Exceptional CX is no longer a luxury. Learn how Generative AI transforms customer interactions, even for businesses with legacy on-premise systems.
Every company strives to offer a good customer experience, viewing it as the key to repeat sales, loyalty, and referrals. From speed and convenience to friendliness and providing a human touch, success is never down to one single factor.
Exceptional customer experience is no longer reserved for luxury purchases
Once upon a time, exceptional customer experience was only associated with luxury or indulgent purchases. However, in 2025, this is no longer the case.
Whether shopping for groceries or contacting a bank or insurance provider, consumers now expect a personalized and streamlined experience across all touchpoints.
The 2023 Customer Contact Week (CCW) report found that nine in ten consumers were more likely to support brands that offered easy experiences, with nearly as many gravitating toward those that personalize interactions.
The same report found that despite rising consumer expectations, reality didn’t quite live up to the mark. Indeed, only 4% of consumers felt that their experiences with businesses had improved. Even more troubling, a staggering 57% felt experiences had gotten worse.
Interestingly, the 2024 CCW report found that customer service leaders perceive Generative AI (GenAI) as a viable solution to various problems. The overwhelming majority (70%) of leaders who felt that self-service needed to be more personalized and resolute see Gen AI as the tool to help them achieve this aim.
Leaders are also confident in Gen AI’s ability to help them foster more contextually relevant self-service that is capable of acting based on customer data.
With Gen AI now making an impact, it’s worth exploring why some businesses cannot still achieve exceptional customer experiences.
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Upgrading legacy and on-premise solutions
As all businesses can appreciate, it’s unrealistic to completely overhaul existing systems and processes as soon as a new technology arises. Migrating to Generative AI solutions takes time, and while most contact center environments are gradually shifting to the cloud, many remain reliant on on-premise solutions.
In fact, according to a global customer experience study of 1,531 companies, fewer than 30% of contact centers have switched to the cloud. The Metrigy study found that 21.5% operate their contact centers from their physical location, with 20.8% reliant on servers at a third-party data center.
Alongside cost, businesses cite wanting to retain control over their technology in terms of rolling out new features, apps, and workflows. Often, significant ROI remains in existing legacy systems, dissuading many IT executives from exploring potential rip-and-replace changes.
Customization is another factor, with in-house teams possessing considerable knowledge about the technologies in place and the use cases for what else is needed. This level of customization is a key reason why 22.5% of organizations won’t move to the cloud, believing they won’t see the benefits.
Interestingly, 21.6% believe they know their business better than the cloud providers.
Generative AI can’t be ignored
As we’ve already highlighted, introducing Gen AI to the CX industry is transformative, fundamentally changing how businesses engage with their customers. Early adopters already report higher agent productivity, improved self-service, and increased customer scores.
Now is not the time to stand still.
Gen AI leverages large language models (LLMs) to create highly personalized, contextually aware interactions. This allows contact centers to move beyond scripted responses and efficiently deliver experiences tailored to each customer’s needs.
According to Gartner’s 2023 Forecast Analysis, the global market for conversational AI and virtual assistants will grow at a staggering 57.6% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) by 2027. This highlights the urgency for enterprises to integrate these technologies into their operations.
Yet, for many, the challenge has been effectively managing legacy on-premises systems that weren’t designed for such advanced capabilities.
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A vision for the future
There are solutions out there for businesses in this situation. Talkdesk’s Ascend Connect offers a suite of Gen AI applications, bridging the gap between traditional on-premises contact centers and allowing brands to enhance their offerings.
Offering a flexible, no-code platform that integrates effortlessly with existing third-party on-premises contact centers.
The solution provides powerful AI-driven applications without extensive technical know-how or the risk of disrupting current operations. Furthermore, the platform allows migrations at a pace and for touchpoints across the customer journey that make the most sense for a business in the near term while allowing it to expand to other points of interaction later down the line.
For example, a business can elect to start adopting AI-powered self-service solutions in the near term while reserving more complex AI feature adoption, such as live agent assistance or supervisor analytics, for a future time window that best fits operational readiness criteria.
In addition, because businesses can rely on the Talkdesk platform for end-to-end AI solutions, they can avoid multiple vendor administration for billing, service management, and upgrades.
As we look to the future, Gen AI will continue to redefine the customer experience landscape. The challenge for enterprises with legacy on-premises systems will be to adapt and evolve without being left behind.
Talkdesk Ascend Connect offers a path forward—a way to modernize and thrive in this new era without disruptive and costly infrastructure changes.
