On June 18, we were proud to be a platinum sponsor at Genesys Xperience UKI 2024, joining over 800 attendees at The Brewery, London. The event followed Genesys’s flagship customer experience (CX) event of the year in Denver, where its Chairman and CEO, Tony Bates, shared his vision for the future: where customer and employee relationships are transformed through a human-centric approach to developing and implementing AI.

The theme for this year’s UK event was “Your Future Accelerated,” focusing on how empathy, AI and automation can create outstanding experiences for customers and employees. And it was cleverly brought to life as soon as you arrived, with a Ferrari racing car parked just outside the entrance – a reminder of the exhilarating speed and power of AI in accelerating the customer experience. Plus, an incredibly empowering keynote speech from Nicolas Hamilton, who shared snippets of his life journey as the first disabled athlete to compete at the top level of British motorsport.

The overarching theme of the event was AI. And how it’s essential for businesses to embrace this transformative technology as a strategic imperative.

One of the main stage presentations which really captured our attention was how organisations can harness AI for seamless customer Experience Orchestration (the process of identifying and creating personalised customer journeys). There were five levels of Experience Orchestration, and attendees were asked at which level their business operates. Interestingly, the majority saw themselves at ‘Level 2,’ which introduces natural language-enabled automation of routine dialogues with customers across all channels, including voice, text, chats or social apps, but still requires a large degree of ‘human’ interaction.

We’ve been partnering with Genesys for over 20 years, and together, we’re at the forefront of driving Level 3 Experience Orchestration into the mainstream, which makes heavy use of large language models and generative AI. At this level, virtual agents handle a lot more challenging use cases, like product enquiries, and unlike chat bots, are capable of more natural and engaging customer conversations, knowing exactly when to hand things over to human agents. These innovations can deliver our customers new business value and opportunities. For example, faster resolution of customer issues can lead to increased customer loyalty and retention.

During the presentation, Genesys also unveiled some of the latest Level 3 Experience Orchestration platform capabilities to empower agents and maximise performance, including:

Agent Copilot - an AI-driven contact centre feature that assists customer service agents by providing real-time information, suggestions and automated actions.

Predictive Routing - uses AI to automatically match customers to the right agents.

Work Automation - seamlessly connects front office and back office systems to provide consistent end-to-end customer experiences. 

Like any other sector, consumers expect government services to be personalised. But there’s currently a gap between the experiences they expect and what public sector organisations currently offer. Robbie Warwick from the Home Office , spoke about the public sector’s ‘empathy gap,’ highlighting the importance of CX and the need to improve service interactions to build trust amongst citizens and reduce costs. Emerging technology like large language models (LLMs) and Generative AI can help. An LLM chatbot for example can automatically identify the type of information or action a customer is seeking and generate a response from previous conversations and media, for more natural and engaging conversations.

Robbie also emphasised the importance of working with an experienced global CX partner to future-proof CX solutions for organisations. We’ve been working with the Home Office to migrate its critically important UK Cross Sector Top 1% contact centres to Genesys Cloud. And thanks to our detailed knowledge of network, regulatory and security compliance, as well as hands-on experience with the migration of people and processes, the organisation has benefited from a smooth and rapid transformation. With our end-to-end solution, the transition has only taken two months, without any disruption or risk, reiterating the value of a trusted partner to ensure CX success.

A number of companies  joined together on the main stage to share their advice and learnings on AI-powered customer experiences. Here’s what they had to say:

“Slow down with Generative AI.” Organisations of all sizes are rushing to implement Generative AI. But one cloud-based service provider advises its customers to slow down. While Generative AI brings several benefits, it also poses serious cyber security, regulatory compliance and privacy risks. So it’s important to seek guidance and train employees to ensure your organisation uses it safely and responsibly.

“Don't try to skip any steps.” The key to proving the value of CX lies in customer data. And the more data, the better. So make sure yours is in good shape and of high-quality, to ensure reliability and accuracy.

“Choose the right partner for your ambition.” Lean into the ecosystem, leverage the network and invite people to share their CX expertise.

Generative AI is expected to surge in business adoption over the coming years and is poised to revolutionise the customer experience. Get ahead of the curve by identifying key touchpoints in your CX journey where AI can personalise interactions, improve efficiency, or automate repetitive tasks.

AI is transforming customer experience, but it can’t replace human interactions just yet. Even so, as Bill Gates reminds us: "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.” So don’t get left behind. Embrace AI now to create exceptional customer experiences that will future-proof your business.

Packed with insights to help organisations transform their customer and employee experience, Genesys Xperience UKI 2024 was a brilliant event. Luc Puylaert, Head of Product Management at BT, sums it up the day perfectly, saying : “We’ve been partnering with Genesys for over 20 years and it’s been truly inspiring to witness the innovation and ambition to deliver better, smarter, more personalised services and engagement for customers and citizens. There’s been a lot of talk today about AI as a strategic imperative and how together we can level-up to reap the benefits. At BT, we’re already supporting our customers to bring together disparate systems, integrate data sources seamlessly and build a scalable, flexible, future-ready environment. The ultimate experience starts here today – with Genesys and BT.”