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NOVEMBER 2023

INSIDE:

AI for CX: Don’t Get Left Behind Creating Your Roadmap for
Generative AI in CX >>
Establishing the Roadmap for AI in
More than half of enterprises say that AI is already helping them better understand customer needs, the Contact Center >>
increase customer retention and satisfaction, and increase revenue and operational efficiencies. And
we’re still near the beginning of the adoption curve. Generative AI promises more potential use cases How Contact Centers are Using AI >>
that deliver these benefits. Enterprise Chatbot Market to
Triple by 2026 >>
Harnessing Generative AI for the
So, to keep a competitive edge in the critical area of customer experience (CX), enterprises must keep Contact Center >>
up with AI-enabled technologies—while still maintaining governance and compliance best practices
How AI can enhance the in-store
that avoid the risks. In this special report, you’ll gain insights to help your enterprise use AI to drive customer experience >>
improvements in real-world metrics.
Generative AI: The Topic of
Conversation in Contact Centers >>

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FEATURE

Creating Your Roadmap for Generative AI in CX

Generative AI is poised to bring profound changes to contact center operations, and to the customer experience. We’re still in
the technology’s early stages, but there’s a lot you can (and should) do now to get ready.
By Eric Krapf

D
evelopments around AI, particularly generative rise since late 2022, as well as concerns about how best to
AI, have been moving so fast, enterprise CX deploy it while minimizing risk. Nowhere is this truer than in
decision-makers couldn’t be blamed for feeling a the contact center: On the one hand, enterprises can build
bit overwhelmed—especially when both the rewards and hard ROI cases around any technology that saves agents
the risks are gaining so much attention and contradictory time, improves upsell opportunities, or—ultimately—allows
coverage. Generative AI is presenting enterprises with morethe company to control agent headcount or adapt to labor
possibilities than ever, but the one option you don’t have shortages. On the other hand, the contact center is the
is to stand still—you need a strategy to leverage GenAI face of the business to its customers, and any technology
in your contact center (if you don’t already have one). So implementation that damages the customer experience
how do you find the use cases that make the most sense (CX) poses an unacceptable risk.
for your contact center today, and how do you plot your So enterprises are proceeding with caution when it
roadmap for the next six months? comes to generative AI in the contact center—so much so
that industry expert Dan Miller, lead analyst and founder
Where to Find the Low-Hanging Fruit of Opus Research, coined the term “DIH”—a play on the
Generative AI’s ability to (as its name suggests) generate popular acronym “DIY”—to describe many enterprises’
new content via machine learning (ML) and use of large current posture with regard to generative AI. “DIH” stands
language models (LLMs) has fueled both its astonishing for “Deer in the Headlights.”

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CREATING YOUR ROADMAP FOR GENERATIVE AI IN CX
Any generative AI implementation will certainly bring a
host of governance and compliance issues, but enterprises
can’t use these concerns as a reason not to proceed
decisively in positioning themselves to deploy current
GenAI-driven capabilities, and to expand on these as much
as possible. The good news is, we already have examples
of GenAI capabilities offering benefits in the contact center.
The most popular example to date has been call
summarization. This has been seen as an ideal use case,
since the GenAI does not interact directly with customers,
and therefore the risk is relatively low. The system generates
a summary of each call upon completion, which it presents
to the agent for editing and filing, as part of the agent’s
routine post-call work. This saves the agent the time it
would take to compose the summary themselves, which
means the agent can handle more calls.
GenAI-driven call summarization has actually been
around for about three years, using earlier versions of the
LLMs that we see today. “Now it’s a checklist item and
it’s something that, for large contact centers, yields just
incredible cost savings; it shaves seconds off of the handle
time,” Miller said. “An agent can go on to the next call
without pausing to write up the purpose of the previous
call and its disposition.”
A clear next step is for the GenAI to write any follow-up
emails that may need to go from the agent to the customer
after the call, Miller said. The system would send a draft to
the agent to check and personalize before sending it out. Approaching Self-Service
From there, the enterprise can begin to look at ways From call summarization to intent modeling and other
GenAI can bolster the contact center’s models to improve agent-assist processes, GenAI has a clear role to play on
performance. Miller calls this step, “the rapid extraction the back end for the contact center. But many enterpris-
of insights from contemporaneous conversation.” For es have their eyes on a potentially bigger prize: Customer
example, contact center technology experts are finding self-service, which can directly offload interactions from
that GenAI can recognize caller intent more quickly than agents, allowing them to focus on customers with more
the earlier-generation AI-driven versions that relied on pre- complex issues. Wider acceptance of self-service also
structured models. could potentially slow the growth of the agent workforce,
“It used to be really labor-intensive to build an intent even if it doesn’t replace agents.
model. It required people to label the purpose of every call Even if you remain wary of letting a GenAI chatbot talk di-
coming in,” Miller said. “This turns out to be something that rectly to your customers—and you should—you can start
large language models can do really well.” And by doing laying the groundwork now for using GenAI as part of your
it in real time, it can continually be improving the model,
without the need for humans to take on the arduous task
of adjusting it on the back end.
Another area where GenAI holds near-term promise
is in sentiment analysis, which Miller said is becoming
increasingly important to contact center managers. “It used
to just sort of be word spotting, looking for the names of
competitors, [the caller] saying, I’m angry,” he said. Now AI
is beginning to offer more sophisticated sentiment analysis
that the contact center can use as it gauges customer
satisfaction: “AI can detect differences in pitch and tone
and cadence in speech to know when somebody’s been
upset, and within a call can suggest being a little more
empathetic here,” Miller said.
November 2023 3
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CREATING YOUR ROADMAP FOR GENERATIVE AI IN CX

self-service strategy, according to Opus analyst Derek lot more than just approving a draft or something like that,”
Top. Start by making sure you understand your customers’ Miller said. “It’s about defining roles for humans to leverage
self-service journeys, so you can begin to strategize where the power of AI. That’s just really important to do right now.
best to deploy GenAI within that journey. Top echoes that sentiment but says you can’t
This is also where some of those agent-assist GenAI use underestimate the challenge ahead.
cases can act as an “accelerant,” Top noted. Things like “One of the biggest hurdles right now really is humans
improved intent models don’t just help with call handling; and change management,” Top said. “The idea of
they can help enterprises better model self-service jour- accepting some of these technologies for what they offer
neys by understanding customer behavior. “Creating the is still a struggle--that’s true for many business units, not
dialogue and understanding, building and designing con- just within the contact center, of course.”
versations, as a way to provide self-service customer jour- Top agrees that continuing to advance AI functionality in
neys, can be done faster and better,” Top said. agent assist and other back-office roles could help contact
This is also a time when enterprises can use agent-as- center workers—from agents up through managers—to
sist scenarios to experiment with the way GenAI behaves, feel more comfortable with the technology. “In terms of
and the kind of content that GenAI would produce for a trying to find that value, seeing how it works within your
customer-facing self-service use case—even if they’re not day-to-day work life, your business, your workflows, I think
ready to release it in the wild. “You want it to be creative. that will accelerate” in enterprises that continue to move
You want it to be tight and short. Maybe you want it to be on AI.
more narrative. There are ways to really make a person- “What we’ll see is time to value shorten or over the next
alized experience--[initially in agent assist scenarios], but on the people. six months or a year.”
also ultimately for customer facing,” Top said. One area where Miller expects to see AI take a more So not only will the technology continue to advance and
prominent role is in the workforce management systems improve, but it’s likely that your competitors will be getting
Your Six-Month Roadmap that contact center operators use to schedule, monitor, better at figuring out how to use it. It’s not a process you
What should you be planning for the next six months to analyze and train agents. can afford to move slowly on or sit out.
keep your AI strategy on track? While you’ll certainly need He also suggests encouraging agents to embrace greater Eric Krapf is General Manager and Program Co-Chair of
to stay abreast of technology developments and taking the use of AI applications and to find ways to use them in their Enterprise Connect.
steps outlined above, Miller and Top also suggest focusing roles. “We have to make room for [agents] to be doing a

November 2023 4
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SPONSORED
Establishing the Roadmap for AI in the
Contact Center
An interview with Jessica Smith, Director of CCaaS Product Marketing, 8x8
How can large language models be tailored
to optimize CX capabilities?
There’s a lot to take into consideration when assessing
how LLMs can help optimize CX. The goal should be
to start small and assess from the standpoint of where
some of the greater problems are today that AI can help
address. Start by considering some of the following as
either starting points or potential key areas as part of a
multi-step journey in answering this question for your or-
ganization:
i. Start by mapping the customer journey – understand
what parts of their journey may be able to be automat-
ed or where perhaps LLMs could be incorporated to
enhance their interactions.
ii. Define the use cases that you’d like to apply – cus-
tomer facing, agent facing, chatbot, voicebot, etc.
Consider the use of the LLM to train and understand
or interpret user intent and purpose.
November 2023 5
iii. Assess the integrity of your data as you consider in-
tegrating with an LLM to better personalize customer
experience based on their history or preferences.
iv. Consider which systems you would integrate an LLM
with to enhance automation or figure out where you
can streamline certain processes.
v. Performance monitoring: quality assurance; sen-
timent analysis; automated call summaries; script
compliance.
vi.  Training for agents: knowledge base enrichment;
scripting and guiding agent responses; language
and tone coaching; adaptive learning paths.
What should be on an enterprise’s roadmap
for the next 12 months in order to make
sure they don’t fall behind on AI in their
contact center?
First assess the problem you are trying to solve, then
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look at how AI can address the issue. Remember, start- centers and agents operate. It’s now a matter of how are just some of the many ways AI will help the contact
ing small can lead to greater success down the road. You quickly organizations can adapt to center save money.
don’t have to use AI to solve every problem right out of We need to see AI as a good thing! A way to enhance In terms of revenue generation, AI can play a significant
the gate. our skills, make us better / faster, etc. So, in saying that role in helping contact centers by enhancing cross-sell
i. Select the use cases that make the most sense based AI will have an impact on the hiring of agents should be or upsell initiatives, automating parts of the sales pro-
on business priorities and customer needs. looked at as an opportunity to improve hiring practices. cess, proactive issue resolution, and minimizing custom-
ii. Evaluate and choose the best fit solution based on i. Shift on roles & responsibilities: As AI takes over rou- er churn by analyzing customer interactions and behav-
these needs and initial deployments of AI. When as- tine tasks, the role of agents may shift towards more iors. Organizations can leverage AI to enhance customer
sessing a vendor, ensure they have a strong roadmap complex and strategic activities. interactions, optimize internal processes, and automate
or dedication to innovation in order for your adop- ii. Potential for upskilling and career growth workforce operations, in order for the contact center to
tion of the solution to grow as your needs evolve. You iii. Shift in compensation: Compensation structures may create valuable revenue-generating opportunities.
want to work with a vendor that helps you future-proof evolve to reflect the changing nature of the contact
your solution; not one that only fits a niche use case, center role. Agents who excel in areas such as cus-
forcing you to eventually bring in other vendors to fill tomer relationship management, problem resolution,
certain gaps. and utilizing AI tools may be rewarded accordingly.
iii. Consider the integrity of your data and infrastructure. iv. Soft skills may be recognized as greater assets (i.e.
Ensuring you have the right pool of data and aggre- empathy and strong communication) and be more
gation of those data sets will be extremely necessary prominently recognized and rewarded
for the AI to perform optimally. Additionally, be sure
to Implement data governance policies as well to op- Will wider use of AI save money for the
timize the integrity of your information. contact center, and if so, where and how?
Will it drive increased revenue, and if
How will wider deployment of AI affect the so, where?
qualifications that contact centers apply in AI will be able to contribute to cost savings in a big way
hiring agents? Will agents see their status for the contact center. Automating routine tasks, offering
and pay rise or fall because of AI? 24/7 availability at a fraction of the cost, scaling opera-
It’s already evident that AI is changing the way contact tions up or down, and delivering faster response times

November 2023 6
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ARTICLE

How Contact Centers are Using AI

The message for enterprise decision-makers: Plan for AI’s disruptive, transformative use cases, but don’t
miss out on the incremental improvements available in the short term.
By Eric Krapf

I
t’s always seemed logical that AI’s first strong use case in
the contact center would be in an agent assist capacity.
Generative AI in particular might not be ready to show its
face to the customer just yet, but surely it can help agents
perform tasks like call summarization, and provide real-
time information and recommendations to the agent while
the human is interacting live with a customer. But it turns
out that while agent assist may be the most popular use
case, other functions are more effective, at least for now.
That was a key takeaway from a presentation David
Myron, principal analyst at Omdia, delivered during a
recent No Jitter/Enterprise Connect webinar. Myron
offered up some findings from Omdia’s recently released
State of Digital CX:2023 survey, focusing on where AI is
being implemented now, and where enterprises believe it’s
working best.
Agent assistance topped the list of AI features already
deployed: 64% of respondents currently have AI in place

November 2023 7
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HOW CONTACT CENTERS ARE USING AI
for agent assist, and another 30% will deploy it within
the next 12 – 18 months. Other functions with over 50%
deployment included call classification, survey and review
analytics, Web-based chatbot, and intelligent call routing.
But Myron pointed out that when Omdia asked which AI
features added value in the contact center, agent assistance
ranked eighth, with 48% saying it has “significant value.”
And Web-based chatbots were dead last on this measure,
with 41% of respondents ascribing “significant value” to
them. Myron noted the good news here—when you add
in those who assign these features “moderate” value, you
get a total of 89% saying that both AI has at least some
value in agent assist and Web-based chatbot use cases.
Still, the most valuable AI features, according to the
Omdia survey, are intelligent call routing and social
listening and ticketing. For each of these features, 56%
of respondents ascribed “significant” value, and another
41% assigned “moderate” value. Also near the top were
digital CX analytics for quality management (QM), customer
satisfaction (CSAT), and training; call classification; caller
intent; intelligent knowledge base; and survey and review
analytics, all of which received a ranking of “significant”
value by more than 50% of respondents.
Another interesting set of datapoints: Omdia asked the
top reasons why respondents felt AI delivers significant
value on the one hand, or limited value on the other, and
here were the results:
Significant value:
• Employees know AI’s importance; it’s adopted broadly
(66%)
• A strategy is in place that prioritizes AI outcomes (63%)
• Have comprehensive AI data management and
governance programs (62%)
Limited value:
• Lack of applicable use cases (43%)
• Not capturing or quantifying results (43%)
• AI doesn’t integrate with existing business systems
(35%)
These results shouldn’t be too surprising, and they
resonate with the state of the industry right now. People are
excited about the potential for agent assist or customer-
facing scenarios, but at the moment, the highest value is
coming from more mature use cases, or those that don’t
require AI-human interaction.
The message for enterprise decision-makers
seems pretty straightforward: Plan for AI’s disruptive,
transformative use cases, but don’t miss out on the
incremental improvements available in the short term.
Eric Krapf is General Manager and Program Co-Chair of
Enterprise Connect.
November 2023 8
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ARTICLE
Enterprise Chatbot Market to Triple by 2026
Omdia: Market size, complexity leave room for many vendors to succeed
By Deborah Yao
T
he market for enterprise chatbots and virtual digital
assistants (VDAs) is expected to more than triple
from 2020 to 2026 to at least $8 billion, according to
a new report by sister research firm Omdia.
Moreover, this market should be able to accommodate a
“robust” number of providers instead of being dominated
by a handful of vendors, according to the report, “Chatbots
& Virtual Digital Assistants 2022: Market Trajectory,
Forecasts.”
The reasons why: diversity in market demand call for a
diversity of solutions that range from pro developer DIY
tools and no code SaaS to custom end-to-end solutions;
tech developments such as affordable NLU and training
from open-source large language models could create new
market disruptors; and the market’s size and complexity
leave room for many to succeed.
“The market opportunity is nowhere near saturated
or commoditized, leaving the door open for a variety of
Market Drivers and Hurdles
Hundreds of vendors that offer chatbots and VDA services
worldwide are becoming more sophisticated, with most
falling into one of four categories: end-to-end solutions,
scalable pro development tools, low code-no code SaaS
and integrated solutions.
Here are some vendors in the four categories:
vendors to succeed and prosper,” said report author Mark
Beccue, who is an Omdia principal analyst.
While customer service or experience remains the
predominant use case for chatbots and VDAs, enterprises
also are incorporating them into their business processes
to automate workflows. As such, the market shifts away
from DIY tools back to end-to-end solutions – creating
opportunities for BPOs and SIs for sales channels and
professional services.
November 2023 9
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ENTERPRISE CHATBOT MARKET TO TRIPLE BY 2026

The chatbot and VDA market is expected to keep growing
due to the following factors:
• Continued emphasis on customer experience is driving
growth in spending on chatbots, led by companies in
finance, tech and retail.
• Remote work and shrinking staff accelerated the work-
place automation and cloud-based services trends.
• Customer demand for self-service, with 81% wanting
to DIY.
• Rise of digital channels such as messaging apps and
social media makes chatbots and VDAs a logical user
interface choice.
• Complex workflow integrations are the next use case for
companies with maturing chatbot and VDA initiatives.
AI projects or even abandon them.
Overconfidence in expertise: Larger organizations with
dedicated IT and technical development teams continue
to overestimate the difficulty in designing, building, and
managing sophisticated chatbots/VDAs. They launch and
build projects, which fail because they lack the skills and
dedicated resources required. These DIY projects have
slowed market adoption as companies find out they have
to start over using outside expertise.
Deborah is Editor of AI Business

Barriers to Growth
Siloed approaches: Chatbots and VDAs remain large-
“The market opportunity
ly siloed projects within many enterprise organizations. is nowhere near saturated
Legacy call centers still largely rely on voice while the dig-
ital side deploys chatbots and VDAs differently.
or commoditized, leaving
the door open for a
Lifecycle management: Most enterprises are just begin-
ning to understand the overall cost of AI lifecycle man-
variety of vendors to
agement, which is significantly different from software succeed and prosper”
lifecycle management. Requiring different resources and - MARK BECCUE, PRINCIPAL ANALYST, OMDIA

investment, the AI lifecycle management causes hesitan-

cy in some organizations to start chatbot/VDA and other

November 2023 10
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SPONSORED
Harnessing Generative AI for the
Contact Center
An interview with Elizabeth Tobey, Head of Marketing, Digital & AI, NICE
What is the short- and long-term impact of
generative AI on contact centers?
Elizabeth Tobey, NICE: We’re already in the thick of the
short-term improvements, and that’s a really good thing.
Customer expectations - and even customer demand -
has far outpaced our old-world way of dealing with CX.
We simply cannot keep hiring people and expecting them
to be able to provide the service customers need now,
across all the different channels expected, at the speed
required. Generative AI is a big missing piece to solving
the problems of cognitive overload with employees who
simply cannot keep up with the complexities this mod-
ern landscape demands and better assist the tech-savvy
consumer who knows what they want, how they want it,
and won’t settle for less. That means better self-service
options that actually get the job done, or copilots oper-
ating alongside agents that can actually serve as a col-
laborator rather than another cludgy piece of technology
November 2023 11
that has bogged down their work and addled their ability
to create excellent experiences as with past innovations.
In terms of long term? We’re talking about a fundamental
shift about how we interact with, react to, and take ac-
tion from unstructured data. We have reams of data now
that can answer all sorts of questions - from the micro to
the macro - about how we make our businesses better,
where our biggest problems lie, and what our most urgent
priorities should be. Generative AI is a key that allows
us to unlock and access that data, on demand, easily,
without needing data scientists and weeks or months of
research and coding. It’s a game changer.
Where do you see generative AI offering the
greatest CX improvements over the next
12 months—Agent assist functions, contact
center operations, or customer-facing?
ET, NICE: Yes. Yes to all of it. I think the first and most
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HARNESSING GENERATIVE AI FOR THE CONTACT CENTER
important improvement we’re going to see organizations
adopting is agent assist functions - allowing them bet-
ter access to information, helping them with better, more
personalized answers, and AI-powered technology that
helps them do their jobs, understand context, and in-
crease customer satisfaction. I also see a reawakening
and reinvigoration in the belief that self-service can and
will be an excellent, and even preferred, option for con-
sumers - because now with AI, we have the ability to take
it from good to great - and that next level is what’s going
to turn our collective feelings around a chatbot from “this
may or may not be able to help me” to “this is what I al-
ways want to use.”
To what extent (if at all) will AI replace
contact center agent positions?
ET, NICE: Right now, most companies are struggling to
hire, train, and retain agents. I fear more that companies
who don’t embrace AI will lose agents to those who do
because AI, in general, is a collaborative and additive
technology for contact center employees - be it agents,
supervisors, or leadership at the very top. And, yes, there
will be an evolution in what that means for the overall
workforce. For example, some agents who maybe just
did call triage or transfer will no longer need to work those
roles, but that doesn’t mean their positions are eliminated
- it means their work changes, and probably for the better.
Those kinds of roles aren’t necessarily the most satisfying lives - how could customer self-service not be one of the
for the employees, or the most impactful for the business top areas to use and see immediate and wide sweeping
- so if AI can help ease that burden so they can do more positive impact from generative AI?
significant work that engages them and makes their jobs
more satisfying and helps the organization attain its goals?
That’s a win. So, yes, with AI we might see more AI-powered
self-service, and we might see jobs changing and evolving,
but that’s not new. The phone did that. Computers did that.
The Internet did that. And I don’t think anyone would ever
be able to make a case that those three technologies were
not, holistically, huge improvements to agents’ lives.
Is customer self-service the Holy Grail
application for generative AI? How close
are we to seeing generative AI that’s
suitable for self-service?
ET, NICE: It’s certainly one of the best and most powerful
ways we can harness AI to improve the lives of basically
everyone - and I mean basically everyone - since all of us,
to some extent, engage in commerce both as employees
and as consumers. So whether we’re talking about you
and me as customers, yes, generative AI makes our lives
better, but also as we do our jobs, no matter what that job
is, yes, AI right now is probably making our lives better.
Every day, all of us have customer experience interactions,
whether B2B or B2C - and with that kind of volume, and
that much of a significant impact on so many people’s
November 2023 12
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ARTICLE
How AI Can Enhance the In-Store
Customer Experience
E-book excerpt: AI investments are key for e-commerce, but what about for in-store shopping?
By David Weldon
A
ccording to a recent retail shopping survey by
Shekel Brainweigh, 75% of consumers say they
would like to use autonomous stores, but only 2%
say they have done so.
This is very typical in a new market, explained Guy
Moshe, chief technology officer and co-founder of the
firm. “It reflects that there is real promise there. People
are excited to test it. So, this means that there is a real
business opportunity behind it. And if it is implemented
properly, then people like it.”
But there is such a thing as technology overkill in retail
stores. It is important to use technology for specific
customer benefits and avoid using it for its own sake.
“Don’t try to adjust the retail experience to the technology,
but rather go the other way around. Just let the technology
service your customers better,” stressed Rami Bar, head of
business development at Shekel Brainweigh.
“With some retailers today, you will see very well
engineered shops that are actually a technology demo
November 2023 13
rather than a retail center. They want to show customers
that they have working technology. And nobody cares too
much about the shopping experience,” Bar said.
“I believe that if a retailer goes this route, he will lose his
customer and will see that the technology investment is
not justified.”
Bar offered the example of a fully automated store, and
things that management can do wrong.
“I need to flood it with light, which is unnatural, and not
very pleasant. I need to retain certain SKUs and not others.
And I need to make sure everything serves the technology
best. This is not the right approach. You shouldn’t serve
your customer based on the technology. It should just be
a tool.”
That is the approach taken by Delek U.S. Holdings Inc.,
which has rolled out frictionless, artificial intelligence-
powered self-checkout at its more than 70 retail
convenience stores in Texas.
At the Delek stores, customers can walk into a store,
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HOW AI CAN ENHANCE THE IN-STORE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
select the items they want, place them in a kiosk tray, and
have all items instantly recognized and simultaneously
totaled in less than half a second, without the need to look
for and scan barcodes.
Shoppers can then use credit cards, debit cards or mobile
pay to complete transactions without touching anything
but their purchase and the form of payment. Transactions
can be completed in as few as 10 seconds, the firm noted.
Smart Shelves
Another area where some retailers are using AI is with
“smart shelves” – shelving with technology sensors that
track what products are handled by customers, for how
long, which are put back, where they are put back, and
which ones apparently sell. Retailers investing in smart
shelf technology are retrofitting existing shelves with four
sensors located in the corners of the shelf. The shelf sen-
sors are a 1.5mm thick metal plate, very easy to use, and
easy to implement, explained Moshe.
“You can put up to 10 products on the same smart shelf.
It recognizes each time that an item has been handled
or removed, and it tells you which item has been taken,”
Moshe said.
“You can track your inventory. You know what it is that
you’re selling, so you can automatically replenish them.
But you’re doing it at the shelf instead of at the point-of-
sale. So, it is tracking interest in products, not just sales.”
“We are learning how shoppers are interacting with prod-
ucts. We learn what is the percentage of items being put
back. Are they putting items back in place, or not in the sameto generate an image of that garment on the person. It lets
place? Basically, the heat map of the shelf,” Moshe said.
Retailers can also experiment with ideal product place-
ment, and smart shelves can provide insights on what
placement does to produce interest.
“What happens if I will take the Coke and put it in front ofcan be especially helpful with any product shortages that
the Fanta, and not next to it? What will it do to customer
interest?” Moshe asked.
Artificial intelligence can learn a great deal about a cus-
tomer from product interactions, Dubois explained.
For example, “as people are picking up a product and
turning it around to look at the ingredients, you now know
that they are the type of person that cares about ingredi-
ents. And when they put a product back, that may mean
there are ingredients in the product that they don’t care
for,” Dubois said.
November 2023 14
“All of these things allow me in the future to better target
these people.”
AI and AR
In another example, Dubois said AI can tap augmented
reality technology to support virtual mirrors that enable a
customer to see how they might look in a particular clothing
item if they were to purchase it.
“We’ve seen the magic mirror-type technique for a while,
where someone stands in front of a mirror, they select the
garment they want to be wearing, and the mirror uses AR
them ‘virtually’ try it on,” Dubois said.
AI-based inventory tracking tools can also help a retailer
better plan long-range product needs, as well as manage
fast-moving consumer goods, such as food items. This
might occur, such has been the case with a variety of items
during the pandemic.
If a retailer could better understand what products are of
the highest value to particular customer segments, it could
better plan how it would respond to a shortage.
When a retailer has more knowledge on customers,
their habits, and what they value most, it can more easily
address supply chain issues that might arise.
David is a freelance reporter for AI Business.
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ARTICLE
Generative AI: The Topic of Conversation in
Contact Centers
Since Generative AI burst onto the scene in late 2022, No Jitter has covered the incorporation and implementation of AI and
generative AI-based solutions into contact center platforms. Here’s some of what we’ve found.
T
he introduction of generative AI sparked an ongo-
ing conversation in how that technology could, and
perhaps should, be used for business-to-business
and business-to-consumer communications. Over the
last several months, No Jitter has spoken with many of
the companies directly involved in the incorporation and
implementation of AI and generative AI-based solutions
for unified communications and contact center platforms.
Over the course of those conversations, multiple trends
became apparent, which include:
• Using generative AI to create summaries and thus as-
sist contact center agents during and after customer
interactions. This helps them provide a better customer
experience and save time on post-call wrap-up. Con-
tact center managers can also benefit from AI-gener-
ated summaries of calls, trends, etc., across the entire
contact center operation. This can help them identify
issues that need to be addressed, provide targeted
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coaching, etc.
• Using generative AI to streamline the creation of rote
content and/or remove some of the “heavy lifting” from
laborious knowledge-based processes, such as de-
signing a conversational dialog flow complete with in-
tents and entities.
• Noticing the need for data security, guardrails, etc., to
protect customers’ personal identifiable information
(PII) and enterprises’ intellectual property, while ensur-
ing that the generative AI-based solution is responsibly
deployed so that it doesn’t veer into toxicity, hallucina-
tions, etc.
• Asking questions, at least, about the data used to train
the models. Most vendors’ LLMs are proprietary, and
they will not allow customers to examine the training
data. But, customers have the right to ask about it and
hold the vendors accountable for how they use custom-
er data (or not), how the vendor is reviewing its model(s)
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GENERATIVE AI: THE TOPIC OF CONVERSATION IN CONTACT CENTERS

regarding bias, ethics, responsibility, etc. not complex interactions.” D’Antonio predicts, “As
• Keeping “humans in the loop” to evaluate what the gen- generative AI and ChatGPT advance, companies will
erative AI “engine” produces, as a backstop against look to improve their chatbot capabilities. The market
toxicity, hallucination, incorrect information, etc. may experience renewed growth over the long term.”
• Personalization: AI is already a key technology for en-
In addition to these learnings, we can get a pulse on the terprises seeking to offer personalized omnichannel en-
state of AI from the researchers at Omdia, whose State of gagement, particularly in industries like media and enter-
Digital CX 2023 survey reveals some important insights tainment, where AI drives content recommendations for
about how enterprises view AI in their contact centers today. customers. “As ChatGPT and generative AI increase in
When Omdia asked which currently-deployed AI-based popularity, companies’ awareness of the benefits of har-
technologies deliver “significant” value, the top five were: nessing AI to personalize experiences and optimize audi-
1. Intelligent call routing: 56% ence engagement will also increase,” D’Antonio predicts.
2. Intelligent knowledge base: 51%
3. Sentiment analysis: 48% Finally, the Omdia survey found that the currently-
4. Agent Assistance: 48% deployed generation of AI was already producing the
5. Speech Assistance: 43% following outcomes for enterprises:
• Can better understand customer needs: 59% resolve customer issues more efficiently and effectively.
In addition, Omdia found that several other capabilities • Increased customer retention and satisfaction: 57% Also, by monitoring customer behavior, AI-powered
are likely to see their value increase with the rise of GenAI. • Increased revenue: 57% technology can detect patterns and identify opportunities.
These capabilities include: • Increased operational efficiencies: 50% Finally, AI algorithms can analyze customer data to deliver
• Chatbots: 57% of respondents currently have chatbots • Reduced routine tasks: 40% tailored product recommendations.”
deployed, however the Omdia survey expects adoption Clearly, the current generation of AI has already made its
to slow down over the next 12 – 18 months. The As D’Antonio summed up these findings in her report: mark in the contact center, and with the immense promise
survey report’s author, principal analyst Mila D’Antonio, “AI-powered technologies, and especially generative AI- of GenAI on the horizon, we’re likely to see a transformation
attributes the projected slowdown to the current- powered applications, include the promise of personalized in how enterprises serve their customers and continually
generation chatbots’ reaching their technical limits, as customer experiences. Advancements in technology can improve CX, and in the benefits that both enterprises and
they were built for “simple and repetitive tasks, and improve the handling of routine inquiries by chatbots and customers stand to gain.

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