Laying the Foundations for Agentic with a Customer Data Platform
As established, a Customer Data Platform is more than just another system of record. It sits above systems of record, unifying data streams into a single location and format for ease of access. A CDP is a system of action, coordinating activity in response to the information it receives. A CDP does more than just coordinate activity though, it orchestrates data from different sources to support exceptional service.
Data is critical to AI models, but unstructured data is worse than useless. Training takes time and care, and the outcomes you get out will only be as good as the data you put in.
This is the first critical role of the CDP in building the Agentic future: laying the data foundations.
- A CDP unifies data formats, creating a coherent body of customer and organizational information that can be used to train Agentic models and deliver exceptional outcomes.
- It’s not just your AI that stands to benefit: by bringing all your data into a single, accessible location, the CDP empowers your human agents with relevant customer data alongside every interaction.
- The CDP lets you access all this information, and the specifics on AI performance, from within a single reporting interface, to make coordination easier for strategists and administrators.
The Customer Data Platform offers coherence, utility, and transparency for your teams. If you’re going to put Agentic AI to work, a CDP is where you’ve got to start.
A CDP Enables Hyper-Personalized Agentic AI
Your customers are AI sceptics, and there’s only one way to change that mentality: prove quality. No one likes to feel as if they’re being shunted over to an AI chatbot. It’s enough to make them feel rejected, burdensome, unwanted. People want human interaction; they want advocates who can champion their cause and get results.
Agentic AI is more than just a scripted chatbot. Their autonomous nature means that Agentic systems can act as advocates, empathizing with customers and taking immediate action to resolve their issues. But it’s not enough just to solve a problem; great Customer Experience turns interactions into experiences, and customers into advocates.
To get off the ground in the contact center, Agentic AI needs to master empathy and personalization. The CDP is essential here.
- A CDP makes customer data instantly accessible to an Agentic system. The AI can draw out customer details and context, immediately understanding who the customer is and why they’re reaching out. That means an accurate, personalized greeting, which makes reference to previous interactions, to establish an immediate foundation of confidence.
- Today’s generative AI models can be incredibly persuasive, even to excess. No one likes a sycophant. Your customers don’t want to be pandered to; they want results. A CDP that equips your AI systems with organizational knowledge can help keep interactions on track, ensuring that your AI models stay helpful, not just charming.
- Though it should be your goal to resolve every interaction on the first attempt, not everything can be handled in a single chat. In cases where a customer has to call back, preserving context from the previous interaction can increase the likelihood of a successful resolution on the second attempt.
To be anything more than a flashy gimmick, your Agentic AI solution needs to be backed by accurate customer and organizational data. Failure to personalize will lead to failure of uptake, which will turn your AI investments into wasted effort.
The CDP Turns Agentic AI into a Powerful Human Tool
Make no mistake, Agentic AI is about automated tasks. But that doesn’t mean it’s here to replace your human agents; it’s here to enhance them. Every contact center agent has their fair share of boring or repetitive tasks. Depending on the individual, these might make up a majority of their responsibilities. Mostly, these involve data entry and management: ensuring that systems of record are accurate and up-to-date.
We’ve already discussed how the Customer Data Platform improves access to data; how it makes customer data accessible from any location, via any device, to speed up data entry and make management easier. With Agentic AI, that’s just the start:
- Agentic AI can automate data entry and management tasks. By recording and transcribing customer interactions, it can draw out key data points and populate them to the CDP. All the agent needs to do is check the data for accuracy and approve the upload.
- Agentic AI can speed up the process of outbound communication by drafting hyper-personalized outbound messages en masse, which agents then approve and send off.
- After each interaction, Agentic AI can automate feedback processes, drawing on real-time sentiment analysis and performance statistics to generate feedback personalized to the agent, or support a supervisor in the delivery of agent training and coaching.
The CDP turns Agentic AI into a tool of empowerment, helping AI deliver for your human employees. The success of any Agentic AI projects depends on successful adoption. The best way to drive adoption is to demonstrate value to employees, and the CDP supports the delivery of that value.
The Future of the CDP is Agentic
Agentic AI is the next big thing, and it’s going to continue to evolve as the demand for fully-autonomous Customer Experiences grows. The technology might not be fully mature now, but as it approaches that stage, Agentic AI has the potential to completely transform the way we interact with businesses.
- Self-service is about to go into over-drive. As the limits of what Agentic AI can do within businesses shift, self-service will make up a far greater share of total interactions. Self-service will become the norm – if your organization can’t offer comprehensive self-service, you’ll start to fall behind.
- Customer Experience agents will become premium advisors. When agents are only handling the most sensitive, complex issues, expert knowledge and empathy will become premium skills.
- Customer service will move from ‘human in the loop’ to ‘human in the lead’. Customer service agents will shift from handling customers, to managing teams of AI agents. This will require upskilling, but will yield tremendous efficiencies for organizations.
The future is agentic; that is, if you’re able to keep up. And the first step to getting ahead is optimizing your data.
