Artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly central role in shaping how companies engage with customers, but many of the most impactful innovations are designed to operate quietly in the background.
That was the key message from a panel discussion at the VivaTech 2025 conference in Paris on Friday (June 13) featuring executives from Louis Vuitton, Verizon and Adobe.
While their industries span luxury retail, telecom and digital marketing, each company is investing deeply in AI to personalize service, increase efficiency and empower employees.
They also believe that they can elevate the customer experience without losing the emotional spark that only human beings can provide.
For Louis Vuitton, the use of AI in stores is focused on supporting client advisors — representatives that engage with, sell to and develop relationships with customers.
Laura Krittian, the luxury brand’s vice president of global retail excellence and development, said AI helps advisors identify which clients to contact, what to say and when to reach out.
The French retailer is piloting a program that uses generative AI to create bespoke “thank you” messages with a tone tailored to each client’s preferences and profile while staying true to the Louis Vuitton brand and culture.
“It’s really about simplifying the life of our client advisors,” Krittian said, and giving them AI tools to take away the administrative tasks can “give them more time to really focus on high added value interactions.”
Verizon is pursuing a similar approach in customer service and sales — using artificial intelligence to reduce friction for both employees and customers.
Chief Digital Officer Kris Narayanan said the telecom giant is investing in AI-driven tools that empower service and sales reps by streamlining workflows and making relevant customer insights available in real time.
For instance, Verizon now uses sentiment analysis — drawing on data from calls and digital interactions — to display red, yellow or green indicators of a customer’s emotional state. This helps reps adjust their approach and avoid missteps.
“We process audio in every channel where we’re legally allowed to capture it,” Narayanan said. “We transcribe, summarize, derive insights, and merge it with other data to provide a complete picture.”
The goal is to make artificial intelligence invisible to customers while delivering meaningful improvements. “AI should feel seamless,” Narayanan said. “It’s not about replacing people — it’s about making their jobs easier and making the experience better.”
Read more: Report: LVMH Tells Analysts Demand Remains Weak in Luxury Sector
Not Fearing Failure
At Adobe, AI is being used to dramatically accelerate the pace of marketing campaigns and personalize customer journeys.
Rachel Thornton, CMO of Adobe’s enterprise division, described how AI tools embedded in Adobe products allow marketers to conduct segmentation, testing and content generation in days rather than weeks.
A key goal is to help marketers be more creative and move faster, Thornton said. Creating assets normally “would have taken me seven, eight weeks. Now it literally takes me about six days,” Thornton said.
Adobe’s agentic artificial intelligence platform, Brand Concierge, is another example of how companies are aiming to make digital interactions more conversational and tailored. Modeled after a luxury hotel concierge, the AI assistant is designed to guide users through personalized journeys, helping them find what they need with minimal friction.
Despite the enthusiasm, all three executives emphasized the importance of thoughtful implementation.
At Louis Vuitton, new AI tools are tested extensively in pilot programs to ensure they are intuitive and genuinely helpful.
“We want our client advisors to spend as much time as possible on our applications, so [the AI tools] need to be super seamless, so they spend more time, really with the clients,” Krittian said.
Read more: Luxury’s Lost Luster: Brands Grapple With Shifting Tastes, Economic Headwinds
Verizon, meanwhile, focuses on reducing cognitive load and designing tools that are easy to adopt without extensive training. “If you have to teach people how to use a simple tool, it’s not designed well enough,” Narayanan said.
As companies race to adopt agentic artificial intelligence — where digital agents act on behalf of users — guardrails and governance are top of mind.
Thornton noted that CMOs are increasingly collaborating with CIOs to ensure experimentation doesn’t outpace ethical or technical oversight. This also means they can experiment without fear.
“I encourage people to fail,” Thornton said. “If we’re not experimenting and we’re not failing, we’re not learning something.”
See also: Sephora, Retail Division Drive LVMH’s Q4 Performance Amid Luxury Market Headwinds
Looking ahead, the panelists agreed that AI will continue to expand its role in customer engagement, with automation and proactive assistance becoming more common.
Narayanan said Verizon is testing systems that allow customers to manage tasks like billing and account changes through simple voice or search commands — and eventually, AI agents may be able to anticipate and act on customer needs without explicit prompts.
“A lot of the things customers today expend effort on, like calling to understand the status of a bill or adding someone to their plan, should become as easy as giving simple commands on search,” Narayanan said. “If you can anticipate customer needs, you’ve done your job.”
Read more: LVMH Founder Bernard Arnault’s Family Firm Invests in AI Companies
Photo: Louis Vuitton’s Laura Krittian, Verizon’s Kris Narayanan, Adobe’s Rachel Thornton and the moderator.
For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.