Maximise AI’s impact on CX with a data-first approach.

In the rapidly evolving world of customer experience (CX), organisations are under growing pressure to modernise operations, enhance customer engagement, and drive operational efficiency, often through artificial intelligence (AI). Yet, approaches to AI deployment diverge significantly across the market.

By Greg Jarvis, Head of Customer Success at Connect SA.

While many organisations gravitate towards quick wins anchored in high-volume, low complexity use cases, these superficial gains often fail to unlock AI’s true strategic potential. 

A case exists for a more transformative route – one grounded in deep data analytics, cross-functional alignment, and a relentless focus on data quality.  

Discover how a data-first approach, rather than opportunistic experimentation, can futureproof CX strategies and catalyse meaningful outcomes.  

The conventional approach.

Across the CX landscape, early-stage AI deployments often follow a familiar path: organisations focus on easily scoped use cases, such as automating FAQs, routing simple queries, or implementing basic self-service capabilities. These are typically low-risk, high-volume functions with short time-to-value. 

While these initiatives can yield quick traction and stakeholder buy-in, they come with limitations. Their value is typically incremental rather than transformational, and they seldom establish the strong data backbone required for scaling AI intelligently.  

Worse still, they can entrench siloed thinking, treating AI as a tool to reduce headcount rather than as a strategic enabler of differentiated experiences.

The data-driven paradigm.

At Connect, we advocate for a different approach – one that begins not with the technology, but with data.  

A deep-dive co-analysis of the customer’s existing environment, operational metrics, and unstructured data sets forms the bedrock of our AI deployment strategy. 

Rather than rushing to implement off-the-shelf AI features, we prioritise understanding the richness, accuracy, and availability of existing data. This diagnostic phase enables us to identify high-impact, organisation-specific AI use cases that align with business objectives, process gaps, and real-world operational complexity. 

In this paradigm, AI deployment becomes a strategic lever, tightly integrated with CX vision, contact centre operations, and business performance goals. And it begins not with the tech, but with trust in the data.

A co-authored success story.

In one particular engagement, the executive we are collaborating with had not yet successfully implemented AI-driven transcription within their contact centre. They had encountered a significant stumbling block: their existing solution was only able to transcribe 60–70% of voice calls with acceptable accuracy.  

This fell well short of the 85 – 95% threshold needed to support confident data-driven decision-making. 

The risk was clear. With poor transcription accuracy, any downstream analytics or AI models built on top of that data would be compromised, leading to misaligned actions and misguided investment. 

Yet, this engagement surfaced a different kind of success: alignment. Through structured engagement, Connect and the executive team reached a shared understanding: that meaningful AI implementation requires a trusted foundation of data integrity.  

This alignment of philosophy, rather than a rushed implementation, became the real success story. It was a case study in strategic patience, where both parties agreed that building confidence in the underlying data architecture was a non-negotiable precursor to any AI deployment.  

That mutual understanding now forms the cornerstone of a longer-term co-innovation roadmap.

The path to impactful AI.

The path to impactful AI in CX doesn’t begin with automation. It begins with data. 

Organisations that focus on quick fixes risk missing the transformative potential of AI.  

In contrast, those that invest upfront in understanding and strengthening their data environments are better positioned to unlock sustainable value from AI.  

At Connect, we believe that alignment, integrity, and insight must come before implementation. The future of AI in CX belongs to the organisations willing to look deeper.