Standard customer experiences often get lost in the noise. When every brand is touting “customer experience” how do you stand out? Personalized experiences cut through the clutter because they feel relevant. A customer who bought running shoes last month doesn’t want to hear about formal wear — they want deals on fitness gear. Show them you know their history and preferences, and they’ll keep coming back.
And agentic AI is poised to revolutionize personalization – taking user experiences across various industries to new levels. This article explores the goals of personalization, how agentic AI can transform personalization in CX, and some examples of how agentic AI can improve personalization across several use cases.
Goals of Personalization
Personalization enhances interactions by tailoring responses and actions for individual interactions, rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach. Personalized experiences make customers feel seen and understood, which can increase trust and can lead to repeat business positive referrals.
Without personalization, interactions are necessarily generic and, therefore, limited to standardized responses that may not fit the situation.
How Agentic AI Improves Personalization
Unlike traditional, script-driven AI models that passively wait for user commands, agentic AI can make decisions and execute complex tasks with minimal human intervention. This allows for personalization at an unprecedented speed and scale, acting as an always-on customer relationship strategist.
Artificial intelligence can automate tasks necessary to gain information about each customer, individually. By analyzing and incorporating data, such as browsing history, account information, purchase patterns and location information, a customer profile can be built.
Even more powerful is the agentic AI’s ability to remember and build upon past interactions. This combination makes interactions with AI agents feel more like a conversation with someone who understands your specific context and can make customers think, “They know me.”
A personalized approach transcends simple interactions, such as “Our address and hours are…” Instead, it anticipates needs, offering solutions, such as, “I see you have oral surgery scheduled for Thursday at noon. Would you like to reschedule? We have availability next Tuesday at 9 AM. Will that work for you? Please remember to refrain from eating prior to the procedure.”
Common Applications of Personalization Using Agentic AI
While the uses of agentic AI are potentially unlimited, here are a few examples of how organizations can use it to enhance customer experience – and the benefits that can be realized.
Proactive Problem Solving
Airlines
Agentic AI can determine if a passenger on a delayed flight will be at risk of missing their connecting flight. If so, it can look up the passenger’s destination and airline status and automatically book a replacement flight with the correct cabin class and seat preference.
Upon landing, the app can greet the passenger with information about the new flight and directions to the new gate.
Benefits:
- Ability to handle spikes during weather events and other widespread conditions
- Smoother, less stressful experiences for passengers
- Less manual effort for staff
- Improved efficiency
- Reduced complexity
- Happier passengers
- Reduced staffing requirements
- Less stress for staff and airports as a whole
Insurance
After a regional hurricane, some carriers integrated agentic First Notice of Loss (FNOL) experiences into their mobile apps, allowing policyholders to report damage, share photos, and receive personalized updates and repair instructions from an AI agent.
Benefits:
- Policy holders don’t have to wait for a human adjuster in order to start the claim process
- Policyholders get tailored updates and instructions, streamlining a potentially difficult process
- Ability to handle spikes during weather events and other widespread conditions
- Reduced load for staff
- Improved efficiency
- Reduced complexity
- Happier policy holders
Utilities
During an outage, call volumes spike and wait times skyrocket. There is no way to anticipate when an outage will occur and staff is consequently overwhelmed. However, agentic AI can identify all homes and businesses within an outage area and provide proactive notification that an outage is occurring.
For those who are calling in to report an outage, the agentic agent (as opposed to a more traditional scripted agent) can identify the address associated with the calling number, check a GIS map for outages and inform the caller if their property is in a known outage state. It can potentially provide an estimated resolution time. And it can handle notifications when the outage is resolved.
Benefits:
Proactive notification deflects calls to contact center to report outages already known
Ability to handle traffic spikes during outage events and deflect callers in known outage areas, reducing call volume
Less stress for contact center staff
Improved efficiency
Happier customers
Healthcare
Agentic AI can be used for appointment scheduling and proactive outreach for:
- Appointment reminders
- Lab results
- Rescheduling
- Appointment follow-ups
- Confirmation and instructions for upcoming procedures
- Prescription refills
- Health tips
In addition, agentic AI can provide:
- 24/7 access to information and support through intelligent chatbots and virtual assistants for inquiries
- Personalized health insights through analysis of patient data for:
- Disease diagnosis
- Second opinions
- Early disease and risk identification
- Readmission risk
- Recommended proactive interventions
Benefits:
- Reduced cost of care by ensuring patients are well-informed and adhere to care plans
- Improved health outcomes
- Smoother, less stressful experiences for patients
- Improved efficiency
- Happier, more well-informed patients
- Less stress for staff and patients
In essence, agentic AI transforms personalization from a rule-based, reactive process into a seamless, autonomous engine that can understand, predict, learn and adapt in real time. This allows organizations to create truly individualized experiences for millions of customer touchpoints.
The Future of Agentic AI in Personalization
During a recent trip, I encountered an unexpected fuel charge on my rental car bill after returning home. I logged into the rental agency’s online portal and initiated a chat, where an agentic AI responded.
I provided my rental agreement number and stated my intention to dispute the fuel charge. The AI immediately presented all rental costs within the chat window, formatted clearly and embedded directly, rather than as a separate attachment. In addition to the full breakdown, the AI specifically itemized the fuel charges.
Then I clarified that there should be no fuel charges, as I had returned the tank full and had a photo of the dashboard showing both mileage and a full tank at the time of hand-off. I reiterated my dispute of the charges.
The AI then seamlessly handed me to a live chat agent, who had access to the full transcript, eliminating the need to re-explain the situation. I again stated my dispute regarding the fuel charges, and the live agent confirmed that a credit would be issued. Aside from a 5-minute delay between each exchange with the live chat agent, the experience was relatively smooth, and the credit did, in fact, appear on my credit card statement.
Personalization allowed the AI agent to respond specifically based on both my account information and what I was requesting. It’s not a bad start, but I wasn’t thinking “They know me” afterward.
How could personalized agentic AI improve this experience in the future?
Hyperpersonalization: Anticipating user needs before they arise
Because I’m an existing user of the rental agency app, the AI agent could have proactively identified my most recent rental based on available information, such as the date and location. This would have eliminated the need for me to manually provide the rental agreement number, streamlining the initial interaction. This simple type of anticipation should be easy, given the information is readily available.
Seamless integrations across multiple touchpoints
It’s easy to envision an AI agent managing this interaction entirely, rather than transferring it to a live agent. It could access the dashboard image I uploaded and scan it for verification. It could then issue the credit and send a confirmation email for my records.
Increased sophistication and learning capabilities increases proactive problem-solving
Going further down the line, a system integrated with the car itself would have seen the tank was full and not charged the fuel charge in the first place. One can dream…
This dream highlights the potential of truly integrated, agentic AI systems. Imagine a future where your car isn’t just a collection of disconnected features, but a cohesive entity aware of its own status and your interactions with it.
In this ideal scenario, the car’s integrated system would possess real-time knowledge of its fuel levels. Upon recognizing that the tank was already full, it would intelligently bypass any attempts to initiate a fuel charge, thereby preventing an erroneous charge on your statement. This would then eliminate the need to dispute the charge, deflecting an irritating interaction and negative customer experience.
Such a system wouldn’t merely react to explicit commands; it would anticipate needs and correct potential issues before they arise. This level of foresight and self-awareness is the hallmark of personalized, agentic AI – a system that acts autonomously and intelligently to optimize its own operations and, by extension, the user experience.
The implication is a seamless interaction, free from the minor annoyances and potential financial discrepancies that currently exist due to fragmented systems. It’s a vision of ultimate convenience and efficiency, where the technology fades into the background, working flawlessly to enhance daily life.
The Seamless Integration of Agentic Personalization
Personalized agentic AI offers a vision of ultimate convenience and efficiency, where the technology fades into the background, working flawlessly to enhance daily life.
At the same time, poor implementations or lax security have the potential to create a fiasco. So, it’s critical to ensure that your organization has a strong foundation from which to build AI capabilities.
Global Tech offers an online quiz that will provide a high-level score of your organization’s AI readiness. We also assist in identifying and assessing the viability of AI use cases and creating strategic plans for implanting AI.
This article was originally published on Genesys.com/blog here: http://bit.ly/4hhiXua
