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Dion Millson, Head of AI Strategy at Connect.

Adoption of AI in contact centres is accelerating as executives look to keep pace with competitors and rising expectations. Yet, reports that up to 95% of AI projects fail reveal a deeper issue: many organisations are deploying AI before defining the business problems they’re trying to solve. AI has become the default response to CX challenges, rather than the outcome of a thoughtful strategy.

Rising pilot failure rates, concerns about an AI bubble, and a widening gap between massive investment in AI and actual returns are signals that AI, while transformative, is not a universal solution.

The best way to realise a genuine return on investment (ROI) and deliver real, sustainable impact, is to implement AI as part of a comprehensive business strategy, rather than as a standalone technology pilot.

A strategic approach begins with clarity: What are the business priorities? Which customer outcomes matter most? From there, a CX roadmap can be built that aligns these priorities with the right technologies and processes. AI should be selected only once the business problem is defined, ensuring the tools complement existing systems and deliver measurable value.

There has been a change from the old paradigm where improving CX meant increasing cost; the right use of technology will dramatically improve customer experiences, while at the same time delivering real cost savings.

AI excels at processing vast amounts of data, identifying patterns, automating routine tasks, and providing real-time insights. This is great for tools like AI Agent Assist, AI Quality Management and Conversational AI. However, AI cannot fix broken processes, compensate for poor organisational culture, or replace the need for human judgment in complex situations. It won’t magically align disconnected systems or overcome resistance to change.

Designing your CX strategy is like crafting a recipe for the perfect cake – it requires the right combination of ingredients mixed together in the right sequence to get the perfect outcome. But each customer journey requires many different ingredients from across the business to come together in the right way at the right time. Implementing technology requires careful consideration of each ingredient, such as:

• Foundational ingredients: The base technologies used with CX, such as contact centre systems, CRM, CSM, WEM and data tools.

• People ingredients: A customer journey touches so many different stakeholders across an organisation, with different opinions, from business to IT to risk, often with different representatives for each different system and for each different channel within a system.

• Optimisation ingredients: The different AI and automation technologies that sit on top of the foundation ingredients must be brought together in a seamless fashion to improve CX.

• The chef: The right service provider with the skills, experience and access to all the necessary ingredients to bake your CX cake.

A considered customer journey seamlessly orchestrates all the different technologies together with the company’s human elements.

Many organisations assume they can plug a RAG model into their data and instantly produce a high-performing bot. In reality, this often leads to shallow, FAQ-style exchanges that fail to support real customer journeys.

Typically, customer journeys start off as customer-led, with the customer explaining a need, and the agent looking to understand what’s required.

From there, the journey needs to become agent-led – taking the customer through a process that fulfils their need. This process requires understanding, which begins with context. Within each step of this journey, it is vital to understand which ingredient is most important to solve or assist with the customer query at that specific moment.

Channels are no longer just access points—they are ingredients in the customer journey. Voice AI offers immediacy, text channels like WhatsApp allow asynchronous exchange and richer data capture, and human agents provide empathy and judgment.

Omni-channel ensures customers can engage on their preferred channel, but opti-channel goes further: it intelligently selects the best channel for each step of the journey. For example, a voice agent may remain in conversation while a WhatsApp bot collects location data in parallel.

Designing these experiences requires creativity and—critically— the seamless transfer of context across channels.

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