For the last five years, around this time, I’ve compiled a set of customer experience-related predictions for the coming year.

For each article, I gather together a set of predictions that have been sent to me over the preceding month. I then select the ones that stand out and make the most sense in the current context, arrange them into themes, and add a bit of commentary.

This year, nearly 140 different people submitted between 1-3 predictions each, which is an increase of just under 70% compared to last year’s predictions.

In total, this year, I received 263 different predictions.

While sifting through all of these predictions has proved to be quite an undertaking, it has also been a great learning experience and incredibly rewarding, and I would like to thank all of the people who sent me their predictions, particularly those that I have not been able to include in this piece.

Now, it’s a statement of the obvious to say that the emergence of generative AI has been the story of this year, particularly in the customer experience space, and that is set to continue into next year and beyond.

However, we can’t ignore that this year has continued to be economically challenging for many, but it has also been fraught with new sources of disruption, instability and uncertainty.

While we can hope that economic conditions will improve and stability will return, the signs are that they won’t, at least not in the short run.

That being said, delivering a great customer experience has never been more important as a competitive differentiator because when times are tough, customers become ever more discerning about where they spend their money and who they spend it with.

As such, brands will have to continue to adapt to both a changing and challenging environment, stay focused on meeting customers needs but also think about how they can embrace the possibilities of new technology without getting carried away by the hype.

The predictions I have selected bear this in mind.

So, without further ado, here goes with 2024’s predictions:

1. Economic conditions are still very tight for most customers, with price, value, and making budgetary savings being the three most significant factors driving much of their behaviour. However, brands should not ignore sustainability, which is a growing factor in customers’ decision-making process.

Zsuzsa Kecsmar, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Antavo, predicts:

“The cost of living crisis has shown its teeth and pressures posed by inflation have had a significant impact on the way consumers spend their money. This is showing no signs of abating. The battle for customers is fierce and retailers of all sectors will be fighting hard to keep their market share. Loyalty programmes can help here, but ultimately all eyes will be on finding new ways to keep customers spending during a time of increased financial pressure.”

Rob Weisberg, EVP & President, Incentives & Loyalty at Inmar Intelligence, concurs and adds:

“Inflation is still impacting the day-to-day decisions of 9 out of 10 consumers, with nearly 70% of them still concerned about affording food for their household. Inmar Intelligence survey data found that 89% of consumers have purchased an alternate brand in the last year and over 55% have switched retailers in pursuit of lower prices and bigger savings. Nearly 40% find the most stressful part of grocery shopping–besides writing the list and finding time–is managing the budget, and 24% report that finding deals to make their groceries more affordable is the most stressful part. We’re seeing consistent usage of coupons across shoppers of all generations, with the highest usage in Gen Z and Millennials. (50% of Gen Z and close to 60% of Millennials report that they have used digital coupons in Q2 of this year.)”

Meanwhile, Sven Denecken, Chief Marketing and Solutions Officer, SAP Industries & CX SAP, highlights the increasing importance of sustainability in the minds of consumers when he says:

“In 2023, 32% of US shoppers switched brands because of their sustainability practices, according to the 2023 Customer Loyalty Index from SAP Emarsys. As businesses look to meet green-minded consumers’ demands, achieve their sustainability goals, and align with regulations, we will see greater investments in technology to drive green customer experience in 2024. Intelligent recommerce technologies provide businesses with the capabilities to introduce excess, restored, returned, or used products back into the market. This creates a circular revenue stream that drives additional growth and revenue in a more sustainable way.”

Comment: Over the last couple of years, as economic conditions have tightened, many brands have resorted to different types of tactics, like skimpflation and shrinkflation, in order to protect their margins. Skimpflation is when the quality of something decreases, and shrinkflation is when the volume or size of a product shrinks while the price remains the same. However, customers aren’t stupid and tend to spot these types of tactics from a mile away. They then switch to brands that they feel are truly trying to help them make their budget work but are also increasingly aligned with their own sustainability goals and values.

2. The physical retail store is set to play an increasingly important but also evolving role.

Sean Turner, Co-founder and CTO at Swiftly, predicts that we will see:

“A trend of customers returning to physical stores for groceries and other essentials in pursuit of lower prices. Currently, there’s nearly one trillion dollars in consumer credit card debt, and with student loan payments kicking back in, people are really feeling the pinch. They’re looking everywhere to save money, and in-store shopping is a great first step. Shoppers are also going to think twice about using delivery services as the convenience will be outweighed by the additional fees and higher costs associated with using them. This is a big opportunity for retailers. By spotlighting great deals and discounts, they can really help shoppers stretch their dollars, and retain their loyalty.”

Nikki Baird, VP Strategy at Aptos APT 0.0%, concurs and adds that:

“Retailers are pulling out all the stops in what it takes to drive consumers to stores, but some of those things are shifting customer expectations on what the store can do for them, and retailers will need to invest in 2024 in order to keep up. When customers are encouraged to return to store, it encourages them to go there to seek solutions to any problem – and you’re pretty much guaranteed to find a store associate who has to deal with you, whether they’re actually equipped to do that or not. Where’s my order? Or, you shipped this late and I want my shipping refunded. Or, I want to change where you’re shipping my order – things that customers would normally call the call center for, they will increasingly look for help from a real person in a store.”

Ryan Hamburger, Vice President of Retail Partnerships at Instacart, builds on that and adds:

“In 2024, successful retailers will continue to redefine the shopping experience by seamlessly blending online and in-store interactions. Embracing the mindset of ‘digitize, optimize, monetize’ is critical – not only for unlocking new revenue streams but also enabling them to reinvest in their business to drive greater affordability for customers. Now is the time to embrace technologies that will connect the dots between channels and empower grocers to fully understand their customer base no matter how they choose to shop.”

Comment: In the wake of the pandemic and the massive shift to digital that took place, economic conditions are now forcing customers to pursue all channels, online and offline, to achieve their objectives. This will be both a challenge and an opportunity for brands. However, for those that get it right, the reward is likely to be higher satisfaction, improved market share and increased customer loyalty.

3. Despite all of the excitement and possibilities surrounding generative AI, employee experience will remain the number-one C-suite priority.

Amit Dhingra, EVP Managed Network and Collaboration Services at NTT, suggests that:

“Despite the fast pace of technology innovation and the rapid increase in AI solutions as an enabler of EX/CX strategy, 8 in 10 executives agree that human-led support will remain a critical element to employee experience (EX), according to NTT’s 2023 CX/EX Report.

The EX/CX connection – EX directly affects CX and an organization’s profitability. This is because satisfied and engaged employees deliver exceptional work. But EX strategies will require close alignment with technology and business strategies. At NTT, we’re seeing that employee experience (EX) has emerged as the number-one C-suite priority. In the coming years, organizations will work to more closely align technology and business strategies.”

Comment: The focus on employee experience was a trend that appeared in the 2023 set of predictions, and it is heartening to see this continued focus at the C-suite level despite the amount of attention that has been given to generative AI over the last year.

4. Meanwhile, generative AI adoption will continue apace.

Patrick Martin, Chief Customer Officer and General Manager, Service at Coveo, predicts:

“In 2023, the world got hit by the ChatGPT storm and the hype was huge around its capabilities and what it meant to the support world. We saw opportunities for operational efficiencies, automation of redundant tasks and improvements on the overall experience. As we head into 2024, companies will continue their exploration of how this technology will be implemented in support organizations across multiple use cases. We will see more and more live use cases, largely for agent assistance as concerns of removing the human-in-the-loop to validate generated content linger.”

Samantha Richardson, Executive Programs Lead at Twilio TWLO -2.4%, concurs and says:

“AI will become a non-negotiable. As the dust settles in 2024, more brands will hopefully start to think practically about how they’ll start implementing it. Brands need to start to update essential channels like IVR, voice, chat and email. Relatively simple AI applications – like Google Dialogflow, ChatGPT, LLM’s, and natural language voice assistants – can be implemented quite easily these days, and they’re a quick way to add efficiency. In 2024, we’ll see more AI applications automating and handling simple-to-resolve queries, offering deeply personalised interactives that surpass consumers’ expectations, and helping agents better understand each customer’s history and previous interactions with their brand.”

However, Graeme Geddes, Chief Growth Officer at Zoom, goes further and says:

“Generative AI-powered solutions for CX aren’t merely “nice-to-haves” anymore—they are now fundamental for success. Businesses that haven’t invested in AI will fall behind on productivity and customer satisfaction in 2024. Generative AI capabilities with unified communications and omnichannel contact centers are helping CX workers get more done, while deeper analytics on customer sentiment and engagement are enabling CX workers to strengthen customer relationships.”

Comment: It is no surprise that the focus on generative AI is set to continue into 2024. Whilst there is a lot of hype around the technology, it does offer an almost endless set of possibilities, and these seem to be expanding on a daily basis. However, as I have watched developments over the last year, I have been saying to folks: Embrace the possibilities, but don’t get carried away by the hype. That counsel still stands.

5. The knowledge gained from the establishment of contact center generative AI use cases will help solve challenges in other areas of business.

Yan Zhang, COO at PolyAI, predicts:

“At this time, generative AI can be dangerous for customer-facing interactions because by design, the technology doesn’t yet know how to say “I don’t know.” Since generative AI pulls from information on the public internet, the answers it outputs may be, at best, misleading and, at worst, negatively prejudicial.

On the other hand, generative AI is invaluable when it comes to reporting, and organizations that deploy generative AI tools on the back end will be able to quickly organize massive amounts of data and extrapolate insights from it, like customer sentiment or purchasing trends. Employees can then leverage that data to improve customer engagement on calls. Those engaged customers will keep talking, allowing the automated system to capture more data to further inform future calls. It’s a virtuous cycle bringing about a sea of change regarding how we view automation systems.”

Pasquale DeMaio, Vice President, Amazon Connect at Amazon Web Services, builds on that and specifically predicts:

“Technologies developed for the contact center will be used to solve challenges in other lines of business. Agent assist functionality will quickly become sales assist and supervisor assist. Back office task management will seamlessly meld with contact center work, giving much deeper insights into customer outcomes and costs. Customer profile data and identity resolution will drive Marketing workloads as well as contact centers experiences.”

Judy Weader, Principal Analyst at Forrester, goes further and predicts:

“Half of large global firms will make the leap and experiment with customer-facing genAI in response to executive demands, even though they may not be fully ready. Companies that succeed will test the technology with employees before deploying it in customer-facing experiences. For example, Morgan Stanley’sMS -1.2% genAI solution will initially help employees find resources and later offer support and insights to financial advisors during client interactions. Starting with internal use cases allows enterprises to build genAI expertise in a lower-risk environment, delivering business value while learning how to manage and mitigate hallucination and bias.”

Comment: For the longest time, I’ve held the view that the contact centre is an undervalued and underutilised source of data and insight. With the emergence of generative AI and how it can be applied, particularly in a contact centre setting, we are now seeing that view shift. We are potentially on the cusp of a renaissance of the contact center. And it’s about time.

6. Marketing teams are set to become more effective and productive.

Einat Weiss, CMO at NICE, predicts:

“There will be a transition from fear of AI to AI FOMO, with marketers embracing AI’s ability to augment marketers’ skills and connect with consumers in a hyper-personalised way. Marketers will no longer fear AI but will instead quickly realise if they aren’t using AI, they will be far behind their competition.

Companies that implement AI into their marketing strategy will drive a 30% increase in pipeline because of their ability to interact with customers with more personalised, targeted marketing materials.”

Bill Magnuson, Co-Founder and CEO at Braze, adds:

“Generative AI is poised to make marketing teams faster and more creative in 2024. AI-assisted content production will continue to see refinement for text and images, while generative animations and video will leap forward. These advancements will impact the entire marketing workflow–providing more sparks of creative inspiration to aid in expansive brainstorming upfront, moving through the “whiteboarding” stage faster and at higher fidelity, and finalizing ideas with higher conviction by leveraging automated content analysis and performance predictions. Once new ideas are in the wild, AI is at work again to amplify relevance for customers and impact for brands through deep personalization. Everyone benefits when the imagine, create, and evolve loop spins faster, and Generative AI will be here in 2024 to really get it flying.”

Meanwhile, Christian Ward, Executive Vice President and Chief Data Officer at Yext, predicts that both content generation and personalisation will improve when he says:

“2024 will mark a significant shift in digital marketing and customer engagement, driven by the rapid scaling of generative AI in content creation and the evolution of AI-powered chatbots. The year will see businesses harnessing AI to produce volumes of content, from text to images, reshaping content marketing and SEO strategies. I expect this content explosion to challenge classic search engine optimization, compelling search giants, like Google, to adapt their algorithms more dynamically than ever before.

I believe as content creation scales exponentially, the nature of brand-customer interactions will also undergo a radical transformation. AI-driven chatbots will evolve to engage in meaningful, personalized dialogues, especially as consumers near their decision-making phase. These interactions will focus on providing direct, accurate answers to objective queries, removing past scripted interactions’ inefficiencies. The hallucination problem will be primarily conquered by focusing on more classic information retrieval strategies like knowledge graphs.”

Comment: Creation of content has always been a major lift for marketing teams, taking up significant time and resources as they seek to create relevant, engaging and personalised content and distribute it across a myriad of channels. The emergence of generative AI and its ability to ease this load and streamline the process from ideation and generation through to performance analysis will be a boon to the marketing teams and brands that embrace the possibilities that are in front of them.

7. And, onsite search should get a revamp (finally!).

Bill Staikos, SVP, Evangelist & Head of Community Engagement at Medallia, predicts:

“Traditional search algorithms simply display static, ranked results for you, offering 1,000’s of options in nanoseconds. In 2024, brands will finally come to the realization that consumers no longer want to search for products and services the same way, and replace their traditional search capabilities with a generative AI solution. Generative AI will understand your query contextually, offering truly personalized suggestions that go beyond keyword matching. This dynamic interaction between consumer and algorithm will democratize discovery, helping consumers make more informed choices.”

Comment: In today’s digital world, whenever we are presented with a question that we don’t have the answer to or a situation that is unfamiliar to us, we invariably end up searching for information and help on the internet. Brands understand this and spend a lot of time and resources working with third-party search engines to help them be easily found and for customers to easily find answers to their brand-related questions. However, in recent years, the majority of brands have focused mostly on their work with third-party search engines and have neglected the search experience on their own websites. As a result, the search experience on most brand websites is rubbish. Generative AI applied in the right way has the capability to fundamentally change the search experience. However, if it only improves the onsite search experience on a brand’s website, then that alone would be welcome.

8. However, security concerns and trust issues will persist.

Providing the business perspective, Eric Williamson, Chief Marketing Officer at CallMiner, predicts:

“According to CallMiner’s 2023 CX Landscape Report, 45% of CX and contact center leaders said they’re concerned about AI exposing their company to security risks, 43% are worried about the technology spreading misinformation, and 41% are fearful of AI giving biased or inappropriate responses in CX and customer service use cases. Only 6% said they don’t have any fears.

I don’t expect AI adoption to slow in 2024, in fact, I expect it to continue to accelerate, particularly for CX use cases. But more business leaders will come around to the idea that generative AI is not a silver bullet – and it is most powerful when used for specific use cases, often along with other AI techniques, to meet specific business needs. I predict that the organizations who ‘get it right’ will be the ones that effectively balance AI velocity and agility with responsibility and security. Those that do this will find themselves in the position to deliver the most value to their customers and improve the bottom line.”

Tim McDougal, Service Excellence Lead at Deloitte Digital, provides the customer perspective and predicts:

“Gen AI by itself won’t replace most human-to-human interactions. While Gen AI has great technical potential, recent Deloitte studies have shown that a substantial majority of customers don’t trust AI. Organizations will discover that incremental and tangible investments in Gen AI will carry the day, especially as leading software providers are aggressively investing and will provide more substantial capabilities in 2024. Leaders will consider how Gen AI can augment human interactions providing quicker, more effective access to data and information to increase the efficiency of agents and improve the customer experience.”

Gregg Johnson, CEO at Invoca, says that not addressing these issues will have very real consequences for some when he predicts:

“In 2024, companies will reject tech vendors due to concerns on secure, privacy-focused use of AI. The initial market excitement from ChatGPT and generative AI has morphed into growing concern over data security that has extended to all AI. Businesses will be more heavily scrutinizing the types of AI being used by their solutions, where their enterprise data goes, and how it is used. They will reject AI solutions that risk leakage of critical enterprise data and intellectual property. Consumers will also insist on this level of scrutiny from businesses to protect their personal data.”

Matthias Goehler, EMEA CTO at Zendesk, predicts that communication and education will be a key part of building trust when he predicts:

“Trust is the ultimate currency of the future. At present, we’re hearing a lot of talk in the media about the power of AI, as well as the potential risks. Customers are becoming more wary of the dangers around AI and it’s the responsibility of the businesses to reassure them that their data is safe. As consumers educate themselves on the capabilities of AI, we’ll see them asking more questions of whether their data will be used to train large language models. Businesses will need to be prepared with a response, and when it comes to data privacy, AI can be part of the solution. For example, AI can identify personal identifiable information and automatically redact it so that customer data is only used when it’s really needed. That’s why companies will have to be proactive in the way they communicate about how it’s used in their organisation. Are customers told when they are speaking to a chatbot rather than a human? Do they know they can opt out of their data being used and stored? Businesses will have no alternative but to be clear and transparent with customers in order to gain and keep their trust.”

However, Matt Trickett, EMEA XM Solutions Consultant, Strategy at Qualtrics, cautions firms to remain focused on what matters most to customers when he predicts:

“In 2023, we knew that customers were increasingly looking for deeper, more human connections with the companies they were engaging with. In 2024, despite AI gaining popularity, particularly as a tool for delivering digital customer service, we’ll see consumers place an even higher value on the human touch.

According to recent research, less than half (48%) of consumers are comfortable interacting with an AI chatbot or AI-powered self-service, particularly when it’s regarding very personal details such as healthcare or finance. Companies are understandably excited about the potential of AI in providing them with opportunities to serve and understand their customers in new and different ways. However, if they are implementing AI solutions, they must think deeply about addressing customer concerns around the loss of human connection and poorer quality of interactions if they want to stay ahead of the pack in both customer retention and loyalty.

While brands must become more reliant on digital channels as the future of customer engagement, they need to balance this against ensuring there are enough human touch points across the customer experience to keep people happy. This is especially important as great customer service – whether in-person or online – becomes the predicted key driver for consumer spending in 2024, overtaking low prices (47% versus 43%.) Despite the economic landscape, consumers truly value receiving excellent customer service.”

Comment: The concerns that customers, professionals and leaders have surrounding generative AI are real. Many of these are technical in nature regarding things like data use, bias, privacy and security. These are likely to be assuaged by communication and responsible deployments. Others are more personal and often center on the rate of progress and the possible displacement of labour. Many people think much of these latter concerns can be alleviated, in large part, through familiarisation and education. However, what is clear is that the concerns and anxieties are real, and businesses and vendors would do well not to ignore them and to make sure that they also focus on bringing people along on the journey.

9. Some of the concerns will be addressed by the development of business, industry and function-specific models and approaches.

Barry Cooper, President, CX Division at NICE, predicts:

“The gap will widen between good and bad AI. AI is the answer to managing the overwhelming complexity of customer service in the digital omnichannel age. But that does not mean that all AI is created equal. Next year, we anticipate that many businesses will struggle to optimise AI tools for their needs. Intelligently communicating with customers, supporting contact centre agents, and operating in the cloud at scale are all vital parts of successful CX. Only AI which has been purpose-built and trained on millions of customer interactions will be suitable and trustworthy to manage a business’s CX efficiently and effectively.”

Brian Peterson, Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder at Dialpad, adds:

“In 2024, we’re going to see the rise of industry-specific AI models that are tailored to solve the unique needs of customer service and sales teams to improve customer support and experience. While the introduction of powerful AI tools like ChatGPT remains impressive, businesses are going to start leaning into technology that is customizable and specialized in order to deliver stronger customer interactions, improve service accuracy and speed, avoid hallucination and, ultimately, increase customer satisfaction – all while remaining cost efficient.”

Ivan Ostojic, Chief Business Officer at Infobip, agrees and adds:

“One trend that we’re betting on is verticalization of generative AI to different industries. We will start seeing very domain-specific models that are lighter, cheaper, maybe open-source. Some will be specifically trained for support, others will be specifically trained for marketing or sales, healthcare diagnostics, etc. As a result, companies like ours with multifaceted software will work to go into more verticalized solutions, creating more complex flows.”

Finally, Don Schuerman, CTO at Pega, predicts:

“We’ll see an increase in approaches like retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) that will allow organizations to harness the power of GenAI to access their latest enterprise content and knowledge, while ensuring attribution of answers and minimizing the risk of hallucinations, helping ensure more quality interactions with customers whether it’s a service interaction or a marketing interaction.

Ultimately, you can’t advance customer service and experience without AI, and 2024 is going to be the year when it becomes truly omnipresent. It will also be the year that separates those using AI correctly and ethically from those who aren’t – and those who implement responsible AI are the ones who will come out on top.”

Comment: Many companies are sitting on large amounts of underutilised data, so it’s great to hear that business, industry, language, and function-specific models and approaches are now being developed. Funnelling this data into models specifically built for particular use cases will go a long way to minimising the risks associated with generative AI.

10. Others will be addressed with a focus on governance and building organizational competencies.

Nikola Mrkšić, Co-Founder & CEO at PolyAI, predicts:

“Companies will invest more in improving customer experience through automation, with advanced models of generative AI fueling much of that effort to create more natural, expressive interactions via hyper-capable chatbots. This will pose new risks associated with ungated (and largely unregulated) language models, prompting the need for organizational efforts to develop AI competency centers within various operational functions.”

Assaf Baciu, Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder at Persado, goes further and predicts:

“We’ll see an end to the GenAI multiple personality disorder—the consequence of disconnected AI tools without a centralized feedback loop—currently plaguing enterprises and confusing customers. In turn, we can expect the emergence of enterprise GenAI governance. Businesses will start deploying a central GenAI “brain” to manage the myriad disparate GenAI systems currently littered across the tech stack, particularly in marketing. This master brain will bring orchestration and order to AI model training and decision-making, much as CRM did for email and CDPs are doing for customer data.”

Comment: To help with the improvement of employee and customer outcomes, experimentation with and the adoption of generative AI solutions is likely to continue apace in 2024. However, in order to do that in an ethical and responsible way, organisations must build up their own internal skills, understanding and governance capabilities if they are to minimise the risks that are inherent in this new technology.

11. But, many organisations will struggle to prove the RoI of their generative AI investments.

Eli Finkelshteyn, Founder and CEO at Constructor, predicts:

“This year, there’s been lots of excitement around generative AI — and a breathless rush to exploit the hype around the technology by just about everybody. The collective zeitgeist of 2023 has largely been based on companies that did not previously do AI waving their hands around and yelling “us too!” with features that emphasize the flashiness of generative AI … and not typically based on companies’ business metrics, nor rooted in quantifiable improvements to the customer experience.

In 2024, that’ll change. Businesses and customers alike will be much more scrutinizing, consistently asking what AI can do for them. They’ll reject or abandon initiatives that don’t add value to the customer experience.

Instead, companies will be investing in ways to use large language models (LLMs) and transformers (the “T” in ChatGPT) to make processes more engaging and efficient for their customers, while supporting the business’s key performance indicators (KPIs) — a win-win.”

Prashant Mahajan, CEO & Founder at Zeda.io, adds:

“One of the biggest challenges CIOs, CTOs and CXOs will face in 2024 will be how to include AI in their strategy, as while many leading companies have prioritized AI, they’ve done so out of a fear of being left behind, and don’t have a clear vision of the ROI to expect. What we expect to see in 2024 is companies rushing to do their due diligence with AI by investing in AI skills and talent, as well as their data pipelines and quality of data. We’ll also begin to see the barometer move with data security and ethics in AI as the technology moves from trend to mainstay.”

Kenneth Gonzalez, Head of Analyst Relations at Freshworks, goes further and predicts:

“While the general public might think of generative AI technologies as being very cost-effective, business leaders may be surprised by what this capability will actually cost them to consume beyond the introductory free/low-cost trial. Providers are experimenting with different revenue and billing models to drive their profits higher while closely managing their spending related to capacity and performance.

It’s highly likely that we won’t see any degree of “standardized”/common pricing models for several years as both providers and consumers experiment and evaluate their respective value scenarios for long-term viability. How these will influence planning and budgeting remains to be seen, as many customers do not have sufficiently developed means for characterizing and supporting value-based assessments.

For the short-term, we should expect “trial and error” to be the most common approach for both customer and service provider.”

Comment: Whilst it’s clear that many organisations have a clear vision of the operational benefits and the concomitant improvement in employee and customer outcomes they could achieve with the deployment of generative AI technology, there is still a lot of flux in the industry around pricing and use models. Thus, establishing the RoI of these investments may prove challenging.

12. To really profit from these developments, organisations will need to get their data house in order and focus on both integration challenges and reducing their technological complexity.

Michael Lawder, Chief Experience Officer at ASAPP, predicts:

“To implement AI into their CX stack in 2024, enterprises must establish foundational building blocks, such as high quality transcription, and get their data house in order before they can really take advantage of the benefits of AI. We’ve seen a lot of customers get excited about the potential of generative AI to transform the customer and agent experience, but struggle with where to get started and how to sequence the work for long-term, sustainable, and transformative results.”

Monica Ho, Chief Marketing Officer at SOCi, adds:

“We are witnessing a crucial transformation in the business landscape as AI takes center stage. In the past ten years, companies have accumulated an extensive assortment of marketing technology tools, with the average business utilizing approximately 100+ or more different applications. However, to effectively harness the power of AI, companies will need to shift their focus toward consolidating and unifying their data, rather than leaving it scattered across various disparate platforms. A recent BCG study emphasizes the significance of training AI on an organization’s specific data and insights, identifying this as the key for differentiation and achieving superior results. As the AI-driven future unfolds, strategically managing data will become imperative for businesses to remain competitive.”

Sanjay Brahmawar, CEO at Software AG, goes further when he predicts:

“After several years of accelerated investment in digital transformation, the resulting technical debt will come to a head in 2024. Organizations need to maximize the value of their investments in larger-than-ever portfolios of apps, data and systems while meeting heightened customer expectations for always-on, always-accurate service. If their IT landscapes weren’t complicated enough at the start of 2023, the sudden rise of generative AI and the content, applications and artifacts that need to be incorporated into the corporate infrastructure have only added to the urgent need to connect not just systems and data but the entire enterprise.

I think at this stage, everyone recognizes that integration is important. But less discussed is the need for the technology to evolve and the growing pains of integration not working as it should.

On the backend, poor integrations lead to system downtime. The average cost of downtime across all industries has historically been about $5,600 per minute. Recent studies have shown this cost has grown to nearly twice that — about $9,000 per minute. That’s about half a million dollars an hour, $13 million per day, and $90 million per week. That staggering number doesn’t even include the cost of damaged customer relationships and the reputational harm to businesses. This is exactly what happened this summer when a US airline was thrown into chaos when some of its smaller systems went down and had a ripple effect through the whole service infrastructure.

Any disconnects can eventually creep their way to the customer experience and lead to more incidents of frustrated customers and service mishaps. At first, things like unexpected downtime, delayed flights, lost orders, and account errors will appear to be isolated, unrelated events, but they will share a common theme: unreliable integrations that do not properly connect technology on the back end nor unify it on the front end.

These breakdowns will become more common as technology complexity continues to grow and a chaos of connectivity emerges. That is, unless a new approach to integration is prioritized. The smartest companies will make integration a top IT priority in 2024 as they know not doing so will put them at risk of falling behind competitors who harness connectivity to innovate and deliver on their promises to customers. More specifically, AI-enabled integration platforms that automate and democratize the process of building integrations will become the new standard for connecting companies’ vast and growing technology portfolios while resources for skilled labor remain stagnant.”

Comment: This prediction feels like the elephant in the room.

For example, the airline referred to by Brahmawar in his prediction, I believe, is Southwest Airlines, an erstwhile darling of the customer experience world. They suffered a catastrophic system failure earlier this year, resulting in thousands of cancelled flights and countless stranded passengers, pilots and cabin crew. Reportedly, this cost them more than $800 million in lost revenue and has led to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Now, despite investing up to $1 billion a year in technology, much of that spending was reportedly directed toward making customer-facing improvements, leaving the organisation’s core systems and IT infrastructure very much underserved.

According to Gartner, legacy applications, proprietary solutions, and large amounts of technical debt are rife in the aviation industry. However, the aviation industry is not alone in this and most major industries face similar issues. Therefore, if organisations want to avoid a catastrophic mishap like the one Southwest Airlines faced, then they would do well to focus on getting their data house in order as well as addressing both their integration and technological complexity challenges.

If they don’t, then they may be in danger of just adding more bricks to the top of an already unsteady Jenga stack with their generative AI initiatives.

13. Customer trust will be further tested by the rise of the use of advanced technology for fraudulent purposes. But, innovative ways, including insurance policies, will emerge to ameliorate these risks.

Brett Weigl, SVP & GM of Digital, AI, and Journey Analytics at Genesys, predicts:

“While AI deepfakes have been causing waves due to their potential to spread disinformation or misrepresent recognizable faces, little attention has been paid to the potential risk they pose to the average person. With customer experiences increasingly becoming digital, the potential for deepfakes to be used by bad actors to overcome biometric verification and authentication methods increases exponentially. While this technology is in its infancy, the rapid advancements of AI will only accelerate the potential for customer trust and security to be disrupted. Fortunately, technology is also evolving to address these issues, and we’ll undoubtedly see major tech innovation in the year on both sides of the coin.”

Juliette Powell, Author of The AI Dilemma and Founder at KPI AI Advisory Services, provides an interesting take on how some companies will respond when she predicts:

“Insurance and reinsurance companies will begin a lucrative business indemnifying clients against the worst of AI harms. We’ve already seen how big tech is using insurance policies to cover possible lawsuits, even as they accelerate the pace of AI adoption and innovation in the face of calls for AI regulation and enforcement. As civil lawsuits unfold over issues like deep-fake defamation and theft of intellectual property, likely triggering multi-million dollar awards to people and businesses who have been harmed by the technology, the insurance and reinsurance industry will make their rates steep enough to begin curbing big tech’s bad behavior over time — especially if the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act goes through with proposed fines of up to 6% of a company’s global revenue + damages.”

Comment: Cybercrime is defined by Cyber Crime Magazine as the “damage and destruction of data, stolen money, lost productivity, theft of intellectual property, theft of personal and financial data, embezzlement, fraud, post-attack disruption to the normal course of business, forensic investigation, restoration and deletion of hacked data and systems, and reputational harm” and it’s incident and costs have been steadily increasing ever since the early days of the Covid-19 global pandemic. So, predicting that some nefarious types will use new and emerging technology for fraudulent purposes is no surprise. But, I think the public’s awareness of the capability of deep-fake technology will be accelerated over the course of 2024 by how this technology is used in political campaigning, given that there are a significant number of what will be hotly contested elections scheduled to take place over the course of 2024, including elections in the U.S., the U.K., and India.

This could cause some significant problems for the technology sector, and so Powell’s prediction about how the use and increasing costs of insurance could have a regulating effect on technology companies and the technology itself is an interesting one and is worth watching.

14. The demand for talent will heat up.

Klaus Harisch, CEO at yoummday, predicts:

“Over the next 12 months, the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within CX operations will increasingly automate routine tasks, liberating human resources for higher-order, inventive roles. This shift will massively amplify the competition for adept critical thinkers and innovative problem solvers within the industry.”

Dave Hoekstra, Product Evangelist at Calabrio, Inc., predicts:

“Next year, research shows AI will drive a heightened emphasis on developing agents’ critical thinking skills and fostering a culture of continuous learning in contact centers. Recognizing these skills as essential for future productivity, contact center managers will invest in training programs that empower agents to adapt to evolving challenges. The industry will witness a transformation in recruitment strategies, focusing on candidates with strong critical thinking abilities and a propensity for continuous skill development.”

Saira Taneja, Chief Experience Officer at Cover Whale, adds:

“We’re entering an era where AI takes on the role of a co-pilot, elevating customer service agents into “super agents.” These super agents will be supported by AI knowledge assistants that provide real-time information and intelligent suggestions during customer interactions. This synergy will enable faster and smoother customer interactions. As AI continues to evolve and integrate into customer service, teams will have the opportunity to focus more on high-value tasks and complex customer issues. This shift demands a workforce equipped with refined problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. AI-powered super agents will not only handle tasks efficiently but will also serve as brand ambassadors, nurturing customer loyalty through increasingly meaningful human interactions. This dual role of super agents as problem solvers and brand advocates will be central to shaping the future of customer service.”

Comment: Given how technology and digital self-service tools have developed over the last few years, the need for people with both higher-order critical thinking and problem-solving skills, as well as an ability to be empathetic in their interactions with customers, even under pressure, has been coming for some time. It’s only been accelerated by the advent of generative AI. The bigger question is, do these shifts in both technology and the demand for talent presage the start of the reformation of the contact centre as we know it?

15. And, finally, organisations should exercise care in who they partner with.

Doug Dennerline, CEO and Executive Chairman at Betterworks, predicts:

“2023 was the year of generative AI – and AI startups – but as we near the end of the year, the startup market is taking a major hit, with economic headwinds having a massive impact on funding. However, we expect to see tech and AI startups being bought by larger companies in droves in 2024. Buying and consolidating these startups allows smaller and mid-sized companies to compete with the legacy tech giants, offering similar (or better, as startup tech is often more agile) services and solutions to prospective customers.”

Comment: Different reports suggest that over the course of 2022 and 2023, it has gotten harder and harder for start-ups to raise funds. That trend is set to continue into 2024. This could have an impact on brands and the experiences they want to deliver if the technology supplier they choose fails or gets bought. As a result, they should do their due diligence not just on the technology they choose to buy but also on the company they are buying it from.

That’s it for predictions from me this year.

Thank you to everyone who sent me material and predictions to consider.

If yours didn’t make it, I apologize. But I did have a long list to whittle down.

However, of the fifteen themes that have emerged, I think there are some decent bets in there.

Let’s see what happens.

 

 

This post was originally published on Forbes.com.
Credit: Image by WOKANDAPIX from Pixabay