20+ years in Design Leadership • Coaching • I help companies elevate design & foster collaboration for CX, EX, UX • Rainforest Mind • Psychologist • Speaker
I attended Engage Customer #CXSummit2024 and the #Awards ceremony that followed last week. Beyond a nice opportunity to catchup with ex-colleagues Joana de Quintanilha Dr. Maxie Schmidt and Richard Sheahan, I enjoyed some interesting content and discussions, and here are my key takeaways. - #AI is part of all conversations, but now is time to look at its #impact on customers and employees – and results are not that pretty once we get passed the efficiency gains for automating simple tasks : Ipsos' UK state of CX research found that 80% of people say customer service is getting too automated and impersonal. It also found that AI fails on #personnalisation, a CX differentiator force: 38% of customers say it made it worse, only 31% say it made it better. Simon Birch from Hobbycraft highlighted the crucial need for #humans to stay in the loop: while AI was good at creating a large knowledge base from their products catalogue, 'now AI is learning from our agents'. In the #data and #insights track, I attended two inspiring presentations: - Helen Luty and Nicholas Mills from Landmark Group shared painful lessons from a new system rollout that generated a massive increase in customer requests for support, and deeply affected all the teams. It is not often that costly mistakes are presented on stage, so big shoutout to them. But also congratulations for demonstrating that it is worth openly looking at mistakes as learning opportunities rather than trying to hide them. And it does pay off: the company adopted a different approach for its following system release that turned out to be a success plus received the #award for Best use of customer insights. Everyone involved can be proud of the collective learning and effort that led them to excellence. - Naomi Sweeting shared how Places for People moved away from demographic customer segmentation to a psychographic one, reaching a deep understanding of its customers – all of them, including those silent voices whose companies tend to ignore but represent a large base. She showcased how this approach can be a game changer for CX when it becomes an actionable tool for positive impact. Finally, back to the main stage for the closing panel discussion led by Martin Hill-Wilson, I was glad to hear that addressing #accessibility and the need for being #inclusive is as top priority for leaders such as Alessandra Canavesi. Having been a firm advocate for digital accessibility and inclusive design for more than two decades, I am like her still shocked to see how many websites keep missing the mark on basic principles (hello semantic html, color contrast and alternative text on rich media) – and I have witnessed shameful comments ("why should we spend time on this, we don't even know how many of our customers this impacts" - sic) from people who otherwise present themselves as thought-leader. So when inclusivity and accessibility are mentioned on stage at large industry conferences 🫶 👏 ✌
Simon Birch
2w
Thanks for the mention Karine Cardona ! Agree AI isn't the answer to everything but I do truly believe Human + Ai can be a great tool for people especially in the CX space .
Aletta Smits
2w
Madelon van Oostrom, PhD. Arnout Ponsioen check the last paragraph
CX Leader, CXMStars2024 #4 Top CX Professional, CX Professional Woman of the Year UKCXA24, Experienced awards judge.
2wThanks for the shout out Karine Cardona, we're glad that you found it interesting. We are certainly very proud of what we have achieved.