How generative AI will transform customer experiences – and why we must prioritize responsible innovation

By Deepak Pargaonkar, Vice President, Solution Engineering at Salesforce

Generative artificial intelligence (AI), one of the most exciting technologies in decades, became all the rage in late 2022, sending people and businesses into a frenzy of curiosity and questions over its potential. With an exponential adoption curve, it has led CIOs and IT leaders to evaluate how it’ll show up across the enterprise. Combining AI technologies, automation at scale and real-time data analytics can help organizations make every employee more productive and every customer experience better. It is a technology that classifies, predicts, and also creates its own content with a human-like command of language, which will transform work fundamentally, not just enhance it. By placing tools of unprecedented power, flexibility, and even personalization into everyone’s hands, requiring little more than natural language to operate, AI is assisting people in many parts of their lives, taking on the role of super-powered collaborators.

Connecting with customers in new ways

Generative AI has the potential to enhance the customer experience through deeper insights to help organizations connect with their customers in new, and more relevant ways. Research shows that 65% of consumers say they will remain loyal to companies that offer a more personalized experience, with over 60% expecting companies to react instantly with up-to-date information when transferred between departments. For example, customer service agents can automatically generate knowledge articles from past case notes, and auto-generate personalized agent chat replies to increase customer satisfaction through personalized and expedited service interactions. Sales representatives can auto-generate sales tasks like scheduling meetings, preparing for the next interaction, and composing emails. Similarly, marketers can generate personalized content faster to engage customers and prospects across email, mobile, web, and advertising.

Aspects like business growth and customer retention are not directly influenced by AI, as costs and availability of products and services are among several factors that support or hinder companies’ efforts to meet customer expectations. Rather, it is how organizations understand the key dimensions of growth and customer loyalty and thereafter embed AI into their business processes that will make them more powerful. By combining generative AI and collaborative technologies, greater productivity can be achieved by customers and companies alike. AI-powered conversation summaries and research tools, for instance, will help users catch up on what’s happening quicker and instantly find answers on any project or topic — whether they’re researching best practices or prospecting a new account. When employees draft messages in seconds to communicate with customers and teams and spend less time crafting replies and meeting notes, they have more time to put plans in action.

The key drivers of business efficiency and growth will be accelerating employee productivity and connecting directly with customers.

Making AI a safer and transparent partner

While the potential of generative AI is enormous, it is not without risks. As organizations look to adopt these technologies, they should prioritize responsible innovation. It is critical to embed ethical guardrails and guidance across products to help customers innovate responsibly and catch potential problems before they happen. Accuracy, safety, honesty, empowerment, and sustainability are five key principles that can ensure the development of trusted generative AI.

The capabilities of AI are only as good as the data that’s powering it in addition to keeping humans in the loop to check and verify. Trust is the most critical element of generative AI’s development, and if organizations can deliver that, without compromise, this technology is capable of changing the world for the better. Guidelines are available to help organizations with the responsible development and implementation of generative AI. Making AI safer and more transparent begins with awareness. It is imperative for business leaders to educate themselves on the implications of AI and arming users with a better understanding of AI’s strengths and weaknesses. Another possible way to address issues of trust and accuracy is by providing explainability or citing sources for why and how an AI system created the content it did.

Everyone must have conviction in these models at every level, right from trusting the content they create to the things they say and trusting the platforms on which they run. If done right, there’s no doubt that this technology will be a boon, transforming the world as we know it.