The strategic value of artificial intelligence (AI) is widely recognised by customer experience (CX) leaders worldwide. However, AI implementation in the contact centre appears to have slowed over the last year. Recent Talkdesk research explores why CX leaders find it challenging to realise the full potential of AI technology in the contact centre. CX leaders understand the value of AI and automation, viewing this technology as critical to accelerate success. The core benefits of AI technology deployment in the contact centre are not contested.

Talkdesk's Future of AI in the Contact Center report found that 84% of CX professionals expect their company's total spending on AI and automation to increase in 2025 compared to 2021, with 89% of CX professionals -- including customer service leaders, managers and operational staff -- believing in the importance of using AI in contact centers. However, only 14% of businesses consider themselves transformational with AI. Just having the technology isn't enough to produce positive results. AI users also need to follow these five best CX industry practices. To be useful in CX, it's important that AI can leverage the right data at the right time, said Karl Phenix, Avtex director of sales engineering.

Talkdesk's Future of AI in the Contact Center report found that 84% of CX professionals expect their company's total spending on AI and automation to increase in 2025 compared to 2021, with 89% of CX professionals -- including customer service leaders, managers and operational staff -- believing in the importance of using AI in contact centers. However, only 14% of businesses consider themselves transformational with AI. Just having the technology isn't enough to produce positive results. AI users also need to follow these five best CX industry practices. To be useful in CX, it's important that AI can leverage the right data at the right time, said Karl Phenix, Avtex director of sales engineering.

Recently, Talkdesk hosted a webinar on The future of AI in contact centers that featured Paul Lasserre, global segment lead – applied AI Solutions at AWS, Margi Deinlein, customer insights manager at Talkdesk, and Jay Gupta, director of product marketing at Talkdesk. The panel discussed the present-day challenges holding organizations back on a progressive path to AI maturity and how these limitations can be overcome in an increasingly automated world. They also discussed the evolving perceptions of AI and its maturity in the field of customer experience (CX). In this webinar, Margi Deinlein from Talkdesk discussed the results from a recent global survey of over 900 CX professionals. These results indicated that 69% of CX professionals believed in the importance of AI in the contact center, endowing contact centers with a pivotal role in accepting the challenge and adopting AI to create value.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is getting a bad reputation. And while Forrester predicts that 1 out of 4 CX professionals will lose their jobs in 2020, it has little to do with employers implementing AI. The real reason is the growing business-criticality of CX. In fact, brands will spend $8 billion more on customer service agents in 2020 than 2019 due to heightened demand and competition for highly skilled agents. The truth is plain and simple: AI isn't replacing contact center agents -- it's helping them step up to be the best they can be and deliver more value than ever.

In a recent Forrester survey, only 35% of CX professionals reported that they are measuring how their most important customers feel about their most important experiences. An even smaller number, 21%, were confident that they shared these metrics in an actionable way. The use of artificial intelligence can help you address both of these issues and make your customer experience measurement programs much more effective. Since CX professionals are just starting to wake up to the idea of applying AI to improve customer experience measurement, you're probably not sure how or where to begin. In this blog post, I detail eight uses of artificial intelligence to boost your customer experience measurement program by improving your understanding of the rich customer experience data you're already collecting and making that data actionable. There are two fundamental ways in which artificial intelligence can be used to impact customer experience measurement. Next, I'll describe four ways you can use AI to improve your understanding of your customer experience data and five ways to make your customer experience metrics actionable.

Jayaram Bhat, CEO, Squelch in this article writes about the evolution of customer experience and what marketers can accept in the coming year 2020. As co-founder and CEO of Squelch, I've gotten to know leaders from across the customer experience industry -- from world-class analysts to visionary founders of professional organizations and fellow CEOs of the support and success platforms that make top-notch CX possible. I've also talked with countless agents, managers, and executives who are engaging with customers on the front lines every day. Welcome to the 2019 edition of The Modern Content Marketer's Buyer Guide. About 10 years ago, marketers realized that content is a critical piece of their pie, and have since been working overtime to generate content to help win the prospect's attention.