Binge-worthy CX: AI shake-ups, insider secrets and unfiltered insights—NICE’s The Room Where It Happened is back

This year NICE gathered the industry’s top CX leaders, partners and analysts for the second season of The Room Where It Happened. As businesses look to transform customer service into a strategic advantage, customer service automation has taken center stage. Central to this transformation is how NICE empowers businesses to leverage automation, creating real, measurable value and driving operational efficiency across industries worldwide.

As part of this year’s season of The Room Where It Happened, we had the privilege of speaking with leaders from top brands across three continents, five influential industry analysts, and key innovators from NICE’s AI divisions. Each customer interviewed has embraced AI in their business, and analysts are now seeing its tangible impact. The key takeaway? The most successful businesses aren’t just adopting AI and automation—they’re mastering what to implement and how to implement it for maximum value.

“The feedback also from agents has been super positive. They don't want to answer the basic straightforward questions. They want to have meaningful interactions with customers,” said Sarah Ross, Senior Director Contact Center at The Standard.

Ross said AI is having real impacts on both the employee and customer experience.

“I don't think AI is overhyped. I think the hype is real,” she said.

The Standard has provided insurance, retirement products, and investment services for customers since 1906 for both B2C and B2B customers. Over the last few years, The Standard has reimagined its customer service operations, fully embracing AI and digital technology to change the way they interact with their employees and customers.

The Standard recently implemented NICE CXone Mpower Autopilot, NICE’s IVR leveraging conversational AI.

“Within three months. We had already seen almost a 20% containment rate,” Ross said. “We had a 92% customer satisfaction score and maybe even more impressive. We had a 96% customer effort score.”

Ross said you have to remember that when you’re talking about customer satisfaction in the IVR, the customer’s not actually talking to a representative.

“So just the fact that we were able to create this great experience in the IVR is something that we're certainly proud of,” Ross said.

Ross said she wants to challenge the notion that all chatbots are bad.

“A lot of people say chatbots are crap. I've met a few chatbots that I might say such things about, but I also think we have to realize the potential that comes from automation and AI. We are only as good as the resources and expertise that we put into AI that we get out,” she said.

Ross said that getting to interact with NICE’s AI capabilities has made everything come together for them.

“I mean, it's very clear to me from NICE's most senior leadership that they know who they are and who they want to be. They want to revolutionize and reimagine what customer experience looks like, and they want to harness all of the great technology that's out there to do that,” Ross said.

“The ability for proactive intervention is just huge for us,” said Hasting Directs’ Lisa Irons.

Irons is the head of customer transformation at Hastings Direct. Irons said the pace of technology innovation makes her excited about what’s to come.

“Rather than us doing quality assessing after the fact, the ability for us to spot a customer in need when they are on that phone call, having that chat, having that asynchronous message, that is probably a CX game changer for me,” she said. “I think it's huge. It's exciting. We are able to lead the charge on this.”

Since 1997, Hastings Direct (part of the Hastings Group) has offered a range of competitive insurance products and services, including car, bike, van and home insurance. In total Hastings Direct has 3.4 million customer policies and over 3,300 colleagues.

“There's a whole digital arm back to our plans to be the biggest and best digital insurer,” Irons said.

Irons said their customers expect to self-serve and they expect their insurer to know them.

“You have all of my data, so why am I inputting the same things into the IVR that you already know? Why am I having to tell your agent or your colleague the same bits of information that you already have,” she said.

She said a really big win for them recently has been using asynchronous as a channel.

“So, they go into the app a need to message you, 30% of our customer's contact is outside of the core call center hours. So that authentication piece is really big for us,” she said. “The ability for us to use digital channels to help customers even outside of core operational levels is something that I'm really passionate about.”

“Make your content findable or die’ is a saying within the industry. And I think soon it's going to be ‘Make your content findable and predictable or die,” said Libby Healy, AI knowledge product owner at Waters Corporation.

Waters Corporation is the leading provider of lab equipment, supplies and software for scientists across the world.

Healy said their customer service operations are unique in that their agents have advanced degrees including PhDs in chemistry. She said that’s why it’s imperative for them to have the tools to support their customer service representatives at a very high level.

That’s where NICE came in.

“For us to have a place, a knowledge base where you can go and ask a question in the customer's words and be able to find answers from your colleagues all over the globe at your fingertips, it really helps you feel like you're not trying to support your customers by yourself, that you have the knowledge of all of your teammates right at your fingertips. And that to me is extremely meaningful,” Healy said.

Healy said they have begun to experiment with generative AI.

“Working with business partners who really know what they're doing is going to be critical. This is not a technology that you can learn and implement off the side of your desk,” she said. “Nobody knows exactly what they're doing. We're all figuring it out together.”

Healy said that their global support team was the first at Waters to launch an internal generative AI tool based solely on Waters’ documentation.

“This was thrilling. Talk about leaning over your skis. We were really writing the script as we were getting this done. So we started at the end of last year, we started with a pilot with our Waters knowledge base being the foundation of this generative AI pilot. And then we launched globally to our internal teams earlier this year, and they love it,” she said.

Healy said generative AI has transformed the employee experience.

“And what generative AI has done for our support agents is it's taken this kind of dry, sparse material and presented it to them conversationally. It has taken generative AI to put conversation into our documentation,” she said.

Healy said employees have been very receptive to the change.

“I sometimes wake up in the morning and check and see what agents are doing in our generative AI tool. And sometimes when they log in, they say, hi, good morning. And the tool says, good morning back to them. And so, it's nice to watch the relationship that they're starting to form with this tool,” she said.

Healy said they are just getting started with AI implementation.

“There are some great things on the horizon for generative AI. First of all, the technology or the field itself is moving so fast that once you've implemented, that is not a finish line at all. Implementing is almost like getting your toes on the starting line because the innovation in this area is going to be so fast for a long time,” she said.

Her advice to businesses looking to replicate their AI success: “Work with a partner that you trust, find a model that meets your needs, and then just lean into it and have fun. Because this is a really exciting time, and we've all been working really hard to get here.”

“We really need to understand and take a step back at how to get the data that really matters in the moment where you can help customers and it has to be contextual,” said Brian Wiseman, Senior Director, Advisory Services at C1.

C1, a NICE partner, is a global technology solution provider committed to elevating connected human experiences.

“There's a lot of options that you can choose from in order to make your experience come to life. So myself, from C1’s perspective, we do a lot of consulting with customers to understand exactly what they're trying to achieve and what's needed to get to that point,” Wiseman said.

Wiseman said at the most basic level people just want to be heard, understood and helped in the moment and having the most advanced CX and AI technology plays a crucial role in making that possible.

“NICE is part of our portfolio because of what it has to bring to the market from its overall strategy, and really taking a look at customer experience and its truest definition, really understanding what we're doing for our customers to achieve their business outcomes in a way that's much more human and connected,” Wiseman said.

Wiseman, who’s been in the industry for many years, said that technology has come a long way, including AI.

“AI really helps our employees connect with customers better,” he said. “I can take that AI and elevate that communication and that connection when those customers are talking with agents.”

“For us, it's very important to have a complete platform because they say data is power, but I would say that if you have structured organized data, it's even more powerful,” said Tulio Prado, Head of Customer Service at Banco Pan.

Banco Pan is a leading digital bank in Brazil serving more than 30 million clients. Prado said because of the large client base, data is essential to their customer service operations.

“It totally blows my mind, the amount of information that we can get from data, so just giving an example, if we transcript all of the calls of our customers, we can understand what exact demand that client has, what is the service that is being given for him. If during this service our customer was happy or was angry at any part in the end, was it solved completely or not,” Prado said.

He said with AI, you can extract information even better.

“As you have those insights, the important part is don't take them just to your department customer service department, use those insights and share with the whole organization because in the end, everyone is interested in improved customer experience,” Prado said.

Prado said his department has become an information hub for the business.

“It's very common that other departments that come to us and they ask for more information to know what's going on, sometimes they have already, it already showed in indicator that we had a problem. And then going through customer service and customer interactions, you can discover better what's going on,” Prado said.

Prado said being on CXone Mpower has enabled them to speed up efficiencies.

“So just given an example in the past, it could take around a week in order to make minor adjustments to the IVR or to implement some fixes,” Prado said. Now, he said, they are able to do those fixes or minor adjustments in a matter of hours.

“Because of this, employees, they take less time to reach their goals. Therefore, they're happier,” he said.

Prado said he’s proud of two recent successes.

“Since last year, we were able to improve our first call resolution by 25 percentage points,” he said. “Another thing that really made us happy during this journey was that we were able to implement self-service, or our AI enabled self-service products for our customers.”

Prado said the recent success has caused him to look ahead at what’s next, “Start planning what are the next amazing things that we are going to do.”

“So, in spite of the wonderfulness of AI, why is CX still awful?” asked Max Ball, Principal Research Analyst at Forrester.

During his Room Where It Happened interview, Ball addressed the elephant in the room.

“We have something we call the customer experience index. It has dropped three years in a row for the first time ever,” Ball said.

He said businesses still don’t fully understand what AI is. In a recent Forrester survey, he said 70% of respondents couldn’t accurately describe how generative AI works.

“So, it's a very chilling data point that says, people who are implementing this stuff don't necessarily understand it,” Ball said.

Ball said that’s why it’s important to have a partner.

“What you really need is somebody like NICE or some vendor out there that has the overall infrastructure for you, go ahead and do it point solution at a time to start until you've got your legs under you, until you're comfortable with it,” he said.

Ball recommends an inside grow and go out approach when it comes to AI implementation.

“So, you start with call summarization, internal reading it, what you have today is horrible, so you're going to be better. Then you can start doing some analytics and reporting and look at that. Then you can start getting into quality management,” he said. “Then you can do agent-facing stuff. And then directly customer-facing AI is going to be able to do more and more of the stupid rot stuff that we never should have paid people to do in the first place if we'd had an option not to.”

Ball said this will eventually lead to fewer agents, as more interactions become automated.

“I think if things go well, how much we start going, I haven't even called customer service in a while or I haven't had to reach out into the app to do something,” Ball said.

He said we’re moving into a world where what can be done is a lot more and the experience of doing what can be done is a lot better.

One question remains, Ball said, “How can AI automate more stuff to make contact centers more cost effective, but do it in a way that doesn't suck that a customer can have and enjoy?”

“I do believe AI is going to change cx. I think it already has. We see it in our research. It's very measurable. AI has absolutely already changed CX in a lot of ways for people who think it's hype,” said Robin Gareiss, CEO of Metrigy.

Gareiss said companies are seeing a much bigger return right now on internal deployments of AI. She said an example of this is seen through sales quotas being attached to customer service representatives. Currently she said 54% of companies have such quotas.

“AI is helping these agents by saying, okay, doing all the calculations in the background to say, this is the offer that you should make this customer based on demographics, tone of voice, what the content of this call was, what this person has bought before, all that kind of stuff, and said, here's the upsell item, and we're seeing huge success here,” Gareiss said. “And agents love it. It actually improves loyalty, actually, it reduces turnover because now they're meeting their KPIs, now they're meeting their sales quota, and yes, they're making commission.”

Gareiss said she understands the fear around AI taking peoples’ jobs, however she said it is making roles more powerful and creating new ones.

“We are seeing more than 60% of companies hiring data scientists, data analysts, programmers, security people specifically in CX,” Gareiss said.

Gareiss said the role of the agent is also transforming.

“We also see some companies, actually quite a few companies, now taking agents and making them sort of the boss of bots, if that makes sense. So, taking live agents and having them watch the chatbots and voice bots and making sure they stay on track, and when they don't, they kind of come in and make some corrections,” Gareiss said.

During this AI revolution, Gareiss said businesses are also experiencing a rude awakening when it comes to knowledge management.

“They need more multimedia content, they need more accurate content, they need more current content, and that's ever changing. You can't just do that once and say, okay, done. Moving on. You've got to have somebody fielding that all the time. So, we do see some companies repurposing agents into that role. So, they're becoming knowledge management experts,” Gareiss said.

Gareiss said one of the most important decisions businesses can make right now is who their technology provider is and making sure that partner is a trusted advisor with industry and technology experience.

“I think one of the challenges that I see is hype in the market,” said Omer Minkara, VP and Principal Analyst with Aberdeen Group.

Minkara said a lot of businesses are trying to figure out what’s real, what’s not and what they need to focus on.

He said businesses are also facing pressure to cut down on costs.

“What's happening right now with all the technology innovations is companies are really enabled with the ability to not just cut costs, but now elevate employee experiences,” Minkara said.

Minkara said with AI, businesses have better visibility into their customers and their needs. He said AI also empowers employees in real-time to support customers.

Read more about how AI is driving happier, more loyal customers here.

“Really we're seeing that renaissance moment for many businesses empowering their agents to be able to help their customers,” Minkara said.

Minkara said AI is also enabling businesses to connect all their data.

“So, thinking about all the fragmented data that companies have been dealing with. Now you can automate many of these processes of data collection, data analysis, so you have that holistic view of the customer,” he said.

“The numbers that are coming in terms of the types and proportions of interactions that can be automated, the promise is now 50%, 60%,” said Sheila McGee-Smith, President and Principal Analyst of McGee-Smith Analytics.

McGee-Smith said AI and automation are driving increased rates of self-service. She said AI is also being used to augment employees.

“Support agents better than they've been supported in the past,” McGee-Smith said.

She said it’s transforming what businesses can do for their consumers.

“So, what does AI mean? I think it means businesses and brands will be easier to do business with, and that's the end goal of customer experience,” McGee-Smith said.

As businesses seek to implement AI, McGee-Smith said a big general AI company is not going to cut it.

“I want to choose a company that has been working with how to apply artificial intelligence to customer experience. That's their job. That's how they begin and end the day,” she said.

“The technology actually is outpacing where companies are in their ability to absorb it and make the necessary internal changes to use it effectively,” said industry analyst Mary Wardley.

Wardley said while AI is here and AI is capable of doing amazing things, there are some internal systems that need to work in order to drive real value.

“There are some really bad mistakes out there in trying to push a technology too early and break the internal environment,” she said.

She said a lot of businesses have had to take a step back when implementing AI because their knowledge management systems weren’t ready.

“In an evolution moving forward, you need to be conscious of what you've been doing, make sure it's not too big a shift. And as you move to this new environment, how are they related? Can you leverage what you've been doing? Is it an opportunity to refine it?” Wardley said.

“There is a huge rush for adoption in AI at the moment,” said Richard Bassett, VP of Digital, AI and Analytics at NICE.

Bassett said he is seeing huge interest in CX AI across verticals.

“We've seen great uptake from financial services, from telco, from retail, for example, just because of the huge amounts of volume they've got coming to their organizations right now,” Bassett said.

He said businesses are having cut through a lot of noise in the market.

“There's a lot of vendors saying they can do AI, they can do gen AI, they can go and be that silver bullet for every single organization, and that is not the case,” Bassett said.

He said it’s his job to alleviate some of that noise and help businesses how NICE does AI differently.

Bassett said NICE is using a huge demand from the employee side for AI in the UK.

“So, the employee experience is critical. We see about a 30% attrition rate in the UK in a contact center. So, anything we can do to try and retain agents in the business, make their lives easier, take away the mundane tasks, that's really a key focus for every business right now,” he said.

Bassett said AI is opening new roles.

“If you are building bots, for example, you've got bot managers and you've got conversational designers, knowledge management practices have become a lot bigger and a lot more important,” Bassett said.

Bassett had this advice for businesses thinking about AI, “I'm recommending that people do go down a journey and do go and try something out, and whether that's a POC or a pilot or something else, but they really need to be on this journey.”

“It's put knowledge front and center,” said Aaron Rice, General Manager, CX Expert at NICE.

Rice, a self-proclaimed knowledge wonk, said AI has been the spotlight on knowledge management.

“Because knowledge is the data that feeds the AI, the AI starves without us,” he said.

He said businesses are learning that knowledge is key to driving success with AI.

“Every company, the first time they interacted with generative AI and particularly with their own company's knowledge, saw their own knowledge repeated back at them in a way that they've never heard before, and with an ease that just felt magical,” he said.

Rice said we have entered a new era with the technology that is available today.

“We think it's transformative. We think we've got a really solid handle on how it's going to evolve, and customers are hungry to understand that. And it's exciting to be part of those business transformational conversations with our customers as they grapple with this new world,” Rice said.

Watch Season 1 and Season 2 of The Room Where It Happened here.

Have a customer service story you want to share? We want to highlight YOU. Apply to be on next season of The Room Where It Happened by filling out the form at the bottom of this page to get in touch with us.