via Thomas Walker, CX Today

 
Contact center leaders are making billion-dollar AI investments without ever touching the tools they’re buying. That blindspot is now a competitive liability, and both customers and CX agents are starting to notice.

Are CX executives equipped to lead their organizations through the AI transition? A growing body of evidence suggests the answer is no – and not for lack of resources or ambition, but because of a structural problem embedded in how senior leadership operates.

The people making the most consequential AI decisions in customer experience who decide which platforms to deploy, which workflows to automate, and which agent roles to restructure are also, by design, the least likely to have direct, hands-on experience with the tools driving those decisions.

That gap is widening fast, and for contact center and CX technology leaders, the operational consequences are becoming impossible to ignore.

As Brian Solis, Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow, put it:

“The question is not whether AI will transform customer service – it will. The question is whether the people responsible for that transformation actually understand what they’re deploying.”