Smart CX Automation: What to Automate First for Maximum ROI and Customer Trust
Every week someone claims AI can run your contact center. Some boards are asking why you aren't automating faster. The real question for support leaders is simpler: what should you automate first?
Signals are mixed. A Gartner study shows most customers don't want AI involved when money or mistakes are at stake. Yet Verint reports most consumers find AI helpful for everyday issues, especially younger customers. The takeaway: automation works when it's scoped smartly. Push too far, and trust slips. Just ask Air Canada, which lost a tribunal after its bot gave wrong refund guidance (case coverage).
Start With Fit: The Automation Matrix
Not every task belongs in an AI queue. Classify work by risk and volume before you build anything.
- Low-risk, high-volume: Automate now. Password resets, refunds within policy, delivery updates.
- Medium-risk, moderate-volume: Automate with guardrails and easy escalation. Loyalty updates, warranty claims.
- High-risk, sensitive: Keep human. Billing disputes, fraud investigations, medical questions.
The line between what AI could do and what it should do is where trust is won.
Automate Simple CX Tasks: Refunds, Resets, and Quick Wins
Targets that follow rules and are reversible are your "day one" wins. Password resets, account unlocks, policy-bound refunds, and reshipments fit perfectly. They clear queues and reduce cost without risking customer relationships.
RCBC Bank partnered with Kore.ai to automate high-volume, rules-based service. Result: $22M in annual savings and over 600,000 cases deflected in year one. Retail teams see similar gains with instant refunds and reshipments. Mistakes are easy to fix, and ROI shows up fast.
CX Self-Service: Faster Answers for Common Requests
Give customers the information they don't want to wait on hold for: order and delivery status, appointment confirmations, warranty details. These don't need judgment, just speed.
Deutsche Telekom deployed Rasa CALM virtual agents to resolve routine questions. Half of incoming requests were handled autonomously, cutting agent workload by 30%. Add knowledge search for both customers and agents, and you'll see handle times drop. Reliability here earns the right to automate more later.
Proactive CX: Prevent Issues Before They Hit Your Queue
Some of the best "automation" never becomes a ticket. Proactive alerts calm customers and cut spikes: flight delays, service outages, suspicious transactions.
Lufthansa uses Cognigy to send delay and rebooking alerts to millions of passengers before they call. Telecoms notify outages with ETAs. Banks push instant fraud checks. Fewer surprises, fewer calls, more trust.
AI-Powered Agent Assist: Productivity and Accuracy Without Risk
Big early gains live behind the scenes. Post-contact summaries, suggested replies, knowledge retrieval, and automated QA lift productivity without exposing customers to risk.
Heathrow automated call summaries and hit 95% accuracy, saving minutes per interaction and improving data quality. Yopa rolled out intelligent agent assist and saw a 4x productivity boost. Tools like Scorebuddy automate compliance checks so supervisors can focus on coaching, not spreadsheets.
Automate Internal Workflows: IT and HR
Your contact center isn't the only place with repeatable work. IT and HR are packed with policies and FAQs that drain time.
AMD deployed Kore.ai across global HR to handle thousands of employee queries. Wait times fell, headcount pressure eased, and employees got consistent answers. Wins like these build internal confidence before you take bigger swings in customer channels.
Data-Driven Automation: Clean CRM, Better Personalization
Messy data ruins automation. Fix CRM hygiene early: deduplicate, enrich profiles, and standardize fields. Then use AI to surface next best actions and relevant offers.
Simba Sleep used Ada to automate low-value questions so human agents could focus on sales, adding £600,000 in monthly revenue. Vodafone unified profiles and automated targeted engagement, lifting customer engagement by 30%.
Scale Safely and Sustainably
Getting first wins is easy. Scaling without hurting trust takes discipline. Measure what matters, then add guardrails.
- Time to resolution: Don't just track deflection; track how fast issues are solved.
- Deflection rate: How many contacts are fully handled by automation vs. bounced back.
- CSAT/NPS: Score the experience, not just the cost.
Build control first: clear audit trails, smooth escalations, and kill switches to stop bad workflows fast. Vendors are moving this way: NICE pairs CXone Mpower with Cognigy for proactive outreach, Genesys pushes AI Studio for agent guidance, Salesforce ties Agentforce to Data Cloud for personalization, and Microsoft is piloting its Customer Intent Agent.
Your First 90 Days
Keep it simple and safe. Prove value fast. Then expand.
- Automate: password resets, refunds within policy, delivery updates, proactive notifications, post-contact summaries.
- Expand to: agent assist, IT and HR requests, CRM cleanup and enrichment.
- Measure: time to resolution, deflection, CSAT/NPS, and agent productivity.
What's Next: Agentic AI With Boundaries
Autonomous agents are coming. Forecasts suggest they could resolve most interactions by 2028. That doesn't mean hand over everything. Move too fast and you risk errors that damage trust. Move too slow and competitors pass you with faster service.
Use a simple rule: automate where the stakes are low and the rules are clear. Escalate when emotions or money are on the line. Trust is the KPI that compounds.
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Brands mentioned: Cognigy, Verint
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