27 Mar Gen Z grads say their college degrees are worthless thanks to AI

Reimagining the Customer Service Experience With Gen AI

In today’s digital-driven world, AI is reshaping customer service and adapting to meet the needs of Gen-Z and are shedding light on the future of CX. However, businesses must remember that while AI can improve efficiency and handle routine tasks, human agents still remain essential for addressing complex or sensitive issues. By finding the right balance between AI and human interactions, brands can deliver exceptional customer service experiences that meet the evolving needs of Gen-Z and beyond.

“In general, Gen Z culture doesn’t have a norm for greeting/acknowledging people they don’t already know. However, many rejected the notion that just because the job isn’t great doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be greeting customers. Naturally, many service workers who are guilty of the Gen Z gaze defended themselves and reminded the internet that their jobs suck. “At doctors’ and dentists’, front desk people act like they have no idea why you’re there and give a dazed stare like they don’t know what a doctor or dentist is,” someone else shared. While it might not seem like a big deal to initiate conversation as a customer, many shared that being on the receiving end of the silence has caused confusion and isn’t what is expected from customer-facing roles. A group of authors and journalists this week filed a class-action lawsuit against Anthropic in federal court, alleging that the company committed “large-scale theft” in training its AI chatbot Claude on pirated e-books and articles.

Samsung isn’t exactly an impartial party; it sells and develops many AI-powered products, so it has a vested interest in painting AI in an overall flattering light. Neither is EduBirdie, whose bread-and-butter business competes directly with ChatGPT and other AI writing assistants. It would doubtless prefer folks be wary of AI — especially AI apps that give essay pointers. Yet, according to a report published earlier in the year by EduBirdie, a professional essay-writing service, more than a third of Gen Zers who use OpenAI’s chatbot platform ChatGPT and other AI tools at work feel guilty about doing so. Respondents expressed concerns that AI could limit their critical thinking skills and hamper their creativity. Gen Z is on the rise, and just like Millenials before them, their entrance into the market promises a significant shift in the types of services and experiences businesses need to offer to stay relevant.

Adapting CX Strategies to Meet Evolving Consumer Expectations

With generative AI, we’re now on the edge of e-commerce transformation that we simply have never seen before. That offers incredible opportunities for marketers and businesses at large to stand out in an increasingly competitive market. The ones who begin to prepare now and understand this changing environment are the ones who I believe will lead the charge. Importantly, that experience can span channels—a critical role marketers will play in creating this new kind of shopping journey. No matter where a customer begins their journey with a brand, it moves seamlessly with them, essentially allowing them to build their own journey in real time. An eye-popping 88% say the use of advanced technology helps them overcome “task paralysis.” It’s an affliction, similar to the social media-viral “functional freeze” phenomena, that flares up when workday duties become too demanding.

Gen-Z’s Guide To Customer Service – Where AI Meets The Human Touch

Almost a third of respondents said such jobs offer better long-term prospects, while a quarter said the roles are less likely to be taken over by AI. Despite how new the technology is, support groups have formed to help those who have become addicted to it. “Gen Z has grown up with technology as a constant in their lives, so it makes sense that they’d be more open to new ways of connecting,” Bronstein added.

• Younger applicants are far more likely than their older counterparts to feel that AI has rendered their skills — and schooling — useless.
• As a result, Gen Z has developed a well-honed scepticism towards anything that appears too polished, too perfect, too contrived – a skill that will serve them well as AI-generated content becomes increasingly sophisticated and harder to distinguish from reality.
• For example, using the pay-later mode in a restaurant poses some challenges when customers have to factor in a tip, Levchin said.
• The participants expressed joy in harking back to their past to help identify their future-self.

This process of self-discovery can prove particularly powerful now, at a time when AI and algorithms are often shaping our experiences and interactions. We believe this new-found self-awareness can help Gen Z navigate the complexities of an AI-driven world with greater confidence and clarity. Traditional classroom settings alone are no longer sufficient; innovative, experiential approaches that allow students to become critical thinkers and embrace individuality are required to develop well-rounded professionals. That “seamless” piece is what marketers and e-commerce teams must be focused on as the adoption of generative AI grows. Today, different pieces of the e-commerce experience are often managed separately by disconnected solutions, each powered by a different view of the customer.

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While many have ingrained these recommendations into certain aspects of their shopping experience, others have used them in a far more significant capacity. Stitch Fix, for instance, has revolutionized e-commerce clothing shopping by incorporating machine learning algorithms to analyze customer feedback and offer tailored style and product recommendations. One of the troubles with customer service interfaces is just how unpredictable humans can be; the variability of our questions and responses when we’re stressed, frustrated, or desperate is often what makes those interactions so unwieldy. Gen-Z expects personalization, speed, and convenience, but they also want to ensure that AI solutions don’t compromise the human experience.

On Tuesday, OpenAI publicly launched fine-tuning for GPT-4o, letting developers use proprietary datasets to customize the structure and tone of the model’s responses or get the model to follow “domain-specific” instructions. Despite generally positive trends, Affirm’s stock sank to $31 a share from $35 a share pre-earnings, and it ended the week at $32 a share, as investors were underwhelmed by Affirm’s slower-than-expected momentum. Increasingly, customers are using Affirm for more diverse purchases, including for everyday items, Levchin said. About 10% of Affirm Card users’ spending on the card is now in the debit mode, up from 6% during the quarter that ended Dec. 31, 2023. For example, using the pay-later mode in a restaurant poses some challenges when customers have to factor in a tip, Levchin said.

When every second counts, lengthy customer inquiry resolutions—or complete failures to resolve them—often end up being more costly to the company than to the customer. To that end, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has found that companies ignoring the value of gen AI in centralizing tasks and reengineering processes can leave up to 50 percent in efficiency and effectiveness gains on the table. A major challenge in customer service is managing the surge in demand during peak moments, from product launches to special promotions or even crises. By deploying AI-driven chatbots and virtual assistants, companies can manage large volumes of customer inquiries at scale, offering instant answers to common questions.

What is surprising is just how fast and effective the sea change could actually be here, and it starts with just how well a transformation is delivered. With Deep Customer Engagement AI’s offerings, these outcomes can be achieved faster and with far less risk. Enter Deep Customer Engagement by BCG X, a transformational gen AI offering that could have a massive impact on myriad elements of customer engagement. While younger generations are generally open to AI, they still have concerns – and one significant issue is trust. According to the Prosper Insights & Analytics data, 21.2% of Gen-Z respondents said they didn’t trust AI to have their best interests in mind. Additionally, 32.1% were worried that AI might provide incorrect information, proving a need for transparency and reliability in AI-powered systems.

This is particularly true within e-commerce teams, where functions like marketing and merchandising work separately, using different tools and data sources even as they work to drive similar end results. But for some customers, it doesn’t matter how advanced the capabilities of gen AI become—nothing will ever replace the comfort and security of speaking to a live, human customer service agent. To remain competitive, companies must continuously refine their customer experience strategies to meet shifting consumer expectations. As technology and customer behavior evolve, the brand’s approach to customer service should as well. In addition to self-portraiture, we have found that employing personal branding exercises can help students develop their unique identity. Encouraging students to create personal mission statements, identify core values and develop genuine social media profiles – rather than the “Insta-just-for-show” variety – can help them establish who they really are.

He cautioned that it’s very early to predict the long-term effects of gen AI, but he’s optimistic about ways to deploy the technology across the organization. The average cost of college in the United States has more than doubled over the past 24 years to $38,270 per student per year, according to the Education Data Initiative. Many surveyed Zoomers said they didn’t want to be burdened by paying back burdensome college loans. It’s a stunning inversion from decades’ past, where a job requiring a college degree typically offered far better pay than blue-collar work.