Coveo, the leading enterprise AI platform that brings AI Search and generative AI (GenAI) to every point-of-experience, enabling remarkable personalized digital experiences that drive business outcomes, today released its fourth annual Coveo EX Industry Report. The report, “Can GenAI Empower Employees to do More on Their Own?,” is based on a survey of 4,000 U.S. and U.K. adults aged 18+ who use a computer in their work for companies with 5,000+ employees.
Conducted in partnership with Arlington Research, the research examines the entire digital employee experience journey, exploring the effect of information flow on work quality and ultimately customer experience. The report also dives into how GenAI trends are shaping employees’ expectations of the digital workplace – and how some are breaking the rules, known or not.
Findings reveal that employees are optimistic about GenAI solving the information gap by speeding up answer finding. In fact, more than two-fifths (42%) say finding relevant information faster or personalizing the intranet for their own specific needs would help in their everyday work. Notably, more than half of field support and 50% of sales expressed the desire to use GenAI to better serve customers and prospects. Additionally, 40% of those in customer service and support said generative tools can help them spend less time searching so they can resolve cases faster.
“With trends like ‘quiet cutting’ permeating today’s workforce, it’s no surprise employees are worried if they have the best and most current information to do their jobs effectively,” said Patrick Martin, EVP of Global Customer Experience and GM of Knowledge and Service at Coveo. “The lack of trust and guardrails for using AI tools can lead to increased inefficiencies and risk as employees scour internal systems or use potentially untrustworthy tools. In this study, we found that employees are excited about the role GenAI can play in empowering employees with a knowledge tool to gather relevant information quickly. But GenAI is not a bolt-on — enterprises need to consider the full infrastructure needed to deliver accurate and trustworthy answers.”
Findings in the latest installment of Coveo’s 2024 Employee Experience Industry Report include:
- Humans preferred – employees continue to be the foundation of a great customer experience, but many feel they are not well equipped to meet this challenge. When customers do prefer self-service, 64% of them say the experience would be improved if they had a human on standby should something go wrong. Unfortunately, employees don’t feel well-equipped to meet those customer needs.
- Lacking the right information at work leads to frustration and burnout. With increasing workplace data, employees feel overwhelmed when they can’t find what they need to do their jobs. One-third (34%) reported frustration and burnout due to inadequate tools, and 30% felt less confident in their work quality and information sharing.
- Knowledge of GenAI workplace policies is limited. Nearly 60% of respondents in the US and UK said their workplace lacked a GenAI policy or they were unaware of one. Interestingly, awareness was highest among executive and senior management (75%), while junior staff at the largest organizations were least likely to be informed.
- While companies evaluate GenAI tools, employees are forging ahead using publicly available (and potentially untrustworthy) tools. Compounding the situation, the use of non-permitted tools is high amongst those in IT (24%), and executive leadership or software development (21%). While executives and the tech savvy see the potential in GenAI, this only further emphasizes that companies must clarify the rules and risks around the use of public generative tools. Of note, such public tools can retain enterprise information — and even train their models on it.
- Is it a hallucination or not? Employees often can’t tell if they’ve encountered a GenAI hallucination. One-quarter of respondents said they had, while almost a third were unsure. These realistic hallucinations are hard to spot and can pose a significant risk to companies already facing information overload, potentially bogging down employees with inaccurate information and potentially making their way to customers.
- Employees are keeping guardrails up due to a lack of trust in GenAI tools. Over one-third (36%) always fact-check generated answers. Both staff and management trust enterprise-approved tools more than public ones but still fact-check (38% for management, 34% for staff). While curious about GenAI, employees seek a reliable tool they can trust.
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