Dive Brief:

• While levels of artificial intelligence adoption varies across companies, often contingent on the size of the organization or the amount invested, 90% of companies are using AI to improve the customer experience, according to a MIT Technology Review Insights survey of almost 600 customer experience executives. 
• AI is boosting revenue for many companies, driven by streamlined operations and prioritizing machine vs. human case resolution. Half of those surveyed report increased overall revenue improvement of more than 5% after AI adoption. Almost one-third of respondents say AI has increased revenue more than 10%. 
• Implementing AI comes with an increased operational costs, which some companies are mitigating with customer sentiment analysis, according to the report. By better understanding customer interactions, companies can invest more strategically in AI and other advanced technologies. 

Dive Insight:

In the buzzword-filled world of enterprise technology, companies and IT decision makers are quick to tout AI as a future technology savior. But AI has become overused, interpreted as a human replacement rather than a technology to enhance human interaction with computers. 

The persistent hype muddles the benefits of automated systems, obscuring the small but positive impacts the technology can have on an organization. 

Companies are using AI to streamline the customer experience, sparking an uptick in processing time and how many customer interactions an organization can handle. Almost 90% of respondents said AI has increased the speed of complaint resolutions, according to the report. 

AI can step in to handle rote processing, leaving the more challenging cases to human agents, according to the announcement from Merijn te Booij, chief marketing officer for Genesys.

Leading organizations are taking a measured approach with AI, weaving it into existing technologies and trialing it on a small scale. Customer experience innovations are a key target area for AI implementation, but some companies are already weaving it into the back end.

Walmart is experimenting with AI in the back office to help with invoice processing and exception handling. And Johnson & Johnson is combining machine learning capabilities with domain expertise to experiment and identify counter intuitive results.