Cisco and AI: A Painful but Necessary Transformation

Cisco Faces the Challenge of AI Adoption

Cisco, a company valued at nearly $500 billion and employing over 80,000 people, is embarking on a major transformation with the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into its operations. Liz Centoni, head of customer experience at Cisco, described this process as "surgery without the medication," highlighting the complexity and pain of this transition. For a company of this scale, adopting AI requires a complete overhaul of working methods, which involves a certain degree of discomfort.

Centoni clarified that the adoption of AI has forced Cisco to rethink how it operates. Indeed, integrating AI into a global company with tens of thousands of employees scattered around the world is no easy task. Cisco, which develops networking, security, and collaboration technologies, must ensure that its IT systems remain connected and secure. This includes products such as routers, switches, and cybersecurity tools, making the role of the customer support team crucial.

Revolutionizing Customer Support

Cisco's customer experience division, led by Centoni and comprising around 20,000 employees, is undergoing a transformation to become an AI-native service organization. Centoni explained that adopting AI requires more than just adding it to existing workflows. An earlier approach had been attempted, but it only accelerated flawed processes.

A concrete example of this transformation is the use of generative AI to create case summaries during transfers between support engineers. Whether due to a job change, availability, or the need for different expertise, the goal was to provide more context to engineers. However, Centoni stated that this method frustrated customers more quickly, as it made transfers more efficient without addressing the underlying issues.

Centoni emphasized that the real challenge was not the efficiency of transfers, but rather the intelligent routing of cases to the right engineer from the outset. With this new approach, approximately 88% of the 1.5 million annual support cases are now directed to the right expert on the first contact. A Cisco spokesperson indicated that the company now measures customer service success by the number of calls that require only one — or even no — transfer.

Cisco IQ: A Strategic Advancement

To further enhance the customer experience, Cisco recently launched Cisco IQ, a digital interface designed to centralize support and professional services. Centoni describes this platform as a "single source of truth" for customers, aimed at addressing recurring issues and reducing frustrating support calls.

Cisco IQ enables the detection of avoidable outages and redirects employees to more strategic tasks, thereby reducing the time spent interpreting data. This initiative is part of a broader strategy to increase revenue, expand margins, and strengthen customer trust.

A Vision for the Future

For Centoni, every AI project must not only improve efficiency but also demonstrate its ability to eliminate unnecessary tasks and contribute to business growth. She stated that each initiative must show what work it will stop, and whether it can increase revenue, expand margins, deepen customer trust, or help teams build what comes next. This pragmatic approach could well inspire other large companies looking to integrate AI effectively and sustainably.