Generative AI is no longer just a buzzword. According to CallMiner’s 2024 CX Landscape Report, 87% of global CX leaders believe that implementing generative AI is key to their customer experience (CX) and customer service teams, and 91% believe AI will help optimise CX strategies. This year’s report makes one thing clear: organisations are becoming more intentional and strategic about their use of AI to drive overall business value.

The report recognises a big shift from the early adopter phase of generative AI from a few years ago, where companies sometimes experimented with the technology at the expense of security, cost and other factors. Education around AI and its practical applications has come a long way.

Yet many still struggle with measuring the return on investment (ROI) from these AI deployments. As one example, the report highlights that 27% of organisations do not know how to quantify the ROI of AI investments. This demonstrates that while AI adoption is growing, organisations still face challenges.

To address these roadblocks head-on, organisations have embraced new team structures and governance models. One of the most notable trends is the rise of chief AI officers and dedicated AI boards or committees. While these specialised roles and groups are designed to help create policies and manage the complexity of AI adoption across departments, they may magnify some issues around team alignment — in fact, 38% of respondents cited a lack of alignment on strategic goals.

As adoption increases, teams experience fewer ‘growing pains’

Challenges aside, teams have shown big progress in their adoption journey. In fact, 62% of organisations report having at least partially implemented AI technologies, with only 24% remaining in the early stages of AI implementation. In the earlier stages of adoption, organisations tend to focus on foundational use cases that can drive proven ROI, before moving on to more complex use cases, such as predictive analytics. The survey shows the top motivator for AI adoption is the automation of tasks to improve efficiency and agent productivity (44%).

As organisations see demonstrated progress from their AI adoption, they tend to be less fearful of the unknown. CX and contact centre decision makers are more confident than ever before in their ability to manage AI, with only 21% now viewing it as too complex – a significant drop from 31% last year. Plus, fewer are concerned about AI exposing companies to security or compliance risks, with only 38% of respondents expressing this worry, down from 45% in 2023.

AI: a workforce enabler, not a replacement

Despite fears that AI could replace jobs, the CX Landscape Report found that most organisations are leveraging AI to empower their employees rather than replace them. Ninety percent of organisations believe AI will unlock their employees’ full potential. This belief is reflected in the 43% of respondents who are using AI to automate repetitive tasks, allowing frontline agents to focus on more strategic, complex work.

In addition to task automation, AI is playing a role in elevating employee performance. For example, nearly two in five organisations use AI-driven scoring to evaluate customer interactions and agent performance, while 46% employ AI-powered real-time guidance during live customer interactions. These tools are a critical part of boosting productivity, enhancing CX quality and improving the frontline employee experience.

Advancing CX with increased collection of unsolicited feedback

As organisations interact with customers across an increasing number of channels, they are collecting more data than ever before. Even so, not all data is equal.

Historically, most CX leaders have relied on solicited feedback – collected through methods like surveys and reviews – that is often limited or polarised. This means that C-suite executives and board members are only seeing measures such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) and customer satisfaction (CSAT), which are only part of the CX story. On the other hand, unsolicited feedback – gathered from natural customer interactions like contact centre interactions or social media – offers a broader, more accurate picture of customer sentiment and emotions, especially when combined with or compared to solicited feedback.

This shift is evident, with the reliance on solicited feedback decreasing over the last three years. Today, 64% of organisations still rely on solicited feedback as their primary data source, down from 71% in 2023 and 79% in 2022. Further, a quarter of organisations now collect equal amounts of solicited and unsolicited feedback, which helps them gain a more holistic picture of the voice of the customer (VoC) and CX.

Get the 2024 CallMiner CX Landscape Report

The future of AI in CX lies not only in its ability to automate tasks, but also in its potential to empower employees, boost productivity and deliver more meaningful customer insights to the entire organisation. Beyond these initial insights, the 2024 CX Landscape Report covers additional ways organisations are investing in AI and using it to drive practical improvements in both frontline employee experience and enterprise-wide improvements.

Countries surveyed include the US, the UK and Ireland, South Africa, France, and Germany. Industry-specific data covers retail, technology, financial services and healthcare (public and private), providing decision makers in these sectors and regions with valuable insights into the impact of AI on both CX and overall business transformation.