What is Agentic AI?
Agentic AI is a type of AI that can act autonomously to accomplish tasks. This means that AI agents can make decisions and take actions on their own, and they can even learn from themselves to improve over time.
Agentic AI can think, learn and adapt without needing constant interference or redirection. 'Agentic' means 'agent-like behavior, such as expressing agency or control on one's own behalf'.
It's all about autonomy.
How can a virtual assistant act autonomously? By using a combination of advanced algorithms and machine learning to interpret data, make decisions and take action while continuously learning and adapting to complete tasks and achieve goals.
Agentic AI or Generative AI?
Don't confuse Agentic AI with Generative AI. Agentic AI focuses mainly on autonomous decision-making and completing tasks by itself, whereas Generative AI specializes in creating new content based on patterns learned from existing data, often as an answer to a question or prompt.
What are AI Agents?
An important component of Agentic AI are AI agents. These AI agents act as virtual employees with a certain degree of autonomy within the Agentic AI framework, designed to perform tasks on behalf of the business.
There are many types of AI agents, from agents that automate transactions to agents that help monitor data and processes, each tailored to perform its task autonomously. For example, AI agents can help with order management to streamline services, give shopping advice to help convert and boost sales, and much more. And there is no real limit to how many AI agents a business can create - except for the limit on available resources.
How to Control the Output of AI Agents?
Some may fear that AI technology can get a 'mind of its own' and that it is difficult to control. When employing multiple AI agents at once, there's also a risk of them getting in the way of each other.
So, how does one control AI agents? First, with a platform that has governance or quality assurance options, by setting clear objectives, and implementing role-based access. This makes sure that there is no unauthorized use possible with the AI tooling. And secondly, by actively monitoring the performance of the AI agents. Use dashboards to keep track on behavior and results, and tweak the AI agents accordingly to make sure everything works seamlessly and results keep improving.
What Are Use Cases of Agentic AI Agents?
Customer Service
With an Agentic AI agent, a business can provide 24/7 support, not just for answering frequently asked questions, but also allowing for self-service to make sure customers receive the help they need, whenever they need it. This will in turn also free the hands of your real-life customer service representatives, who can now focus on the tasks where human interference can be of real added value.
In customer service, Agentic AI can have a positive influence on customer satisfaction rates by handling inquiries, providing instant support with data-driven and objective responses, analyzing feedback, and facilitating self-service options such as creating and sending tracking links, registering returns in the system, and handling complaints efficiently.
Marketing
Agentic AI can help automate customer segmentation, personalize content, schedule, launch and manage marketing campaigns, and analyze consumer data for optimized marketing strategies. Setting up marketing campaigns can be effortless with a little help from the smart AI agent. And that's not all!
Every step of the customer journey can be automated, with a focus on two-way communication with customers to create that important connection. This way, businesses can offer customers the same shopping experience in online channels as if they were in-store with a store employee, travel agent or account manager. Gather information, reduce friction, and watch your conversion and customer satisfaction rates rise as customers will be able to find the right products and/or services in a natural and engaged way.
And the best part of it? It's all organized from one central point: Agentic AI. No need for multiple data and marketing tools to try and tie all loose ends together.
The Ethics and Security of AI
Employing (Agentic) AI for business naturally evokes some important questions and discussions. Is it safe? It is impersonal and cold? Will it affect the jobs of employees? Let's address these concerns:
Security
Protecting user data and ensuring the security of AI systems to prevent unauthorized access and manipulation is critical. Agentic AI systems often require access to large amounts of personal and sensitive information. It is essential to establish robust data protection measures, such as encryption and anonymization, to safeguard user privacy. It is also wise to systematically test for vulnerabilities, making sure that the systems stay safe even with the newest evolutions of cyber threats.
Simultaneously, users should be informed about how their data will be used so they can consent to it - or deny it. Transparency about data collection, processing, and usage is crucial to maintaining trust with customers and compliance with regulations like GDPR.
Governance and quality assurance are also important when using (Agentic) AI. Governance allows control over who can create or manage AI agents, and there should always be a level of human oversight to ensure AI aligns with human values and interests. Establishing control mechanisms helps prevent unintended behaviors.
Behavior
The tone of voice, preferred wording and actions of Agentic AI can be customized and personalized to fit any business. Agentic AI agents can emulate the conversation-styles of real-life customer service representatives, so the experience in itself should not 'feel' impersonal or robot-like, unless the business itself programmed the AI as such.
That being said, there will always be cases where human interaction is the preferred solution, and in those cases, the AI agent can seamlessly handover queries to its human colleagues.
Similar to the tone of voice, AI systems learn biases based on the training data provided. Efforts should be made to identify, mitigate, and monitor biases to ensure fair treatment of all users, regardless of demographic characteristics.
Employment
A question or sentiment that is often heard about AI is that it will replace people and cause redundancy on the work floor. While it is true that Agentic AI can significantly alter job landscapes by automating tasks, it's more likely to assist by handling repetitive roles and freeing people to focus on more strategic and creative work. It's a tool for augmentation rather than replacement. And yes, some jobs may cease to exist, but others will arise. Ethical deployment of Agentic AI involves considering the impacts on employment and pursuing strategies for retraining and upskilling affected workers.
CM.com's HALO
HALO is the Agentic AI solution of CM.com. With HALO, you can easily create your own AI agents, upload business specific knowledge, set the tone of voice and control the quality of the agents.
HALO is your guiding light in designing and deploying AI agents that can execute and orchestrate any business task.
HALO redefines the AI experience by prioritizing simplicity, transparency, and security, ensuring users thrive in this new digital age.
HALO's Benefits
Increase productivity & scalability. Automate repetitive tasks, allowing your human employees to focus on more strategic activities and making it easier to scale operations without a proportional increase in headcount or costs. HALO is part of CM.com's engagement platform, and can thus make use of its multichannel capabilities, making it both flexible and scalable in use.
Improve the customer experience. With 24/7 service availability, multi-channel engagement and personalized customer interactions, your business will be able to provide top-tier customer support. There are many use cases for AI Agents to perform tasks in customer service.
Stay in control. Real-time monitoring will let you track AI agent performances, allowing for immediate insights (and quick interventions if needed) and a built-in quality assurance. CM.com will also thoroughly test AI agents across different scenarios pre-deployment to ensure reliable and effective performance.
No technical skills required. HALO is designed to be easy in use, with a natural language interface and seamless integration. The natural language interface makes it possible to create AI agents by writing prompts similar to how one would explain it to somebody in conversation.