The future role of machine-to-people interactions in transforming the customer experience has been spotlighted by Mitel research that says 80% of UK IT decision makers think it will have a positive impact.
Close to 40% expect a correlation between improving customer experience and increasing revenue, and 73% have a projected timeline to allow machines to interact with people in two years or less.
Almost as many say they plan on tying together devices, emerging technologies and communications and collaboration capabilities within two years to enable such interactions, which 40% expect an increase in revenue by doing so.
"Customer experience is an active, strategic discussion across industries as organisations look to leverage new technologies associated with the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and machine learning," said Gary Gould, Marketing Director UKI, Mitel.
"Giving machines a voice in machine-to-people interactions can be a powerful differentiator as the relationship between businesses and consumers shifts from transactional to more experiential, and customer experience becomes just as important as the product or service a company provides."
Yet companies in the UK are behind some nations in the race to embrace technology to better serve customers.
According to the research, 56% of those surveyed reported having made over 50% progress in improving customer experience as part of their digital transformation initiatives, below the global average of 59% and far behind the North American figure at 72%.
Business and IT misalignment were identified as chief barriers to using digital transformation to advance customer experience.
Legacy infrastructure and systems were cited as the second most common obstacle indicating the need for breaking through organisational silos and finding ways to modernise existing infrastructure.