Overcome incrementality by reimagining customer and agent experience - Interview with NiCE's CEO ...

Wow. Blimey. There you go. That was impressive, Adrian. I didn't think I was all those things, but thank you.

I am well. I am well, Adrian, and thank you for having me. It's great to be here. And by that opening of that introduction, I've got a lot to step up to.

Indeed.

Yeah. And I look forward to welcoming you to next year's events because they are obviously great forums first and foremost for our customers to not only listen to what we're doing at NICE and what our vision is but listen and hear from each other. So we had 3,000 people in Vegas and over I think it was over 1,200, 1,300 in the UK of customers and so record attendance because of not only our message but what they're seeing. So what was the main genesis of what we saw and heard and presented and shared? The world of CX is transforming and the opportunity to reimagine, and I use that word intentionally, to reimagine the way customer experience is served for both consumers and agents, human agents, for companies, the opportunity is real and it's now and it's obviously underpinned by AI.

Now, we've obviously looked at this from a variety of aspects, but from a holistic view, we believe that the role that technology and AI plays is profound, but it still needs to create incredible human experiences. Ultimately the consumer that we are serving through the brands on a B2C or a B2B2C or the human agents that are helping serve that needs to be an incredible experience and has the opportunity to be an incredible experience. So the role that AI plays is not just about automation and efficiency. And of course you will get those things, be able to serve and run and do things that you could never have done before but to do it in a human way, in a way that is a memorable experience. You want the benefit of automation and the efficiency and the great technology but you want to be doing it where you feel great. And so the reality is here and now. So we rolled out a series of capabilities, our agentic AI platform, Empower Agent, the ability to be able to generate AI agents, prompt-based, you know, simple description to create to perform tasks, not just to chat based on knowledge, but to truly perform tasks. The ability to be able to interact between an AI bot or an AI agent and a human agent. Interoperability, seamless conversations, fulfilling outcomes and resolutions for customers in sub-second because of the role that it plays as well as still having a platform that caters for the complex scenarios that we as humans generate. So that reimagining customer experiences is what we're about, personalized, human-like even if it's delivered by AI, and it resonated really well. Clearly customers are trying to figure out how to use it and I'm sure you probably got questions about that. So a lot of the discussion was not on the direction, everybody bought in and agreed, but how to get there and that's where we believe the speed and the flexibility of an open platform that we also promote is really critical because every organization is going to deal with the opportunities and the challenges of AI in unique ways. Regulated industries have other constraints than maybe others. So you've got to cater for that and we're able to do so.

Adrian, I do, I would even go as far as to say that incrementality is our enemy, right? If you think about the, and you've been in the CX space for a long time and you understand the technology stacks and how it evolved over generations. We at NICE have done this for nearly 40 years now. So how we managed the workforce and human agents in a contact center, how we routed telco and then used IVR and then did analytics. And so you've had this evolution, but incrementality means that you're not re-looking at well how do I deliver an incredible experience and that means not starting from zero necessarily because I think but starting with what does a great experience, an outstanding experience look like? And can we deliver that in a way with AI? Does that open opportunities for us? And I'll give you a good example. So, Sony, great customer of ours, they identified about 40% of their inquiries that they received to their contacts and it's just complete automation ready, self-service ready. And it was done based on the analytics of our platform. But what they did was they looked at well, how do I create the great experience? It's not just about fulfilling it through self-service and an AI bot, but also how's it going to coexist with human agents in case you can't fulfill it and the handoffs and so this platform. And so they reimagined that engagement of the entire experience including the 40%. Right? Solving the 40% wasn't the challenge. It was an entire CX experience of which 40% could be done in an automated way.

Now what happened was their agents were coming in with informed, equipped capability when the self-service was not able to fulfill all the things that we as humans need. But they were able to get a high level of efficiency and it had record levels of customer satisfaction. And this is one of the things that I didn't want to pick on. A lot of people are worried, oh, if I don't speak to a human. And I'm as guilty as this as anybody, I want that human touch. And that's what we do. We crave for that understanding, that empathy, that connection. And so they were also looking, well, how can our self-service through automation, the AI agent, can it still deliver that human-like? So they were able to get incredible self-service, record customer satisfaction, and achieve the automation opportunities that they were looking for. So I think if you went from a truly incremental, then what you're going to do is you're going to throw an automation tool to go and solve the problem of self-service. No, what you're trying to do is reimagine customer experience of which self-service is a key part of. And it's a big shift.

So it is, so it was both the happiness report and I'll give you a few data points of what we heard and saw from our customers and also our lived experience and the use of our AI platform, our Empower platform and the way it's rolled out. But I'll give you an example. When we connected and we did our happiness report 37% of CX leaders feared that consumers won't trust AI. But funnily enough the data showed the opposite. So what we found was when AI was used actually it increased customer satisfaction not reduced it. So whilst global happiness and engagement was actually down, customer service happiness was actually came up and it was underpinned by the role of AI. So first comment is perception versus reality.

Sure. The fear and what you hear in the public domain more broadly about, you know, the data and the quality and all of the different challenges you have with AI and needing to regulate, but the lived experience of companies in customer experience. What were the causes of unhappiness? I have to keep repeating myself. Long resolution times, not having the opportunity to speak with a human, things that we know and understand. And AI was able to solve many of those things, shorten resolution times. Interoperability with a human is a critical element because it's not only self-service AI platform. And it's not only human, the coexistence of this becomes a really clear and important part. And then the only other thing that we also heard about that uncertainty is so the companies worrying about the wrong thing. But also there is a wow effect. So consumers, 72% of the consumers actually now say that they've experienced real benefits from CX AI and automation and so they've felt that whether they've called, chatted, emailed, whatever way of interacting with their brand of choice when they've experienced a capable AI platform. And again to give you an example, a great one in the UK, Lloyds Banking Group, they use our AI knowledge management platform supporting the 12,000 people that handles the 25 plus million calls I think it is for fraud and disputes by using the power of the knowledge of the AI in serving it in a way that their agents can immediately resolve those challenges. Customers feel heard, they feel fast resolution, it's underpinned, it makes employees feel better because they're delivering exceptional customer care. So the proof points are overcoming the fear, but there's still, you know, I've got to tell you, there's some incrementality in the roll out. Oh, we'll start with a bit of co-pilot and then do some self-service. And I feel that as an industry, we're on that tip of where you can see where the widespread deployment and I think the onus is on companies like NICE. I think we've got to make it easier for them to get on that journey and roll and that's why we've really anchored on the platform of capabilities rather than a solution to solve a specific problem because if you're reimagining customer experiences there is a variety of things and you want to be able to have a platform that can deliver to all of that even if you implement it piece by piece.

Two, there's two big ones but I'll add a third but the two big ones is a lived personal experience because we're all consumers and we've all experienced hallucinations. If you've been in any way or form an active user of whatever your Gen AI platform, whether it be ChatGPT, GPT or Anthropic or Gemini or Bedrock or whatever platform that you've used, and you've used it in a personal sense, you've seen the power of the technology, but also you've seen the implications of hallucinations and issues. And so it's been an evolving way of being able and then as business leaders the uncertainty about the regulations, the changes around the regulatory environment, the quality of the data because that obviously has a big impact on then the quality of the ability for AI to do it, staying in control of the outcomes. But I would add one more is the change management, right? I think we underestimate and it's a perennial problem I think Scott as a technology leader we love what we've built Adrian I mean it really is I mean it gives me goosebumps to look at what our engineers have built and I've inherited a great technology team that has built this and this, you know, it's a privilege to be able to take over from what Barak and team put in place. But there's no doubt I'm trying to, we're accelerating it. But it's great that but the ability for organizations who have got an established known quantifiable highly measurable cost-effective customer service and customer experience platform to introduce this change without disrupting the consumer is one of the key elements. As employees, we're more forgiving if when we roll out an AI tool and it doesn't quite work. It's in the confines of the organization, but customer experience has to work. It can't fail. It can't be wrong. And so I think that introduction and change management and we've really been clear about observability and helping our customers go and we rely on our partners heavily for this as well. To be able to get the measurable benefits rather than it's one big hit. You're that incremental which is again why we've really been distinct in our focus around a platform that delivers a capability that provides compounding value. So you tune it for a co-pilot scenario. That same model can also be applied to an autopilot or a self-service model and that can also be done for call summarization capabilities. So you're constantly compounding the value and you're leveraging what you've built. And a lot of solutions in AI don't do that. Which is why a lot of business leaders get frustrated because they're like, I see the potential, but my lived reality is not the same. And so we've got to help them on that change management and that journey, which we are.

No doubt. I love this. It's got to be here and now. I mean, one of the things that I think I even said in the keynote was I did talk about the balance that you just described the stability, the cost efficiency to be able to or but also to non-disrupt having an incredible experience for your consumers and while you're introducing change, you can't afford to disrupt them because let's face it, as consumers, our expectations are higher than ever and they will continue to increase which means brands are going to be measured on not only their great people that are interacting with their customers whether it be through their contact centers or in other forms but also by the quality of their AI to give great experiences and so they won't be treated well. So that ability to introduce change that is incrementally beneficial that creates a great human experience which coming back to where we see this market it becomes such a critical element because you have to deliver now, you don't get the right to oh let us come back to you in six months time when we solve all of our no no you got to solve today's challenges but also be ready for tomorrow's opportunities.

Yeah, there's a few foundational elements. The first is a recognition that great customer experiences is not just an automated, a cost-effective delivering, but how it feels. Ultimately, how it feels matters. And so, the experience itself and consumers and customers want the benefit of both. So, first of all, there is the acknowledgment that that's what great customer experience because let's face it, we don't sit here as consumers now and say, I accept that it's going to take hours to solve my lost credit card and replacement card or my claims or my new customer creation or my whatever, you know, my flight change and billing or, you know, you want instantaneous response, but you also want delivered in a way that feels good. And I think the acknowledgement of that will be a part of that creating the stickiness and the loyalty of customers which is always paramount when they look at it. Then when we think about our capability, there's three big things that I would highlight. The first is the platform provides compounding value and what I mean by that is the data, the models that we run on the because you can choose any LLM but we have our own foundational model based on the 20 billion of interactions that we run through our AI platform whether you're using it for a co-pilot or autopilot or whatever the way the learning on that and applying it to the company's guard rails but also the standards of which they want to interact with their consumers on the AI. You tailor, you build that on the platform. So you're not just building functional outcomes, you're building experience in being able to do it. I'll give you a simple example. We launched Empower Agent. It's our agentic AI. You can not only design it to create I want to automate a task. The example I gave at Interactions was create an agent that reaches out to eligible customers that will be able to auto approve a premium account upgrade for a financial institution right, bank deployed. But you can then do it in a way that you can also then build in the smart speak language where it has got language translation in the agent you can do so it becomes not just functionally delivering but served in a way. And then last but not least is product design that is explicit about great human experiences. I want to differentiate our company. We've always been strong at a functional capability. I hope you would agree, Adrian. We really do know this space. I would argue better than anyone. But to win with AI, not only do you want the automation, but back to the happiness index, we know that when it's delivered in the right way, it makes a happier consumer. And so we're going to combine the two to measure that happiness as well as the automation performance. And I think when we do that, customer experiences will be reimagined and transformed, but they'll make humans smile. And ultimately, it's not only the consumer that I'm talking about here. It's also the agent. And a lot of the AI use cases, by the way, have been how to help an agent, human agent, be more effective, which makes them feel good. They're doing better and better things when they're interacting with you and I when we're dealing with our difficult challenges that we expect instantaneous solutions for.

So we had a customer in a very session, Apple Leisure Group and they run hotel brands and others and they were great experiences, but what's really amazing is they worked with us on a co-pilot scenario using their data platform to be able to help agents solve challenges for one of the hotel group and making the agents be able to solve queries more effectively, answer it based on the knowledge platform. Super valuable. But what they found was that opened up gee there's automation possibilities where and the agents were saying this can be done in a self-service way. If you use that data and then do it directly with the consumers we can solve that before it even hits us. So they become part of the re-imagined design which I think was an unexpected benefit as they've rolled out. So that for me is a great experience because then the humans that are working in these contact centers are not sitting there saying, Oh gee, my, you know, I'm going to lose my job. No. They're actually saying, Hey, I'm going to help you automate, but I'm still invaluable in creating those great human experiences, but I'm doing more complex, more valuable, and I'm doing more things at the point of interaction, which I will one quick thing, and I know we're probably running out of time, but Adrian, the opportunity to solve I would call it fulfillment, maybe resolution, but fulfill the tasks at interaction, those 20 billion interactions that we get on our platform, our ability to instantaneously solve which often involves tasks, workflows, actions that goes into the mid and back office. That was the other big pivot of the event. We believe firmly that we are able to particularly with Agentic AI and our roll out of Empower Agent and Empower Orchestrator that we can fulfill those tasks at the point of interaction. Whereas historically the customer service agent would need to contact with somebody in the back office to go get a task done and they would say hey Adrian can you just go and hold for a couple of moments or I'll come back to you and minutes later and what they're doing is they're scrambling to solve the thing that you've asked for. We can automate all of that. So I think the lived experience for consumer is better but also the ability to automate what is currently quite a manual task in the mid and the back office is also the opportunity and that's the benefit we see as well in where we can take AI in customer experience.

You are well ahead of I think where many thought because everyone thought AI equals replacement of agents. It's actually not. It's actually powering up those humans who are really knowledgeable, understand the guard rails, have minimal errors, create great human experiences, and are the brand ambassadors for these organizations. And when you use the AI to help empower them, to make them more they become not only better in serving in that brand ambassadorial role, but they become the change agents because they're designing and helping design. I think it's the fact that you identified it a year ago. I think we built the platform, but it was largely through customer feedback. We realized the agent experience scenarios where we were building with AI could be reused in other forms as well. Hence the platform centricity. But I suspect if you had have asked us two years ago, it wasn't here. But it was probably to where you would expect, oh, we've got this solution to solve this problem. We got this solution to do this. But actually the interoperability and let's face it brands are going to continue to interoperate between AI humans in synchronous asynchronous one continual conversation lots of so your ability to be able to work in tandem and in a seamless way I think is a really critical part of that human experience as well. We don't want to have to start again probably frustrates us the most.

Love it. But one final thing I want to ask you about because I know you've started this it's because it's like it's a nice thing, right? That you've announced this new global campaign about creating a nice world and I just thought that was quite a fun thing. I wanted to understand a bit more about that and what was the thinking behind it.

Amen. Thank hallelujah. Yes. And I just that's kind of why I go like that that's like idealistic creating a smile but just creating more smiles and so that's kind of cool. I like it.

If you're an agent and you've just delivered a great experience for a consumer, it makes you feel good. It creates a smile. If you're the consumer on the other end of it, whether it be an AI agent or a human or whatever, the way of creating the smile and doing so in a really automated, efficient way, I think that's the opportunity we have. It's a win-win. The brands don't need to compromise customer experiences and satisfaction anymore. In fact, they can empower it. But ultimately, we need a few more smiles in the world. I think you and I would agree with that.

You've been very thorough and it's been wonderful to join you today, Adrian. I really do appreciate the opportunity to share not only a little bit about what we're doing at NICE and the passion that we have around really reinventing in this space, but also having the opportunity to talk more about the purpose of who we are as well. And I look forward to reading more of your insightful reports because they'll then become the things that we need to implement on in future years. So keep doing that.

Thanks, Adrian.