80 percent of IT managers want to increase the AI budget
IT executives are rethinking their strategies after years of economic uncertainty and rapid technological progress: there is a clear shift in their investments towards the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI). This is shown by a recent Zendesk survey of 1,200 IT decision-makers worldwide.
In the survey, IT managers cite improving the employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX) as a priority. At the same time, the focus is on data protection and security. Competitive pressure, increasing customer requirements and new AI tools are decisive factors for these changes.
The role of AI in the transformation of CX and EX
Leading companies are increasingly investing in generative AI tools: Deploying and optimizing AI across the enterprise has become a significant priority, according to 84 percent of IT leaders surveyed. 80 percent plan to increase their AI budgets within the next year.
Over half of respondents (57%) believe that improving the employee experience (EX) will be extremely important over the next 12 months. Almost 9 out of 10 (89 percent) believe that the integration of AI into the entire customer journey is of great importance. They are aware that the implementation of AI is associated with challenges: 58 percent are concerned about the pace of the rapidly changing AI landscape - they fear they will not be able to keep up. IT teams are also faced with the challenge of achieving more with fewer resources.
Top priority: data protection and cyber security
The increased risk of cyberattacks, growing customer requirements, stricter data protection laws and the simultaneous need to process large volumes of sensitive data are bringing the issue of security into focus. The majority of IT managers (87%) agree that data protection and cybersecurity are a top priority. Almost as many (88%) state that they plan to increase the budget for cyber security in the next 12 months. At the same time, 79 percent of respondents would like more support from partners and vendors: they believe their current CX software could do more to address cybersecurity issues. Policies and tools that promote customer and employee trust are just as important as systems that secure the growing amount of data.
"The survey shows the enormous potential that AI holds for CX and EX. The majority of IT managers have also recognized this, so it is now a matter of making targeted use of the potential and not squandering it due to data protection and security concerns," says Tanja Hilpert, Vice President DACH at Zendesk. "We see it as our duty to drive forward AI-based CX in a responsible and data protection-safe manner in order to help our customers make processes more efficient and minimize risks."
Source: www.zendesk.de
