LAS VEGAS — At Customer Contact Week (CCW) in Las Vegas this week, leaders in customer service agreed that AI represents the future. Where they differed was on the specific challenges this technology brings to businesses.

If not handled properly,AI can add to the burden of already exhausted employeesand create discomfort in their workflows. At the same time, without careful education and training, as well as a clean and orderly data foundation, related investments may underperform or even seem unjustified.

CX Dive spoke with several CX leaders and analysts at CCW about how technology is reshaping customer service. The following four interviewees shared their views on the challenges they or their customers have encountered in AI investments.

InfoPay: Beware of executives detached from real-world use cases

Jessica Gupta, COO of InfoPay, believes that everyone needs to understand what AI can and cannot do in the contact center.

Gupta noted that this is not only crucial for frontline employees working directly with AI agents. AI education is a systematic effort that requires participation from the top down, all the way to the highest leadership.

"In the C-suite, the higher the position, the more disconnected one can sometimes become from the actual use cases of tools," Gupta told CX Dive. "This applies to almost all tools, so what is truly needed is a collaborative effort to learn together, stay aligned, and clarify what to do next."

Gupta said that for CX teams, clearly communicating realistic expectations to management about what can be achieved this quarter or next, and explaining changes in cost structures and customer journeys, has always been challenging. However, these teams must keep communication channels open.

Gupta believes that combining education and training with clear expectations helps teams make a reasoned case when risks are too high or an implementation is truly not feasible, thereby avoiding investments in use cases that could lead to undesirable outcomes or require complete rework.

Talkdesk: AI may exacerbate employee fatigue

Neville Letzerich, CMO of Talkdesk, said that since the COVID-19 pandemic, companies have been asking employees to do more with less. For many employees, the introduction of AI only amplifies their fatigue.

"People feel overwhelmed and left behind by the times," Letzerich told CX Dive. "Even those who love AI and want to keep up with its pace can find it becoming a full-time job."

Letzerich believes the solution is not only setting goals and boundaries for AI itself, but also establishing rules for how teams implement AI. The key is transparency—clarifying how much workload employees are expected to handle, how far the company intends to go with AI applications, and which implementation projects should be paused for now.

Letzerich pointed out that setting expectations and delivering on them is the responsibility of leadership. CX leaders face pressure to move faster and do more with less, but they need to be thoughtful about achieving this without overworking their teams.

"I think if companies just apply AI to everything at a pace so fast that they lose direction, we will see some companies fall apart," Letzerich said. "So, I think we will see both spectacular success stories and some unfortunate failures."

CMP: Data governance remains a team weakness

Nicole Kyle, Managing Director and Co-founder of CMP Research, pointed out that there is no shortage of excellent customer analytics and insight tools on the market. The problem is that many customer contact organizations have not yet organized their data to a state where they can leverage these tools.

"It may sound tedious, but I think data governance and knowledge management are critical," Kyle told CX Dive. "These are not the most glamorous topics in CX operations and customer service, but they are the root cause of long ROI cycles and poor customer experiences from new technology investments."

Kyle believes companies need to streamline their data, whether by better utilizing existing tools or investing in new ones. The way data is configured must support the actual usage needs of their operations.

Kyle emphasized that this is not just the task of CX teams. Other functional departments, including sales and marketing, also generate large amounts of data. Getting these teams to work together can be difficult, but it presents a real opportunity to enhance the maturity of customer contact functions.

RingCentral: Overcoming fear in first AI implementation

John Finch, Vice President of Global Product Marketing at RingCentral, said that not every company currently feels comfortable implementing AI.

Finch said that while it is tempting to rush, it is important to build confidence through a proof-of-concept phase—first using AI internally, and then making it the "face of the organization."

"Going live and delivering immediately, suddenly calls stop coming in, sales stop, and inquiries vanish—that can be a bit scary for some people," Finch told CX Dive.

Finch believes these teams need to develop an end-to-end blueprint before putting AI into operation.Mapping the customer journeyand clarifying expectations helps in understanding the role AI will play in it.