
The eleventh edition of the DEC Congress had the support and participation of Sprinklr as a platinum sponsor; Alsa, BondBl, Goodays, Hyundai, Kia, Medallia, Neovantas, Qualtrics and Zendesk as gold sponsors ; Madison MK as a silver sponsor ; and Intereconomía, IPMARK and Sector Ejecutivo as collaborating media partners .
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