90 VIEWPOINT Agentic AI is only as good as its data Agentic AI is reshaping the customer experience. Powered by Azure, Copilot, Dynamics 365 and related Microsoft platforms, autonomous agents can now handle complex interactions, anticipate needs and deliver personalised responses at scale. Yet agents only perform as well as the data they rely on. A recent Melissa survey found that while 81 per cent of organisations say their data infrastructure can support AI, only 29 per cent are fully confident in the data those systems are using. Confidence drops further when you look specifically at the customer contact and address data that agentic experiences depend on most. When this information is incomplete, outdated or inconsistent, the agent simply gets the customer wrong: the wrong person, address and context. That produces frustration instead of delight, results in higher costs from rework and returned mail and erodes trust. What’s concerning is that 89 per cent of respondents to the Melissa survey reported that data quality already causes AI errors at least occasionally. Trusted data turns agentic potential into reliable customer outcomes. Melissa has spent four decades working on this. We verify and standardise global addresses across more than 250 countries and territories, confirm name-to-address links, validate emails and phone numbers, and resolve identity in real time. Personator goes further by matching and enriching consumer records, applying change-of-address updates, and keeping profiles current. These services sit inside Dynamics 365 and Dataverse, catching bad data at the point of entry and cleaning existing data in the background. When agents operating in Azure or Copilot environments draw on this verified foundation, personalisation becomes trustworthy. Interactions feel grounded in reality rather than guesswork. Costs fall as returned mail, failed deliveries, compliance issues and manual corrections decline. Change management becomes smoother because the underlying customer data stays consistent and reliable across systems. Agentic AI will keep improving. The organisations treating trusted customer data as non-negotiable infrastructure, not an afterthought, will be the ones that turn those advances into reliable, human-feeling experiences at scale. While agentic AI is transforming the customer experience at breakneck speed, its success isn’t guaranteed. Having the right underlying data is key Bud Walker is chief information officer at Melissa Trusted data turns agentic potential into reliable customer outcomes
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