Everyone wants to use AI in customer experience. Far fewer leaders want to talk about the unglamorous thing that decides whether it works: the quality of your customer data. On Navigating the Customer Experience I spoke with Rebecca Stone, Chief Customer and Marketing Officer at Plume and former CMO of Cisco Meraki, who has spent more than 20 years building the datasets that help companies understand their customers. Her message was clear. Before AI can help your customers, your data has to tell the truth about them.
Messy Data? Centralize Before You Clean
When a leader tells Rebecca their data is a mess and they do not know where to start, her first move is always the same: centralize everything. Customer information lives in the customer success platform, the ticketing system, the product itself, marketing tools and the website. Some of it lives only in people’s heads and inboxes.
Pull it all into one data warehouse or data lake first. Only then can you see the overlaps and spot what is clean and what is not.
The Name Problem: One Customer, Not Four
Rebecca’s favourite example is wonderfully simple. A customer’s first and last name sit in one field in one system, are capitalized differently in another, and are all lowercase in a third. Suddenly one customer looks like four different people.
A simple program that joins those records fixes it, and that small fix creates a step change. Your frontline team gets the full history before they pick up the phone, and your executives get an accurate view across every customer.
I see the same challenge in customer satisfaction research. When survey results, complaint logs and mystery shopping scores live in separate spreadsheets, leaders end up debating whose numbers are right instead of fixing what customers are telling them. Bringing those sources together is often the most valuable thing a CX team can do in its first 90 days.
Where AI Ends and the Human Begins
Rebecca frames AI as augmentation, not replacement. Think about calling your internet provider when the service is down. You explain the problem to a chatbot, then to tier one, then tier two, then tier three, starting over every single time.
AI’s job is to carry your context forward, so that by the time you reach tier three the agent can say, “We have already tried these three things, so let’s start here.” That alone would transform how most customers feel about support.
There is something to being made to feel important enough to talk to a real person when you are struggling.
The back and forth conversation, especially when a customer is frustrated or stuck, is where people belong. Automate the simple things so your team has more time and attention for the complex, relationship driven ones.
Context Builds Confidence
As Rebecca moves deeper into customer success, the tools she values most are the ones that give her context before a conversation: conversation intelligence, CRM history and marketing data. Walking into an escalation already knowing the emails, the history and the background lets her be more personal, more confident and better prepared.
Your frontline team deserves the same advantage. If your people are greeting returning customers as strangers, the problem is not their attitude. It is the information you are giving them.
A Simple Checklist for Leaders
- List every place customer information lives today, including the informal ones.
- Bring those sources together before you buy another AI tool.
- Fix the basics first, like duplicate names and inconsistent fields.
- Use automation to carry context between channels and tiers, so no customer has to repeat their story.
- Protect the human moments, especially when something has gone wrong.
Key Takeaways
- Centralize your customer data before trying to clean it.
- Small fixes, like reconciling name fields, can turn four partial records into one accurate customer.
- Clean data serves both the frontline and the executive team.
- Use AI to carry context, not to replace connection.
- Automate the simple so your people can focus on the complex and emotional moments.
Listen to the Full Conversation
This article is drawn from the full podcast episode and show notes. You can also listen to Navigating the Customer Experience on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.
Want Help Applying This to Your Team?
I help service teams in South Florida, Jamaica and across the Caribbean turn insights like these into everyday behaviour through customer service training, mystery shopping and CSAT research. Book a free 30 minute CX strategy conversation and we will map out the right next step for your team.
About the Author
Yanique Grant is a customer experience expert, trainer and researcher with more than 17 years of experience and over 50,000 professionals trained across Jamaica, the Caribbean and Africa. She is a Service Quality Institute certified Customer Service Trainer, certified in Training Design by Training Magazine, author of The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience, and host of the Navigating the Customer Experience podcast, now in its 280th episode. Through ElevateCX and PTOS she helps organizations turn service into retention, reputation and revenue.
