Customer services leaders concerned by scaling difficulties for GenAI pilots

Customer care leaders believe that Generative AI will soon be a defining feature of their sector, with four-in-five predicting their investments in the technology will increase. However, as projects continue to stall implementing it, a quarter of respondents worry they will struggle to scale from pilots to full-production.

A survey of customer service entities by McKinsey & Company shows that leaders are broadly agreed on the need to get digital right. Over half of respondents told the strategy consulting giant that the share of inbound contacts that take place through digital channels will exceed 40% in the next three years. As the sector struggles to build capacity for this boom in digital interaction, it is also agreed that artificial intelligence will play a decisive role in future customer care ecosystems.

Respondents told McKinsey that they were already deploying AI tools in a variety of applications, including chatbots and automated email response systems, training and support for call centre agents, back-office analytics, and decision making. But over the last year, they also explained that the availability of powerful Generative AI tools, especially large language models (LLMs) which can parse and respond to unstructured text or speech, has opened new possibilities for technology in customer care.

A majority of 80% of customer care leaders subsequently confirmed that they were already investing in gen AI, or expected to do so in the coming months. And with leaders highlighting a wide range of potential applications, the same number expected they would increase investment in GenAI in the coming period.

Problematically, though, many companies still find themselves at the beginning of their GenAI journey. One recent example of this came from a Capgemini Research Institute paper, which highlighted that 60% of organisations have implemented pilots or early proofs of concept (PoCs) for GenAI initiatives using their enterprise data – but 75% of organisations still regarded large-scale deployment of GenAI PoCs as a significant challenge. Furthering that point, McKinsey found that 24% of leaders were worried about scaling their pilot to production.

A 22% chunk of respondents were also concerned that their organisation lacked in AI maturity. This alluded to a lack of AI skills within their firm – while a further 15% added that they were unsure how to design the human-experience element for workers using AI tools.

To that end, McKinsey warned that customer care organisations “lack many of the critical skills they need to deliver excellent service and navigate the transition to a digitally mediated, AI-enabled world”. Partly this is due to concentrating their HR policies in other areas – combating record levels of attrition since the Covid-19 lockdown months – and less time on developing training and upskilling programmes. But with staff turnover having slowed, two-in-three leaders are finding space to prioritise staff development. At the same time, they are also using AI-based tools to supercharge these efforts. A 21% portion of leaders confirmed they were using AI to supplement the training and support of their customer care staff.

The researchers concluded, “Gen AI is raising the bar for performance, productivity, and personalisation in customer care, and tomorrow’s fully AI-enabled care organisations will operate very differently from those of today. It’s time for companies to look at their care ecosystems with fresh eyes. They should formulate an independent perspective on the changing expectations of their customers and the role of advanced AI in their organisation. The future of customer care is calling. Leaders should answer with a bold vision and an aggressive time line for change.”