Why It Matters: The contact center industry, notorious for high turnover rates and job dissatisfaction, is experiencing a paradigm shift with the integration of generative AI. This technology is not only improving operational efficiency but also playing a crucial role in talent retention and skill development.

Key Findings:

• Software Quality: 79% of agents believe that access to good software is crucial for job performance.
• Performance Boost: The report highlights that agents utilizing AI are twice as likely to strongly agree that they perform better in their roles compared to those who do not use AI. This underscores AI’s role in augmenting human capabilities rather than replacing them.
• Technology Investment: A significant 89% of agents using AI believe their companies prioritize technology investments to support them, compared to only 57% of non-AI users. This indicates a growing recognition of the importance of technological support in agent performance.

Contact centers are under pressure to transition from cost centers to profit centers, necessitating a shift in agent priorities from solely customer service to include sales. Generative AI supports this transition by enabling agents to upskill and confidently engage in sales activities.

• Sales Confidence: 81% of AI-equipped agents can comfortably shift interactions from service to sales, with over 80% reporting confidence in upselling and cross-selling.
• Effective Coaching: Generative AI enhances coaching, with personalized approaches proving nearly three times more effective than standard methods.
• Demand for Insights: 75% of agents seek more visibility into the data used to judge their performance, emphasizing the need for data-driven, personalized insights.

Conversica, Inc, the leading provider of AI-powered Conversation Automation solutions for enterprise revenue teams, today announced the results of its latest research study The 2024 Marketing Executive AI Sentiment Report.

The Report explores the advantages marketing leaders believe AI brings to revenue growth and their brand over the past year, and plans for its use in the next 12 months by CMOs, VPs, and marketing executives. The Report also reveals top use cases where marketing leaders are leveraging AI for revenue growth, and highlights their general AI trust sentiment.

Key Findings:

• 89% of marketing leaders reported AI-driven initiatives have directly contributed to an increase in revenue within the last year
• 90% plan to increase investment in AI by expanding the use of current tools or exploring new AI applications in the next year
• Marketing leaders believe AI technologies have the greatest potential to impact the middle of the funnel (44%), with lead nurture and qualification topping their list of use cases with the greatest impact on conversion rates and revenue (45%)
• 69% of respondents reveal their top concern is AI’s ability to deliver trustworthy, brand-accurate information
• 53% of marketing leaders are concerned about losing human oversight in customer interactions with the use of AI

Download the full survey report here.

AI Adoption in Marketing

With fewer than 5% of marketing executives reporting no AI usage in the past 12 months, The 2024 Marketing Executive AI Sentiment Report confirms AI has been widely adopted for marketing in the last year. Data on respondents’ plans for the future show that AI for marketing use will continue to grow over the next 12 months, with 46% planning to increase investment in AI technology they already use and 44% planning to experiment with new applications.

“Conversica’s latest Report shows businesses have moved past the ChatGPT frenzy and beyond the experimental stage to understand how AI becomes their competitive advantage,” said Jim Kaskade, CEO of Conversica. “Savvy marketing leaders who strategically adopt comprehensive AI-powered Conversational Automation solutions for revenue-centric business operations such as lead generation, engagement, and conversions are already experiencing steady growth and concrete revenue-generating results. In fact, I’ll be as bold to say, ‘adopt or die’. For CMOs executing on the status quo, get ready for the unemployment line.”

A key finding from the Report identified a correlation between specific AI use cases and sales conversions that resulted in revenue. Marketing leaders who plan to prioritize AI use for inbound lead engagement and outbound lead generation next year were more likely to have experienced a direct increase in revenue attributed to AI use within the last year.

Looking beyond their own immediate plans, nearly half (45%) of Marketing leaders rated lead nurture and qualification as the AI use case with the highest potential to impact conversion rates and drive revenue growth.

Over the next 12 months, respondents’ plans for AI use cases to impact the funnel include:

• Improving real-time engagement and responsiveness to leads (65.5%)
• Scaling outbound marketing for lead generation (59.5%)

Inbound follow-up, which the group selected as their top planned use case for the next year, was a distant second when compared to potential conversion rate impact, with less than a quarter placing it at the top of their list.

“As new tools are launched and marketing use cases continue to expand across businesses and industries, we expect to see organizations focus on refining their AI strategies and applications to harness their full potential. In the next year, AI will deliver even more revenue opportunities and impact growth as marketing executives scale their use cases and reap the benefits,” added Kaskade.

Overall Trust in AI is High, With Brand Accuracy a Top Concern

The Report revealed that 89.5% of marketing leaders trust AI at least somewhat to act autonomously within their organizations, with 44.5% reporting complete trust and 44.5% some trust. When asked to highlight their specific concerns for Conversational AI use cases, respondents cited AI’s ability to deliver trustworthy, brand-accurate information most (69%), followed by losing human oversight in customer interactions (53%).

Given these concerns, to ensure a reliable AI integration process within a company, leaders must create a transparent process that allows human oversight and only acquire solutions from trusted AI providers that have proven track records for success in the specific use cases they’re seeking to deploy. Learn more about the ethical use of AI in Conversica’s AI, Ethics and Corporate Responsibility Report.

About the Study

The research study was conducted online using a random sample of 454 CMOs, VPs, and marketing executives within the United States by SurveyMonkey on behalf of Conversica in February 2024.

About Conversica

Conversica delivers two-way conversations that activate all parts of the funnel with precision, proactively increasing conversions and growth. Whether the focus is converting leads in Marketing, closing deals in Sales or growing existing customers in Customer Success, Conversica’s Powerfully HumanⓇ conversations are informed by the industry’s most advanced enterprise-class, self-learning AI models derived from billions of human interactions over more than a decade. The Conversica Conversational AI platform is powerful enough to hold meaningful dialog in real-time across the entire customer lifecycle and smart enough to seek out and fill the ‘conversation gaps’ in the funnel, delivering the right message at the right time to put any hint of interest on the fast track to conversion. Attack each gap and slowdown point in the buyer journey with precision, influencing and persuading leads, prospects and customers through automated 1:1 interactions tailored to the unique needs of each contact.

A supplemental rule on banning the use of impersonating individuals is a result of the comments that were filed on the proposed rule banning the impersonation of businesses and government agencies, the FTC announced. Scammers are using technology to defraud consumers by impersonating the voices and personalities of individuals they know — such as family members and friends.

The FTC is also considering holding the companies or platforms that allow for the creation of impersonated images, voices, or videos liable if they know or have reason to know that the tool is being used to harm consumers.

Under the new rule prohibiting the impersonation of businesses and government agencies, the FTC will be able to seek monetary relief in federal court from scammers that:

• Use government seals or business logos when communicating with consumers by mail or online.
• Spoof government and business emails and web addresses, including spoofing “.gov” email addresses or using lookalike email addresses or websites that rely on misspellings of a company’s name.
• Falsely imply government or business affiliation by using terms that are known to be affiliated with a government agency or business (e.g., stating “I’m calling from the Clerk’s Office” to falsely imply affiliation with a court of law).

The rule will go into effect 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register.

Learn More.