Getting personal: How AI will help businesses understand customers better

Things move fast in the world of AI, and that pace of change evokes mixed feelings for people working in customer support. While the technology shows obvious potential for helping businesses provide richer customer experiences, it also spawns concerns about the unknown.

In this episode, Zendesk’s Cristina Fonseca, vice president of product, chats with host Nicole Saunders about the challenges and opportunities AI presents. Before joining Zendesk, Fonseca was cofounder of Talkdesk and Cleverly.ai, and her knowledge of the AI space is unparalleled. During this wide-ranging conversation, Fonseca talked about how AI will help companies understand their customers better, what it takes for customers to be comfortable with bots, as well as how AI could create positive outcomes for both agents and customers.

Whether it’s automating mundane tasks or providing customer sentiment analysis, AI stands to make the job of helping customers easier and more rewarding. “With AI in the middle, we have the potential to make the world a better place for both customers and service agents,” Fonseca said.

Ultimately, Fonseca said, AI will likely help businesses gain a deeper understanding of their customers, enabling advancements in the customer experience. That idea has driven Zendesk’s AI offerings, she said. “What we have been doing is asking, ‘How can we make AI work on day one, with the click of a button, so our customers can really focus on driving value and collecting the benefits [of AI] we’ve been promised over the last decade without engaging in these super complex implementations?’”

Stay tuned for episode five of Conversations with Zendesk (July 12), which will feature AWS’s Deepam Mishra. In that intriguing interview, Mishra explores the problem of regulating AI, exciting AI use cases in fast-moving startups, and more.