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Okay, be honest. How long have you spent exploring AI without seeing any real change in your customer experience? If it’s been 12–18 months (or more!), you’re not alone. The pace of innovation makes catching up feel impossible. And committing? Even harder. Fear of making the wrong decision can be paralyzing.
But every delay comes at a cost. Here’s how to spot the endless planning trap before you stall out—and how to take action, instead.
The Evaluation Loop that Never Ends
It happens all too often: A company starts with good intentions. A cross-functional team assembles to evaluate AI solutions, creating a detailed RFP, conducting thorough vendor assessments, and developing comprehensive implementation roadmaps. This takes time—let’s say six months. By then, they realize the AI landscape has shifted dramatically.
- Their original requirements are obsolete.
- Their potential vendors have released new versions with different capabilities.
- New players in the market have new game-changing approaches.
- Their problems can now be addressed in ways they’d never considered.
So the cycle begins again, with updated requirements and a fresh assessment of the market. You see where this is going, right? Technology continues to move on and the same thing happens. This is how 12–18 months can pass without meaningful impact on the customer experience. Teams frustrated, budgets questioned, momentum lost.
The Hidden Cost of “No Impact”
When your contact center does not make meaningful impact on the customer experience, your customers get the exact same experience today as they did a year ago. “Well, that could be okay,” you might say. “Consistency and all that.” But consider this:
Same hold times. Same scripted responses. Same customer frustrations.
And that’s not okay. Same hold times while agents search through multiple systems for basic information. Same scripted responses that don’t quite address their specific situation. Same frustrations when they need to repeat their issue multiple times because information doesn’t follow them from agent to agent.
Basically, your customer experience is stuck in the past while your customers’ expectations have evolved.
While You Plan, Others Deploy
While you’re stalled out in the endless planning trap, your competitors are deploying AI quickly and effectively. And those competitors? They’re not just direct competitors in your industry. Customers compare every brand interaction with the best experience they’ve had, which means you’re competing against a very broad field. And beyond customer loyalty, you’re also competing for call center talent.
Effectively deployed AI solutions means other brands are offering:
- Reduced handle time
- More first-call resolutions
- Modern, responsive experiences
Every month spent planning instead of acting is another month falling behind competitors—and behind customer expectations.
How to Break the Planning Trap
You don’t want to get stuck planning. You don’t intend to fall into this endless cycle. So how do you break free? The short answer: take action. But sometimes that seems easier said than done, when that fear of making the wrong decision kicks in.
Based on our experience working with companies of every size—from in-house CX programs to massive call centers—we’ve found that success comes from smaller, actionable steps. These keep risk low and manageable while paying off in big ways:
- Start with real workflows, not just strategy. Anchor AI in day-to-day problems, rather than trying to solve the whole big picture at once.
- Get middle management involved. They know the pain points and where impact can happen fast.
- Prioritize tools that are deployable. Avoid cumbersome platforms that require total tech overhauls or IT-led rollouts.
- Run micro-pilots with clear success metrics. When you start by shipping small, you can scale—or pivot—fast.
- Use solutions built for operations, not innovation theater. Beware of unreasonable promises or solutions looking for a problem.
Endless planning doesn’t lead to transformation—it leads to stagnation. AI can drive real change in your customer experience program, but only if it makes it out of the evaluation stage and into the hands of your team. So start small. Start real. Even start messy. Just don’t stay stuck.
