Customer-centric IT: Strategies for delivering winning customer experiences

7. Speed AI adoption

CIOs should also be accelerating adoption of all variations of artificial intelligence, such as generative AI-powered chatbots, to create better customer experiences, West Monroe’s Cheng says, noting that agentic AI in particular shows potential as a powerful tool for delivering efficient, effective customer experiences.

Whether the agentic AI is enabled to execute decisions on its own or designed to require a human to approve certain actions, the technology is demonstrating that it can resolve customer needs faster and more accurately than humans can, Cheng explains.

Likewise, Seiler says adding more automation and AI — from chatbots to virtual assistance — throughout the customer journey is essential to meeting rising customer expectations.

KPMG, in its 2024 Global Customer Experience Excellence report, says that leading organizations “are humanizing their AI interfaces, making them more engaging and relatable through anthropomorphism — that is, attributing human traits to non-human things — to create more engaging and relatable experiences. This approach taps into our innate tendency to connect with human-like characteristics, enabling AI bots, like Microsoft’s Cortana and Apple’s Siri, to offer more personalized, emotionally resonant experiences with their distinct personalities and conversational styles.”