← The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#841: NiCE CMO Michelle Cooper on the most common mistake brands make with AI and CX
00:21:17
Loading summary
Transcript26 lines
- [00:01]
A
We've all been sold the dream of AI transforming the customer experience. But what if the most common approach is actually making it worse? Agility requires more than just implementing new technology. It requires a deep understanding of the human interactions that technology is meant to support. It's about adapting your tools and processes to enhance human judgment, not just automate it. Today we're going to talk about moving beyond the hype of AI in customer experience. We're going to explore how to ground an AI strategy in not just the technology, but in the real human moments that define a brand and discuss why empowering your frontline team might be the most critical and overlooked component of a successful transformation. Welcome to season eight of the Agile Brand Podcast. This season we're going all in on Expert Mode, MarTech, AI and Customer Experience, talking with the people and platforms behind the brands you know and love. Again, I'm your host Greg Kilstrom and I help Fortune 1000 companies make sense of martech, AI and marketing ops. Hit subscribe or follow to make sure you always get the latest episodes and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. And make sure you check out our sponsor, Techsystems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world adoption. For more information, go to techsystems.com now let's dive in. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Michelle Cooper, CMO at nice. Michelle, welcome to the show.
- [01:28]
B
Greg. Thank you so much for having me.
- [01:30]
A
Yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you. Before we dive in though, why don't you give a little background on yourself and your role at nice?
- [01:36]
B
Absolutely. So as you mentioned, I'm the CMO of nice. I've been in my position about eight months, so it's been a whirlwind of a cycle. But it is so great to be on kind of the front lines of really helping our customers transform their customer experiences.
- [01:55]
A
Love it. Well, yeah, and we're going to talk about quite a few things here, but want to start with really the strategic look at things and kind of reframing this AI and CX strategy. And so you've stated that many AI initiatives in CX fall short because they're designed around technology instead of those customer moments that I mentioned in the intro. Can you unpack that a little bit? What does the customer moment first AI strategy actually look like in practice for an enterprise?
- [02:25]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And to your, to your comment, I think a lot of companies are kind of approaching this AI era from a technology right from a tool perspective and yes, the tool and the technology that you pick and select is critical in your journey, but where you really need to start is in thinking through, like, what are the customer moments that matter? What are the business processes that you're trying to evolve? What are the outcomes that you're ultimately trying to get to? And a lot of times we see, you know, organizations start with the technology first versus the, the outcomes. And I really think that's the, that's the, the, the opportunity and also the challenges that as companies really build their AI strategy and journey that they really need to be thinking through and taking into consideration.
- [03:15]
A
Yeah, well, and, and a lot of leaders in, you know, figuring out their strategy, a lot of, a lot of them are seeing this as a way to automate a lot of things, you know, increase efficiency and thereby potentially reducing headcount on the, on the front line. You've argued for just the opposite, really using, using AI to empower them. How do you make the business case for investing in AI to support that human judgment rather than simply replacing it?
- [03:44]
B
Absolutely. And I think that, yes, the technology absolutely affords an efficiency opportunity, but if you're only thinking about it that way, you're missing a huge, huge opportunity. For us. We think about the AI as a way to be able to help our customers understand when those moments, at the moment of interaction and engagement, how do you make sure that whether that's an AI agent or a human agent, that you're giving them the context of the intent, a historical perspective, you're guiding them with, you know, information about that customer, you're recommending the next best action. So it's not about just automation for automation's sake, but it is really focused on how and when you're able to deliver a better customer outcome. And a lot of times, yes, there's cost savings, yes, there's efficiency, but it's really more about what, what are those interactions and those special moments that you can really create for your customers, you know, in that, that, that, that, that moment, that instance that really, at the end of the day makes a difference between them continuing to value and select your brand or to possibly make another decision.
- [05:04]
A
Yeah. And, and some of that at least requires really enabling that frontline to be able to, you know, serve customers in the moment. Right. And so when we talk about using AI to help those employees to show up better, what does that look like, you know, on a typical day for a customer service agent, you know, what specific information or capabilities is AI able to provide them in real time that they may not have had before.
- [05:34]
B
Absolutely. And being a customer service agent is, I mean that is a heroic, heroic job and effort. Right. It's not easy. So the technology really helps them become, to your point, much, much more effective and empowered. So a typical day might look like, instead of toggling in between multiple systems, to be able to really understand why the customer is there, to being able to do that in one platform, to being able to give them an understanding of who they are, what they care about, which solutions they have, maybe some of the historical intent in regards to their previous interactions, and then being able to power them with real time coaching recommendations, information on sentiment to really help personalize that experience and deliver the best possible customer outcome and ultimately get to resolution the fastest. The other thing that is really important is these days is that now with AI, not only is it AI in context of co pilots and real time coaching and agent assistance, but it's also being able to automate tasks with AI agents or agentic agents to be in the, in the, in the background to be able to ultimately get to that, that resolution. And I think we're kind of seeing like the whole journey change. You might start with an AI agent, right. And start your customer journey and your interaction there. You may then go from an AI agent to a human agent. And that orchestration layer and that passive information with that intent is so critical in making sure that from the moment that they interact to the moment of resolution, that that really is seamless and as personalized as absolutely as possible.
- [07:29]
A
Yeah. Because I mean it does seem like that that is one of the key points that can really make or break that. I always use the example of when you call up your bank and you have to keep giving them your account information over and over again, no matter who you get transferred to. It's like, yeah.
- [07:45]
B
And that's really the new battleground, right. Is really thinking about how you're going to orchestrate your AI in a new operating model as you go forward.
- [07:57]
A
You know that moment when marketing wants a landing page, design mocks it up and engineering says, yeah, we'll get to it. Thousands of businesses from early stage startups to Fortune 500s are choosing to build their websites in Framer, where changes take minutes instead of days. Framer is a website builder that works like your team's favorite design tool with real time collaboration, a robust CMS with everything you need for great SEO and advanced analytics that include integrated A B testing, and your designers and marketers are empowered to build and maximize your.com from day one changes to your Framer site go live to the web in seconds with one click without help from engineering. Framer is also an enterprise solution, giving brands like Perplexity, Miro and Mixpanel the confidence they need to build their websites in Framer. Learn how you can get more out of your.com from a framer specialist or get started building for free today@framer.com Agile for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com Agile for 30 percent off framer.com Agile rules and restrictions may apply. What do you see as maybe the either single biggest or one of the biggest mistakes that you see organizations make when they try to implement AI tools for frontline teams? Is IT technology? Is IT training? Leadership? Where do the biggest failings seem to be?
- [09:18]
B
And oftentimes we see the biggest challenges is just trying to take AI and automate their existing business processes. Right. And almost treating it as a technology project versus a transformation. And I think one of the things that is so powerful about AI today is you can completely reimagine the way that work gets done, what's handled by AI agents versus human, how to make those, how to balance the handoff and the orchestration between those two worlds. So I think that for me is the thing that we see most is you have to go into this with a complete new orientation about rethinking the work that you do and how will it be done going forward in this new environment.
- [10:08]
A
Yeah. And of course, when it comes to measurements, I'm sure there's a lot of traditional metrics that don't go away because you adopt AI. But you know, let's talk about, you know, when, when the goal is to empower employees and improve quality of human interaction. Are there either new KPIs or different KPIs that should also, you know, either be added or prioritized when we're looking at it from this lens.
- [10:34]
B
Absolutely. And you already see a lot of the industry starting to pivot. There's to rethink, you know, some of the traditional metrics like average handle times. Right. Average cost call times. Right. And those were really predicated on efficiency. And but now it's really more focused around resolution, quality, customer effort, you know, first call to resolution, how quickly can that happen? And being able to really measure those things and to make the correlation between how those ultimately impact, you know, brand trust, reduce customer churn, increase loyalty or nps. And I think when you just look at the research in regards to how, when you can move the needle on an NPS score, you know, just how much that really correlates to ultimately to, you know, customer loyalty and, you know, revenue. Right. Whether that's protection of revenue or expansion of revenue, it really allows you to tie and link everything that you do from a customer experience perspective in a contact, in a call center back to really the, the growth, you know, priorities, you know, of, of that specific business.
- [11:52]
A
Yeah. And of course, you know, one of the things that, that you touched on already, but from a, from a measurement standpoint is we are ideally, we are improving the employee, you know, the employee experience so that, that contact center customer service agent, they are spending less time rooting around to things. They're ideally dealing with less frustrated customers because we're able to know more and know more quickly and all of those kinds of things. How do you connect that, you know, something like an improved employee experience to the customer, you know, so something like customer lifetime value, you know, how, how do you recommend doing that?
- [12:30]
B
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So it's interesting that one of our customers, Lufthansa, actually right now, they're already automating 70% of their tier one and tier two interactions with the Gentek AI agents. Right. So it allows them to be able to handle, you know, higher call volumes, to be able to action and ultimately resolve those, you know, interactions in a much, much more, you know, efficient way. But what it allows you to be able to do is to shift some of the things and some of the work that your call center agents used to do that were very, very time consuming to be able to shift them to higher value opportunities and interactions. And I think that it allows them to be able to focus their time and energy on those. Again, I come back to this word moments, those moments that absolutely matter most to their consumer. So I think there's more satisfaction in being able to feel like you control the work that you're doing and seeing that direct correlation between the customer outcomes and customer satisfaction and also equipping them and enabling them with copilots and knowledge and recommendation engines. Simple things. Like a lot of their time would have historically been spent on just capturing the notes and the resolution and the next steps. All of that is automated today with AI and allows them to really free up their time to focus on what matters most and that's their customers.
- [14:02]
A
Yeah, yeah. And then so looking forward, you know, it definitely seems like there is going to be increased personalization. I mean, you know, even, even just empowering the frontline employees with more information and more, more fulsome information, you know, is, is Helpful. Is there a line, you know, in, in the bank example that I, that I gave. It's like, I don't want to say my account information out loud five times for many reasons. You know, it's, it's sensitive information. You know, that, that carrying that kind of stuff forward is helpful and, and makes it feel more secure to, in some cases, to, you know, customers may feel like that level of personalization may also be intrusive or something like that. You know, how do you, how do you balance that, helping the customer by bringing that stuff forward and by personalizing the experience while still not making them feel comfortable about the level of personalization?
- [14:58]
B
Absolutely. I think the, I mean, to your point, the personalization is so powerful, and I just actually read recently a stat that says, you know, it really is kind of the competitive edge. I mean, it's like 2x right. When you can absolutely find, you know, from a customer loyalty perspective, when you can find that right balance. I think what we advise our customers on is really being very transparent about the data that you have. You want to be proactive in the way that you use it, but you don't want to be creepy about how you use it to target. So we want to be really, really thoughtful about being very transparent around how and where you're using it and to not overuse it. But I do think at the end of the day, the opportunity is that we, as consumers, all of us, want to feel like we're understood. We want to be able to get to, you know, whatever we're trying to solve for faster. And that personalization, absolutely, the benefit of it, when it's done right, allows us to really feel connected and have that trust with those brands that we select and ultimately choose to, to. To do business with. So it, I think as an, as a, as a industry, you'll see this, you know, continue to evolve. But I think we all have an opportunity to be really, really responsible. And it starts with that transparency on how and what and, and where you're using it.
- [16:25]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Well, Michelle, thanks so much for joining today. I got a couple last questions as we, as we wrap up here. The first one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
- [16:39]
B
I believe we will not be talking about AI as a tool or as a feature. I think that will be table stakes for every organization and company. But I really do believe the conversation will shift to AI as an operating model. Now, how do you begin to think about managing a hybrid workforce where you have AI agents and human agents seamlessly working together and then how do you orchestrate that work and that the handoffs as you go through the customer journey. So I think AI becomes much more, the discussion will pivot and become much more around what's the operating layer and operating model that company needs. Companies need to be able to really manage in this new environment.
- [17:25]
A
Yeah, yeah, I love that. Great. Well, last question for you. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it? Congratulations.
- [17:33]
B
Consistently, that's a million dollar question. But for me it's carving out time to learn. You know, I think that the market's changing so fast, technology's changing so fast, as you know in marketing, just in customer experiences general. But I think you absolutely as a leader have to carve out time and make sure you're making that a priority. The other thing for me is I try to incorporate AI into my daily life. I think to be able to embody it, you've got got to be a practitioner of it. So making that a priority for myself and our team as we move forward. I have this mantra about being an AI first marketing organization and it starts with me and really embracing that. And then I think the last thing is that from a mindset perspective, as leaders we all just need to be able to recognize that we're going need to learn and pivot and fail very quickly. In this environment where things are changing so quickly, we just have to be able to be able to react and pivot and some of that comes with learning as we move through this new environment.
- [18:41]
A
Yeah, I love that. Well again I'd like to thank Michelle Cooper, CMO at NICE for joining the show. You can learn more about Michelle and NICE by following the links in the show notes. This episode is brought to you by Tech Systems. They're leaders in full stack tech services, talent solutions and helping companies put it all in action. You can learn more@techsystems.com that's teksystems.com and thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand podcast. If you like the episode hit subscribe and drop a rating so others can find the show too. And if you're interested in consulting, advisory work or if you need a speaker for your next event, feel free to reach out. Just visit GregKillstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op from Ideation to creation. They craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
- [19:46]
B
The Agile brand Dad.