Dive Brief:
- More than two-thirds of CX leaders expect their budgets for technology to grow in the next 12 months, according to a Forrester survey of 350 decision makers released last week.
- AI and data literacy are vital to success with AI-powered tools, according to Forrester. However, only one-third of teams have mastered the data literacy skills necessary for using AI responsibly in CX measurement tasks, and one-quarter are planning to add or improve them.
- “One of the first steps is to assess your organization and team’s AI readiness,” Senem Guler Biyikli, analyst at Forrester, said in an email. “It’s crucial to raise employees’ artificial intelligence quotient to ensure they have the understanding, skills and ethical awareness to succeed with AI-powered tools.”
Dive Insight:
CX leaders aiming to improve their data skills can benefit by taking a strategic approach that focuses on maximizing the potential of investments in the identified key areas.
The first step to getting the most out of data is to prioritize what the company actually wants out of customer information, according to Thomas Randall, research director at Info-Tech Research Group. Leaders should narrow their focus, rather than try to solve for everything at once.
“Align around specific business problems (such as reducing support costs) and structure data efforts around those goals,” Randall said in an email.
Leaders can utilize “guerilla CX” tactics — creative, low-cost strategies — to stretch their budgets as well, according to Guler Biyikli. One approach could be using internal AI-powered chatbots to gather insights from unstructured data like customer calls and seeing the results before making major investments in customer insight technology.
“It helps teams working on tight budgets to make an impact with the limited resources they have,” Guler Biyikli said.
CX departments can also work with internal teams to shape up their data capabilities. This approach can be combined with free or low-cost lessons from external sources to maximize the training benefits.
“Tap into skills that may exist elsewhere in the organization (e.g., in IT or finance) to help get CX or marketing teams started,” Randall said. “Combine that with offering a catalogue of free resources from Google, HubSpot, Microsoft, and others, covering analytics, customer journey mapping and survey design.”
Source: https://www.customerexperiencedive.com/
