In 2023, the world returned to ‘normalcy’, with people spending more time offices and at in-person events, having face-to-face interactions, and traveling more. At the same time, many organizations faced macroeconomic pressures to do more with less, while maintaining sky-high customer expectations. With this setting as a backdrop, CallMiner surveyed 700 senior decision-makers from contact centers and customer experience (CX) departments for its annual CX Landscape Report, to find out how they’re leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and customer data to meet their top CX challenges head on.

Let’s dive into some of the highlights of this year’s report, and find out how organizations have been using customer data to effectively overcome challenges, maximize opportunities to deliver better experiences, and ultimately drive improved business outcomes.

Teams still lean heavily on solicited feedback, manual processes

Considering the industry hype around AI, many companies surveyed still rely heavily on manual processes and solicited feedback to optimize CX. While there has been a positive shift towards organizations collecting more unsolicited CX or customer satisfaction feedback in the last year, most still collect more solicited than unsolicited feedback (71% in 2023 vs. 79% in 2022). Think things like surveys, where customers are asked for their feedback, instead of contact center conversations, where feedback naturally occurs.

When considering how manual or automated the processes organizations use to analyze their CX satisfaction data, there is slightly greater emphasis, at an overall level, on automated (55%) versus manual (45%) tasks, but not by much.

While these signals toward increased automation are positive, many teams may be missing opportunities to automate baseline tasks, such as quality assurance (QA). Those that do automate customer data analysis find that they’re more able to use this data to make better business decisions (61% vs. 51% in organizations where processes are more manual).

Nearly half believe AI is key to optimizing CX

It wouldn’t be a conversation about CX in 2023 without talking about AI’s impact. Nearly half (49%) of respondents firmly believe that AI technologies will help them achieve greater efficiency to optimize their CX strategy under financial strain. With 45% of respondents strongly agreeing that they want their organization to do more with fewer resources in the current economy, many are looking at a range of AI-powered solutions to invest in over the next 12 months for CX purposes. Download the full report to find out exactly where organizations are investing their AI budgets, and how they feel it’s impacting specific challenges.

For example, those that do invest in AI are able to gain deeper insights into CX challenges and issues. To look at one challenge specifically, customer vulnerability is more likely to be on the radar for organizations using AI (41% vs 29% if they aren’t), suggesting these companies are using (or attempting to use) the technology to more effectively identify the customers who might need additional support.

At the same time, organizations are being more mindful about AI guardrails. The top fears surrounding the implementation of AI technology in CX or customer service use cases include: exposing the company to security and / or compliance risks (45%); spreading misinformation (43%); and giving biased, discriminatory or inappropriate responses to customers (41%).

Internal misalignment persists

Despite access to an abundance of data, many organizations are not doing enough with the insights they unlock. While 47% strongly agree that digital transformation has unlocked a wealth of data for CX teams, more than two-thirds (68%) say this data is often not harnessed to their organization’s best advantage. For example, only around a third (35%) of organizations surveyed offer regular group training and retraining for their employees, and less than a fifth (18%) carry out tailored 1:1 coaching. The report details several other areas where organizations feel they’re falling short, as well as where they’re applying data-driven insights to their advantage.

In addition, organizations are struggling to communicate internally across teams, which is inhibiting CX application and processes. Half of organizations say they lack effective communication between departments when aligning on CX data and customer feedback. This makes it challenging for organizations to actually apply the data they collect, with 43% admitting to a lack of clarity on how to act on data insights. Even though CX and contact center teams are sharing CX and satisfaction metric reports with their organizations’ boards, 84% believe that leadership’s use of this data should be improved.

Get the 2023 CallMiner CX Landscape Report

Beyond these findings, the report explores in further depth how organizations are investing in AI, and which types of AI are most prominent among CX and contact center teams. In addition, it covers how teams are applying CX data to improve the customer and employee experience, and inform enterprise-wide improvements. Geographies surveyed include the U.S., U.K. and Ireland, South Africa, France, and Germany. Industry-specific data covers retail, technology, financial services, and healthcare, providing decision makers in these sectors and regions with valuable insights into the impact of AI and automation on both CX and overall business improvements.