Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform the customer experience, said a panel of leading experts during a special reception hosted by Arabian Gulf Business Insight (AGBI) at the Capital Cub Dubai, DIFC, on 15 November.

The exclusive, invite-only event welcomed an audience of senior business leaders from across the UAE to explore emerging trends, opportunities, and challenges brought on by the advancement of AI, as well as the best ways for businesses to navigate its wide-spread influence on people, processes, products, and productivity.

The discussion was led by Michael Bayler, a sought-after strategy consultant and author, who was joined by a panel of international AI specialists – including Mario Rizk, a principal in Oliver Wyman’s Digital Practice; Jessica Groopman, a respected Silicon Valley-based analyst; Professor Neil Maiden, the current director of the UK’s National Centre for Creativity enabled by AI (CebAI); and Noel Tock, a technologist and founder of digital experience agency, HumanMade.

In their discussion of key narratives framing public perception of AI in the workplace, the panellists identified customer experience (CX) as a key field that would undergo a transformation thanks to AI, notwithstanding the challenges of aggregating a single organisation’s huge volume of data into a single platform, and associated data security challenges.

“I think it’s very tempting to replace individual pieces of workflows with AI, and this is not necessarily the best outcome for customers,” said Noel Tock, who counts AirBnb, TechCrunch, and Siemens among his agency’s clients.

“What is the best outcome for customers? Being able to send the right message, to the right person, at the right time.

“There’s a great opportunity [with AI] to go back to the first principles of what is your ideal customer, who are they, spending time with them, and then working back from there.”

Michael Bayler agreed, citing the $600 billion value of the global CX market.

“Anticipating a possible customer need, looking at where customers are in context, and then being able to feed them real-time solutions [is key] to data and digital customer service, but there are basic fundamental attitude problems to resolve in the customer service market before we can move forward,” he said.

Jessica Groopman highlighted other narratives that will shape the CX space, including acceleration and building, as well as their combined impact on democratisation of knowledge at an organisational level.

Mario Rizk added: “There’s a new set of algorithms around large-language models, and consumer expectations…and experience will change, and this change will drive product and market change. At the same time, there are conversations around how to resist the rabbit hole of AI. This is the concern.”

The solution doesn’t lie in resisting AI, though, but in learning to leverage its capabilities to foster creative problem solving across business operations.

“Creativity and creative problem solving isn’t something that happens occasionally,” said Professor Neil Maiden.

“It’s embedded in the world. Combining generative AI technologies with machine learning, creative search, and old fashioned, symbolic AI enables us to come up with new architecture that can deliver augmentations to creative problem solving.

“What we’ve done is bring all these technologies together to prompt business leaders to be more creative and solve problems in more creative ways.

“Creativity is often seen as a trade-off with productivity, but our observation with these technologies is that there’s a sweet spot with both,” he added.

As AI continues to drive new approaches to creativity within business, individuals need to maintain their sense of purpose, agreed the panellists.

“There’s something fundamental about how we define ourselves. Often, an idea we generate is the extension of ourselves. So, it’s really important [with the adoption of AI] that ownership remains with the people,” said ProfessorMaiden.

This sense of purpose needs to extend beyond the individual to the organisation, with leaders carrying the responsibility of redefining corporate identity, echoed Bayler.

He added: “The incredible lack of leadership and what corporate purpose means has to be resolved, and there needs to be greater stewardship of purpose. The real question isn’t ‘what is your AI strategy?’, it’s ‘how is this strategy in service to our purpose?’ Purpose should be the primary lens through which we interrogate our approach.”