Customer experience (or CX) has always been one of the main focuses of any successful global business. This is because they understand that the customer is, and always should be, the focus of any company. The existence of all types of businesses depends on their customers. It’s no surprise that finding ways to make this experience better and more unique has been Twilio’s mission, not only by developing but also partnering with the most innovative technologies capable of transforming the market by placing the customer at the center of the business. That’s why the company is so excited about the arrival of AI Agents.
Both major tech companies and world governments have announced government incentive packages for development that together amount to trillions of dollars in investments in artificial intelligence by 2025 and the coming years, according to corporate reports and recently released investment plans. Within these investments, the development, integration, and adoption of AI Agents (Agentic AI) should be the best next step within the perspectives of customer-centric companies, according to Vivian Jones, Twilio’s LATAM Vice President.
For the expert, this technology is a natural evolution of what companies have been trying to do with chatbots, IVRs, and various other communication tools for years, in addition to being the next step for generative AI in the world. Despite this, there are still those who are not deeply familiar with this novelty.
“Imagine interacting with a brand through any available customer service channel and having a fluid conversation, without the need to choose menu options, with an AI that responds generatively, with real dialogue, that knows your complete history, can suggest various solutions since it is versed in all the company’s details, that personalizes your service according to your preferences, is available, and helps you even when you choose to speak with a human agent, who will be equipped with knowledge and agility in accessing data, since they will have AI as support. This can help you understand how AI Agents will change everything when we talk about CX,” comments Jones. “It’s worth noting that these types of experiences are only possible if businesses have the necessary contextual data.”
AI Agents represent the newest evolutionary level of process automation and can be used in various contexts. They are, essentially, autonomous generative AIs. That is, in addition to their LLM-based response capability, they carry a proactive problem-solving characteristic. “To make this more playful, think of the fully integrated personal assistants capable of solving any problem that we see in movies, series, books, and video games,” explains Jones. “This is one of those moments when fiction becomes reality.”
Within the context of marketing, advertising, customer service, and CX, they enable:
- The highest level of personalization, as they can interact uniquely with a consumer;
- They allow optimizing campaigns with real-time adjustments to budget and targeting;
- They are not limited to expected questions and answers, like chatbots;
- They can take proactive and creative actions to acquire and retain customers, with knowledge of context and preferences;
- They solve the issue of large amounts of unordered data from diverse sources;
- They can suggest strategies based on large volumes of data, at scale; and much more.
For the expert, the technology will allow human CX agents to have a powerful ally when interacting with a customer, understanding contexts, suggesting solutions, products, and even learning from each consumer’s behavior and preferences. “It’s still necessary to invest in this type of solution to make it increasingly powerful, but there are already fully capable market solutions that tend to gain more and more functionalities and reach new levels,” explains Jones.
Of course, there are still challenges to be overcome, but most issues are already considered by companies today and are addressed with increasingly complex developments that ensure these AI agents operate within ethical and legal boundaries, protect customer data privacy, are integrated with different technology stacks, create protocols to avoid hallucinations, and even train professionals to make the most of this tool.
“The learning capacity of AI Agents allows for constant and rapid evolution of the technology, and this is very interesting in the context of CX, as CX dialogue can come from various channels, has long histories, carries tension when dealing with a problem, demands personalization when we talk about a sale, etc. These are complex scenarios, but they still need to be fully satisfactory for customers,” comments Jones.
To conclude, the expert emphasizes that customer-centric companies cannot ignore this evolution, as the next step in customer relationships undoubtedly involves the support provided by AI Agents.
