AI Is Moving Customer Experience From Faster Responses To Smarter Outcomes
Bengaluru: Sukesh Shetty, founder of Away.ai, said artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing customer experience by enabling businesses to focus not merely on responding faster, but on delivering the right outcome with less anxiety and in less time.
In an interaction with mediapersons here on Thursday he said every customer interaction operates on two distinct layers empathy and information. While humans are naturally better at empathy, reassurance and judgement, AI has a significant advantage when it comes to handling information. The ability to identify the right information, provide it at the right moment and act on it reliably can determine whether a customer experience is successful.
“Most poor customer experiences are not necessarily caused by a lack of empathy. They happen because the information was missing, incorrect or took too long to arrive,” Shetty said.
He noted that customer service deployments of AI in recent years largely focused on chatbots, ticket management and reducing the workload of support desks. While these applications improved response times and helped businesses reduce costs, they did not fundamentally change what customer service teams could accomplish.
The next phase of AI adoption, he said, is moving towards handling complex, information-heavy decisions that customers would otherwise have to navigate on their own. Instead of simply providing an answer and leaving the customer to determine the next step, AI systems are increasingly capable of carrying an interaction through to completion.
Shetty said the use of AI in customer experience is also becoming more industry-specific. Rather than relying on generic AI systems, businesses are beginning to develop applications around the specific needs and decisions associated with different sectors.
In financial services, AI can help customers understand the real implications and costs of a financial decision rather than simply presenting a headline figure. In healthcare, AI can help reduce uncertainty between identifying a symptom and determining the appropriate next step, while still maintaining the distinction between assistance and medical diagnosis.
In retail, personalisation could have an unexpected effect, with AI helping customers navigate choices by showing them fewer but more relevant options. Instead of overwhelming consumers with products and information, intelligent systems can use behavioural and contextual information to simplify decisions.
Personalisation, Shetty said, is where customers most visibly experience the benefits of AI. Effective personalisation is based on a combination of behaviour and context rather than a single transaction or interaction. When businesses consistently provide relevant information without customers having to repeatedly ask for it, the experience can build familiarity and trust.
He emphasised that trust in AI is not established immediately. Customers are more likely to allow an intelligent system to take increasingly important decisions on their behalf after it demonstrates reliability through a series of smaller interactions.
“Trust with an AI system is earned in a specific order,” Shetty said, adding that systems attempting to take on major decisions before establishing reliability in smaller ones risk losing customer confidence and engagement.
Shetty also stressed that the success of AI in customer experience should not be measured simply by the sophistication of the underlying technology or the ability of a system to sound more human.
The more important test, he said, is whether businesses are prepared to allow AI to operate at the information layer of decision-making. AI must move beyond providing reassurance or shortening waiting times and demonstrate that it can reliably support and, where appropriate, execute decisions.
He said this shift could redefine the role of customer service, with AI increasingly becoming an operational layer that connects information, decision-making and action. Human teams, meanwhile, can focus more heavily on empathy, judgement and situations requiring nuanced understanding.
For businesses, the opportunity lies in combining the strengths of humans and AI rather than attempting to make AI replicate every aspect of human interaction. The ultimate measure of successful AI adoption will therefore be whether customers receive better outcomes with greater confidence and less effort.
Shetty said businesses that achieve this balance can move customer experience from a model centred on faster responses to one built around accurate decisions, meaningful personalisation and reliable outcomes.