Recent headlines predicting an economic downturn are forcing businesses to take new and creative approaches to attracting and retaining customers. Many are refocusing their efforts to enhance engagement, drive return on investments (ROI), and increase operational efficiency. 

Indeed, there is an understanding among technologists and industry leaders that engagement efforts need to be modernized. As a result, more businesses are turning to communication-platforms-as-a-service (CPaaS) solutions and programmable communications using the combination of data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI).

Today, using AI for personalized customer or employee experience is a primary focus for businesses, according to a new survey of product and marketing leaders by CPaaS company Nylas.

Businesses are “seeing immense value in leveraging AI and automation as a way to harness data and put it to work to create modern, personalized customer experiences and journeys,” said a company blog. In fact, survey respondents ranked data intelligence for personalization as a “critical AI service” because ultimately “better and more personalized experiences can directly drive customer loyalty and retention as well as lead to upsell opportunities and much more.”

Human interaction is still vital in ensuring a good customer experience — something that AI won’t be able to completely replace. “It’s the people who will often need to step in to create even more of those personalized experiences for customers,” said Gleb Polyakov, co-founder and CEO of Nylas. 

"If AI can take over the initial leg-work making it easier for that human interaction, both the customer and the AI implementation benefit,” he said.

When it comes to challenges, businesses need to ensure that when utilizing AI, they have access to real-time data. “AI is only as good as the data that is fed into it so accessing data in real time and leveraging it to build automation and personalization is really what is key in standing apart from competitors,” said Polyakov. 

“Understanding what AI can and cannot do is one of the main challenges that businesses experience,” he added. “While many believe that AI is taking jobs away from humans, the reality is that AI has a huge opportunity to create more customized experiences, but only if you use it correctly. However, because AI is used to automate experiences, there is also a potential to over automate when we want to personalize experiences.”