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Disney, Walmart, And Carnival UK Share Lessons In AI For Customer Experience
When it comes to implementing AI for customer experience (CX), the gap between technology promises and enterprise deployment reality can be vast. During the NiCE Interactions conference, customer experience executives from three major companies— Disney , Walmart , and Carnival UK —shared how their companies navigated these challenges with different approaches, offering a glimpse into what works when deploying AI at scale.
The companies’ collective experience reveals that successful AI implementation requires more than a focus on finding the right technology solution. Instead, CX success demands strategic partnerships , effective organizational change management, and a fundamental shift in how companies approach customer service operations .
Carnival UK: The Knowledge Management Imperative
When John Wells inherited customer service operations at Carnival UK, he faced a familiar enterprise challenge: 1.25 million annual guest interactions flowing through disconnected legacy systems that couldn’t even link a customer’s phone call to their email inquiry.
“We had siloed systems,” Wells explained. “If guests would phone us or they’d email us, we wouldn’t know one interaction to the next.”
The cruise line’s transformation over 18 months represented a desire to reimagine the experience. “This wasn’t a technology change program,” Wells emphasized. “This was a business change program underpinned by a technology change.”
Carnival UK understood that data quality was key to delivering a successful customer experience.
The company spent six months consolidating scattered knowledge from multiple systems, recognizing that AI success depends entirely on information architecture.
“Knowledge management and structuring your knowledge is as important to your success as AI management,” Wells discovered. “Getting the data and the knowledge in the right place, structured in the right way, enables you to be able to be successful in your development of the AI.”
Carnival UK’s methodical approach to knowledge management enables it to create guardrails that ensure AI responses align with company policies while maintaining the premium service experience that luxury cruise customers expect.
Disney: Leadership and Security First as a Foundation for Customer Experience
Arun Chandra, SVP for Customer Experience at Disney, shared Disney’s vision to build the best CX program globally, serving over 150 million customers in 100 geographies. Disney’s approach uses three foundational principles that address the organizational dynamics often overlooked in AI implementations.
First, Disney insists on direct senior leadership involvement, recognizing that executives must work alongside their teams to separate genuine AI capabilities from marketing hype. This hands-on approach ensures that AI initiatives align with business objectives rather than getting caught up in technological possibilities.
Second, Disney places extraordinary emphasis on data privacy, legal requirements, and security challenges. The company focuses on critical questions like: what data trained the AI models and was it proprietary Disney company data? It also has to evaluate the implications of using models trained on external and potentially inaccurate data sources.
Disney recognizes that AI implementations can create new security vulnerabilities if not properly managed. Data governance isn’t just a compliance issue for a company handling millions of customer interactions across theme parks, streaming services, and merchandise operations. It’s essential for securing data and delivering a seamless experience.
Third, Disney views change management as the cornerstone of successful AI implementation. The company recognizes that AI transformation affects not just customer-facing agents but the entire organizational workforce.
“AI impacts everyone across the organization, as everyone ultimately contributes to serving customers and stakeholders,” according to Chandra.
Disney’s Key Lesson: AI implementation requires comprehensive organizational change rather than isolated departmental deployments. Success depends on addressing security concerns upfront and ensuring executive leadership remains actively involved throughout the process.
Walmart: Consolidation and Strategic Partnership For Scaling Customer Experience
Anderson Wilkins from Walmart explains the company’s rationale: “We selected NiCE as that one (contact center) platform, not because it was perfect, but because we found a strategic partner. We created a shared vision to co-innovate together, to scale with a microservice architecture and auto-scaling for on-demand capacity.”
This approach proved crucial for handling Walmart’s massive scale challenges.
“When everybody calls us on Black Friday, many of our brands are unified under one Walmart contact center platform,” Wilkins said.
Walmart’s Key Lesson: Enterprise AI success depends not just on technical capabilities but on organizational acceptance across diverse business units with different priorities and concerns.
Source: www.forbes.com
