Want to get real results from AI? Start by respecting people’s time.

Nobody is getting any more hours in the day. Nobody is getting more free time. If anything, our time is even more valuable and precious.

Because I spend my days forging and growing technology partnerships, I have a front-row seat to the latest software hitting the market. It’s an incredibly exciting time, and the sheer pace of innovation is staggering. But after looking at how hundreds of companies handle their technology, I can tell you that a lack of tools is almost never the problem. The software is out there. Where folks actually struggle is setting the foundation and figuring out how to harness it for their specific business goals. There just isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.

When we have interactions with companies during a frustrating moment — whether our travel plans have changed or we are navigating a major life event — we want to get through it in the most efficient way possible. We want an experience that still leaves us feeling positive and wanting to stay a customer.

Unfortunately, many enterprise contact centers view technology as a trade-off between automation and human connection. But it doesn’t have to be. To build a sustainable, impactful strategy, we must rethink how we balance AI and empathy.

The golden rule: Automating the predictable

My golden rule for balancing AI and empathy is to automate the predictable. It’s about finding those interactions that are unemotional, that don’t have a lot of charge behind them and making those easy for your customers. There is a lot of emotion and empathy that goes around being able to just do standard things very quickly.

When a company makes predictable interactions easy to self serve, customers notice. They don't want to spend a lot of time changing passwords or resetting accounts, but once you make it super easy for them, they will remember that ease of use. So find the easy, predictable interactions with customers to automate with a bot today, and leave those more emotionally charged interactions for an agent.

By offloading administrative tasks, you elevate the moments that matter. You give your agents the room they need to spend high-touch, quality time with customers during big life events — like navigating healthcare, handling a payday issue, or filing a complex insurance claim.

What it truly means to meet consumers where they are

When it comes to executing this, you have to look closely at multi-generational CX habits. On one end, we have older generations who didn't grow up with the internet and still place immense value on human contact. On the other end, younger generations will do everything they can to completely avoid talking to an agent. Meeting each group where they naturally want to be is its own form of empathy.

Personally, I am team self serve — until I can tell that the system has not been built properly. I will always try to self serve in every single way that I can, and I get really frustrated when I find out I can't do something basic, like resetting a password, without calling a 1-800 number. But if I can tell that the phone tree is antiquated, I will just try to hit zero as fast as I can because I don't have the patience to go through a poorly thought-out bot tree.

That is why the most expensive and cringe-worthy mistake a company can make right now is just throwing a bot out there simply to "check the box" on AI. Today’s consumers do not have the patience for a poorly thought-out bot.

Plus, every time a poorly configured bot forces a frustrated consumer to give up and call your 1-800 number, you are actively driving up your operational costs by forcing a complex live agent intervention. It’s a completely avoidable cost — and honestly, a completely avoidable mistake.

Using automation to anticipate needs

One of the clearest examples of empathetic automation comes from proactive communication. Monitoring customer behavior and reaching out with helpful guidance shows customers that an organization is looking out for them, not just reacting when something goes wrong.

This approach changes the tone of the relationship. Customers stop feeling like they have to chase answers. Instead, they feel supported. Trust grows when automation is used to anticipate needs rather than deflect responsibility.

Empathy also means recognizing that not every task requires human involvement. Low emotion, low value activities can be offloaded to AI so customers can focus on what actually matters to them. By offloading administrative tasks, you elevate the moments that matter. You give your agents the room they need to spend high-touch, quality time with customers during big life events — like navigating healthcare, handling a payday issue, or filing a complex insurance claim.

Data fuels the empathy engine

No AI initiative succeeds without a strong data foundation. Clean, current, and well orchestrated data is what enables automation to deliver the right experience at the right moment. Without it, even the most cutting-edge technology falls short.

If your customer is trying to engage with you across multiple channels, or they have to repeat the same information over and over again because your data sources aren't talking to each other, that’s an incredibly frustrating experience. By the time they finally reach a human, they are already agitated, making it that much harder for the agent to deliver an empathetic experience.

Empathy means maintaining clean data for the sake of your customers’ and employees’ sanity. When you invest in connecting your backend systems, you are actively choosing to respect people's time and spare them the frustration of repeating their problem. It means your agents aren't flipping through multiple tabs just to find basic information the customer already shared. When systems are connected, it bridges the trust gap and makes the customer feel seen across your entire business ecosystem.

But here is the catch: you cannot scale human empathy on top of broken, legacy infrastructure. True, real-time personalization is only possible if you move away from static databases and transition to a unified modern data estate.

Without a dynamic cloud ecosystem designed to centralize and clean your information, your technology will inevitably stall. In fact, Gartner predicts that 60% of AI projects that are not supported by AI-ready data will be abandoned through 2026. If you want your AI initiatives to succeed, you have to build them on a foundation that actually makes empathy possible across your entire enterprise.

It’s time to operationalize empathy

Too often, we let our internal processes and departmental requirements shape the customer journey instead of the actual people using it. But empathy starts by recognizing that customers do not experience your business in departments. They experience it as one journey.

When technology is designed around org charts instead of human needs, the result is completely predictable: you get solutions that are frustrating to navigate, less intuitive, and frankly, less effective in practice.

If you want better outcomes, you have to build with people, not just deliver for them. Real CX success — and the actual business results that come with it — starts with deeply understanding the human beings your systems are meant to serve.

To scale successfully, key leaders from every internal group — from the contact center and IT to marketing, finance, and legal — must be aligned on those intended business outcomes. If they aren't, you face friction points during deployment. For example, bringing security teams to the table early allows them to act as enablers who understand the guardrails, compliance, and data protection posture. Left out, they inevitably become eleventh-hour blockers.

True internal alignment requires investing in end-to-end change management. The C-suite must recognize that AI impacts the entire organization — transforming front-end customer experiences, augmenting agent workflows, and streamlining back-office administrative tasks.

Be your own customer

One of the simplest and most effective ways to evaluate empathy is to experience the journey firsthand.

Become your own customer. Walk through your own IVR. Call in and try to navigate a difficult, friction-filled interaction with your own company. Act like a customer who forgot an item in a rental car, or a patient trying to reschedule an urgent appointment.

Until you are walking in your customer's shoes, your strategy — and your empathy —  is just speculation. Experience the actual steps they take. Find the friction, map out the predictable interactions, and build your CX and AI strategy starting right there.

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