After a day’s worth of discussion on “reimagining customer engagement,” the May 12 CXNext event crowned companies and individuals that have already been successfully transforming their experiences.
The Catalyst award winners represent different types of organizations and customer bases, but they all have one thing in common: they are harnessing the power of artificial intelligence.
Whether by reducing customer effort, adding value to conversations or uncovering vital intelligence, AI is helping to turn customer-centric ambitions into customer experience realities.
Long an important conversation topic within the customer contact space, AI gained even more significance in the wake of COVID-19. It is the ultimate pathway to business continuity - a way to efficiently handle interactions as volume rises and customer expectations change.
By learning from these award-winning examples, the customer contact community stands to improve its customer contact operations in trying times and pave the way to more effective, agile experiences down the road. These examples also prove that the best use of AI enhances, rather than eliminates, the humanity of each experience.
CX Team of the Year: Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood won the coveted honor for its deeply human approach to the customer experience - one that involves always demonstrating empathy and never losing sight of customer needs.
The organization received specific recognition for its Roo chatbot, which has already handled over 5 million interactions. Not simply an effective self-service tool (it has answered 80% of questions and boasts a 70% satisfaction rate), Roo underscores the notion that AI can add unique value to the experience (as opposed to just being a “good enough” substitute for human agents). Roo provides customers with a safe, anonymous place to get the information they need - in that sense, it actually increases one of the most fundamentally “human” tenets of the Planned Parenthood mission.
CX Industry Disruptor: Christine Kilmer, Fannie Mae
An individual award, the disruptor trophy recognizes Kilmer’s success in leading the Ask Poli team. Not simply an effective self-service tool for Fannie Mae, Ask Poli is a testament to the impact artificial intelligence can have on, well, “intelligence.”
“Poli keeps getting smarter with each question you ask.”
Indeed, the tool uses natural language processing and AI to consistently refine its answers and navigation. Poli becomes increasingly helpful for customers, ensuring self-service is a valuable component of the journey rather than an operational necessity.
Its intelligence capabilities also provide a window into the voice of the customer, helping Fannie Mae learn details about customer behavior, preferences, intentions and expectations to which it never previously had access. Given Poli’s clear ramifications for overall experience design (and what it proves about the overall potential of AI), Kilmer is unquestionably deserving of such a prestigious honor.
Outstanding Woman in CX: Dawn Connet and Zhaia Wineinger, State of Iowa
Collectively offering a flair for leadership and strategic design, Connet and Wineinger have made digital transformation a reality - not just a hollow buzz word - for the state of Iowa.
They, to put it simply, have revolutionized the way citizens interact with the state. Beyond doubling down on the overall importance of CX, they have played particular attention to the importance of live chat conversations and the adoption of AI. And by ensuring that these digital capabilities span across numerous state departments, they have helped Iowa achieve the unified excellence that often eludes small corporations - let alone inherently fragmented public-sector organizations.
The secret, of course, is that digital and AI solutions - when driven by the right leadership and design mentalities - can help to eliminate silos between teams and departments. They standardize knowledge, capabilities and accessibility, ensuring that everyone is capable of answering customer questions when, how and where they want those answers.