How do you best serve an AI agent acting on behalf of a customer? We need to delve into customer experience for machine customers.

 

In October 2023, the booklet was published by Ziptone's publisher. Customer contact in 2030 on the occasion of Ziptone's tenth anniversary. That booklet came out just after the introduction of ChatGPT. So it is full of carefully promoted, but nonetheless quite poor, AI-generated images (like the one next to this text). Creating images with AI was hot at the time; whether AI could also mean anything for customer contact was still unclear back then.

After that, things moved very quickly towards 'inflated expectations'. Contact center managers decided to unleash generative AI on the knowledge base, customer conversations, and employees. So far, that business case has been positive in many cases. In terms of AI in customer contact, more is being turned on than turned off.

And the rest is history?

We are closing the shop

No, not exactly. The discussion about AI is still ongoing and has even been discovered by the trade unions. According to the CNV trade union, employees, especially abroad, would are increasingly being replaced by chatbots and AIJust leave out the 'abroad' part – there is no difference between onshore and offshore. Customer contact needs to be cheaper everywhere. It was unfortunate that with that statement, the CNV gave the impression of not having a good grasp of reality. It was also clumsy, because unions must be taken seriously, for example as a negotiating partner during collective labor agreement negotiations and regarding the social plans that come into play with decisions like the ones Transcom is making: we are closing the shop, because the Netherlands is becoming too expensive.

Machine customer experience

The discussion about AI deserves better than a one-liner from the CNV. For we have only just begun. Companies are actively exploring AI – invariably affectionately referred to as 'low-hanging fruit' – but the biggest change is yet to come.

I have, of course, written about AI before, about agentic AI, and about consumers who will soon be sending their own bots after customer service. While I argued that those AI agents are irrational (they have no problem being put on hold or calling ten times about the same subject, incrementally oriented as they are), Job van den Berg recently presented a picture in which the AI ​​agent, when making decisions is guided by agent experience data.

Perhaps AI agents are sensitive to, well, 'machine customer experience' after all? Incidentally, that term was coined in late 2023 by Sirte Pihlaja, CEO of the Finnish company Shirute and at the time leader of CXPA Finland. Her idea: companies should invest in (competencies for designing) machine customer experiences. MCX for short. Remember those letters; they are bound to come up more often.

Bots that talk about customer experience

I would like to add something to that. In the booklet Customer contact on Mars I was still fantasizing about AI agents talking to animals, but the scenario where consumers' AI agents seek each other out on Reddit, Tweakers, or TrustPilot to exchange experiences is not that far-fetched.

Why couldn't AI agents post a question on the customer forum of the household mobile provider or in the local app group for Utrecht-Noord, where their owner lives? They could seek advice there, but just as easily post recommendations or warnings. Synthetic customers engaging in online discussions about agentic experiences. That would be a disaster, especially for marketers.

(Ziptone/Erik Bouwer)

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