Restoring Customer Trust: New Standards For Personalization, Security, and Proactivity

I'm the vice president of customer experience strategy at ASAPP. I, for the last six years, I've worked very closely with companies of really all shapes and sizes. And, you know, you might imagine our world has changed tremendously in the last six years where six years ago we were really focused on moving voice interactions to digital, asynchronous messaging and virtual assistance and now we're just one hundred percent all in on agentic AI. And so, we've been doing that for the last six years helping companies really improve customer experience and I think one of the things that's unique about ASAPP is we're not just a technology company. We don't want you to take the technology and just plug it in and expect it to work miracles and that's where my role comes in because there's a tremendous amount of people and process that goes into extracting maximum value from these technologies. And I started with Verizon, you know, as an agent on the phone twenty-six years ago. Now, not to date myself, but I've walked several miles in your shoes as an operator, so I understand the real-world challenges that you guys face. And so over those courses of twenty years, I think I did just about every job in the contact center and really began to understand the importance of people, process and technology and how all of those things really need to work together so that we ultimately do change the customer experience. You know, we saw the negative implications of security or lack thereof or concern at least, and with good reason because we understand the engine that really fuels AI is a whole lot of customer data. And we've heard the headlines, you know, that really bad things happen when data breaches occur. And so I think for the first and probably most important piece of really preserving trust in the agentic era, it's really making sure you've got really good rigor around your security and privacy of your data. And we'll probably talk a little bit more about that but there's some really practical things you know from does your technology meet standard requirements? You know, we can talk about a variety of certifications that are required. I think the second part beyond just the data is really not looking at the agentic AI era as an opportunity to eliminate human work. I think where we see, enterprises going further faster is really leveraging humans to collaborate with the AI. And this is central to ASAPP's customer experience platform because it's no longer this sort of binary mindset that we've had in the past where okay, if the human agent or if the AI agent cannot resolve the issue, well it just has to be escalated to a human. We lived in that world for two decades. Now it's more of a collaboration between the AI and the human agent and I think that supervision and the guidance, not after the fact where we hope to do better next time, it's in real time to avoid some of the challenges that Dan just mentioned. With the human there providing guidance and supervision, really helping make that critical decision, bringing empathy, while not having to completely take over the conversation, is probably the largest game changer that I have seen. And really it fosters trust because you can now rely on your agent, your AI agent, to deliver very reliable resolutions over time. I'll be a little critical of us, myself included. When I look back over my career, think we were personalization became a buzzword, a lot like omnichannel. Omnichannel, we never really achieved true omnichannel. I think we're getting close for probably the first time in my career but personalization I think sort of took a back seat to eliminating the interaction altogether. For a long time we've been deploying technology whether it's an IVR, self-service websites, mobile apps to ultimately deflect and contain interactions. So when that is your focus, you're not really focused on personalization. And so, you know, and I understand how we got here because you know, I've been to the proverbial principal's office before and for those of you who don't know, the principal office is the CFO. You know, budgets are tight for us, you know? Budgets have only gotten tighter and so it's a matter of almost survival at times where I have to eliminate budget and this is why wait times and service levels have been headed in the wrong direction. And this is the first time probably in my career where I'm as optimistic about actually being able to bring personalization and omnichannel to life. We just have to really make sure we do it in a very thoughtful way and that comes back to the data, You know and I would even say the agent empowerment topic is going to be enabled by data. But you have to be very careful about which data you use. You know, we haven't been super thoughtful in the past about it but obviously you need to have good security, good privacy but you also need to have sort of an ideology around data. It needs to be very purpose driven. It needs to be very focused on how does the use of this data create value for my customer? And even better than just value for the customer, how can this data when we use it, can it create value for customers, employees and the business? And that's sort of the trifecta. It's very possible but those are designed workflows. Those don't happen by accident. So you have to be really mindful about which data is required to create a great customer experience and then beyond that how long do I have to retain this data? And your technology platform should be able to answer all those questions and you should have a technology partner that can help you navigate sort of those workflow designs. In addition to the education which is just being honest and transparent but really explaining to your customers why are we using this data and then one step further when you actually execute on utilization of that data that it's not this sort of very obvious attempt for you to drive your business goals, it's actually creating material value for your customer. And I don't think we've always done that in the past, know, we'll do a text message blast out to a million people with some offer that really isn't relevant for them. If you want to talk about purpose driven personalization, it's using all of this data in a way that really meets your customer where that customer is and it has to be very honest, it has to be very transparent and it has to be very focused on creating value for them. I've sat in more than one meeting where we came up with some really compelling proactive use cases and we talked ourselves out of them because we were afraid to quote unquote poke the bear and again it was focusing on cost containment, you know. So if we are serious about being customer centric, we will identify those opportunities. Brian mentioned a couple, you know, one that resonated with me was you know, as I'm approaching my limits on my cell phone bill or whatever service, you know, and I'm looking at overages, can you proactively reach out to me and let me know that this thing's about to go off the rails and make a recommendation. There's versions of that, you know, where, okay, well you see my flight is getting interrupted, can you make a proactive recommendation to keep me on schedule? And virtually every company in here has a version of really valuable proactive opportunities. Again, comes back to how are we using our data and are we really committed to maximizing customer value. And I think those are the things that will pay dividends in the long run. And now with this sort of the ushering in of agentic solutions, we can do this at scale unlike we've been able to do in the past when there was a human workforce. I think when we have a better understanding of what our customers are calling us about, you know, really understanding what are the intents, you know, these these unmet needs that customers have and then really sort of laying out that customer journey in a way that says here's where the friction and the fragmentation is eroding the customer experience and when you have a visibility into that, you can figure out is this a people problem, is it a process problem, a policy problem or is there a technology opportunity here? And so I think when you, have the right data and it's curated with customer value in mind and then you know, you're building out these automated flows because you believe you have a personalized experience that will create material customer value. I think the additional step would be to have the appropriate guardrails in place so that every company represented in here has sort of a brand voice. And I think that's what thoughtful communication really says. It's like this is the voice of our brand and we know who our customers are, we know who we are, we know what our value proposition is and so I'm going to engage with you in a way that really puts you first and it's not this thinly veiled attempt for me to drive my own goals. When you do that and you use the AI platform to sort of simulate what those customer experience will be like rather than just releasing them into the wild and hope they perform. The right platform will give you the opportunity to simulate. Guardrails could be things like, well let's make sure we don't call them thirty seven times, you know, over the next forty eight hours or let's not call them at three am. You know, and there's so many customer preferences. We have such a gold mine of data. We haven't historically used all of that data in a curated way and I think we're entering into a time where that's possible. Know, we've been talking about the cost center becoming a value center for a long time. That's arguably a set of buzzwords too, but I think the opportunity I see in front of us, and I'm already seeing it with a lot of the customers I work with, there is a shift that's happening away from cost center to value center as we identify just how much potential there is in this technology particularly when we take into account the people and the process that goes along with it. And so we're going to have to be willing to be very forward thinking and you know the contact center we measure everything. So average handle time, transfers, CSAT, we've got a hundred different metrics. I think the answer to this question is while trust is hard to measure, I think it would come in the form of sort of share of wallet, you know, how much money is the consumer spending with our brand, as well as loyalty, you know? We don't stay with companies that we don't trust and we don't value and we feel like they don't know me, they don't value me. So between share of wallet and loyalty, you know, the single metric if I had to pick one, it would be customer lifetime value. The thing I like about customer lifetime value is that there is, while you've got the revenue component, you've also got the cost component and this tells me a story about sort of more broadly how valuable are we to each other. A customer who doesn't trust me is constantly calling me, constantly coming into my retail store and that's the cost side of the equation. So I think customer lifetime value is a very good proxy for trust and whether or not the relationship is healthy. Not only at a single customer level, that trend of customer lifetime value over time will tell you if your operations are healthy or if they're possibly destroying trust. My one thing for the leaders in this room was also communication. Slightly different than Dan's but you know, I work with lots of enterprises and we know that the sort of the headline with AI for a long time has been AI is coming for our jobs. There's a real risk that there's people in this room that think AI is coming for my job and I just don't subscribe to that and I think it's important for leaders to sort of lead from the front and I think there's an opportunity for us to change the headline. I think it's important for us to communicate in a very honest and transparent way what our AI strategy is that needs to be clearly defined, it needs to be honest And it really needs to help every employee figure out where they fit into this. You know, without a shadow of a doubt the entire CX ecosystem is going to be overhauled with agentic AI. Old roles will evolve. New roles will emerge. Know and over time the workforce as we've known it probably our entire careers will be right sized. There will be a lot of change and I think it's incumbent upon us as leaders to get in front of that as much as we can and say, we're going to put very powerful but appropriate AI tools in your hands and ultimately it's about driving maximum customer value, employee value, business value, all the value I've talked about. We're all going to be walking around with AI in our hands using it on the job and I think it's so important, such a huge opportunity for us to shift the narrative away from fear and anxiety to really emphasizing the importance of this moment. These types of moments don't come around in a career very often. So I think if we want to remove the headwind a lack of employee trust, we get in front of this and we change the conversation by communicating very clearly how powerful AI will be for all of us.