The Reality of Business
AI & Customer Experience: Why Human Skills Matter More Now
Published: 21 May 2026 at 05:00 Europe/London
Listen on
Episode notes
Bob and Jeremy share what they learned at a three-day London customer experience (CX) conference and why AI now sits inside almost every customer journey.
As AI takes care of more of the routine work, the human conversations left behind are often the difficult ones – emotional complaints, complex problems, retention calls and moments where judgement still matters.
Bob and Jeremy also challenge some of the thinking currently shaping contact centres, customer experience and customer service strategy.
Across the episode they discuss:
- Why AI and customer experience are now impossible to separate
- The rise of AI agents supporting both customers and frontline teams
- How far conversational AI can realistically go
- Why Net Promoter Score (NPS) is becoming less trustworthy
- Using AI to analyse customer conversations instead of relying on surveys
- The gap between AI demos and what companies are actually implementing
- Why human roles are shifting towards more emotional, high-stakes conversations
- The importance of smooth AI-to-human handovers
- The cost, complexity and training challenges behind AI adoption
- Where the line currently sits between automation and human judgement
- And why customer service conversations are becoming more important commercially too
If you work in customer experience, contact centres, customer service, sales leadership or CX strategy, this episode will give you plenty to think about.
To find out more about our work and to see what we could do to help your organisation, visit www.realitytraining.com.
