Over the past two years, Generative AI has become a kind of managerial Rorschach test: some see it as a shortcut to cut costs, others as a nightmare of bots talking to already frustrated customers. The reality, as is often the case, is far more interesting. Leading consulting firms, from BCG to McKinsey, from IBM to Capgemini, are converging on a fairly clear diagnosis: the future of Customer Experience will be neither fully human nor fully artificial, but a carefully engineered coexistence between people and digital intelligence.
To understand why, it is enough to look at what already happens in a modern contact center. Generative AI does not simply “answer”, it listens, reads, summarizes and suggests. While a human agent is speaking with a customer, an invisible copilot analyses the context, retrieves the customer’s history, proposes the most appropriate response, flags inconsistencies and, at the end of the interaction, even writes the summary. This is not science fiction, it is already everyday operations in many companies. The result is not a replaced human, but a human who suddenly works with infinite memory, extraordinary speed and the ability to never forget anything.
This leads to a point that research is making increasingly explicit: the real difference is not made by the AI model itself, but by how it is embedded into daily work. Consulting firms insist on this because they have seen too many organizations buy powerful technology and then leave it unused. On average, only a small portion of a successful transformation effort is purely technical. The rest is made of training, processes, incentives, roles and even organizational psychology. In other words, AI only works when people are actually able and willing to use it well.
On the customer side, things are changing faster than many believe. Most people do not hate artificial intelligence; they hate wasting time and not being understood. If an automated system solves a problem in thirty seconds, it feels efficient. If it forces you to press “one” nine times and then drops the call, it feels like a public enemy. When designed with care, GenAI can understand what you need, adapt its behavior and, most importantly, hand you over to a human being when the situation requires it. This is where the hybrid model shows its true power.
Major consulting firms now openly talk about an augmented workforce. This means that many repetitive and administrative tasks will disappear, while the value of human skills such as empathy, judgment and the ability to handle ambiguity will increase. Paradoxically, AI makes people more central, not less, because it takes away mechanical work and gives back relational and decision-making work.
And what about a typical Italian SME, with limited budgets and endless priorities? The answer is not to buy the most expensive platform on the market, but to start where AI generates immediate value. Customer service and back office are ideal starting points, because GenAI can already reduce the time wasted on emails, transcripts, reports and information searches. Simple tools, well integrated and supported by basic training, are often enough. The biggest mistake is to think that AI is just a technology issue. It is, above all, a managerial choice: deciding that people should work better, not harder, and that technology is there to support them, not to frighten them.
The future of Customer Experience will not be ruled by bots, but by organizations that know how to use artificial intelligence to make human intelligence shine. And for once, that is a kind of progress worth looking forward to.
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