Cisco exec Liz Centoni admits adopting AI is ‘painful’; says: How do I tell the right engineer that …

Cisco executive Liz Centoni has acknowledged that adopting artificial intelligence (AI) across a large enterprise can be a difficult process. The executive of the US-based tech major described the transition as “surgery without the drugs” and admitted that “It’s painful.” Speaking to Business Insider, Centoni, Cisco’s chief customer experience officer, discussed the challenges of transforming the company’s roughly 20,000-employee customer experience division into what she called an AI-native services organisation. She said the company learned that simply adding AI to existing workflows did not necessarily solve underlying problems.One of the key lessons came from Cisco’s customer support operations. The company initially deployed generative AI to create summaries when support cases were transferred between engineers during shift changes or when different expertise was required. While the technology sped up handoffs, it failed to improve the customer experience. “The outcome was…