For many companies, the customer experience is what drives the business. When a majority of the customers have a good experience, the company is able to grow amid good reviews, repeat business, and a loyal customer base. When some customers have a bad experience, however, the company may find itself battling a PR nightmare as it tries to right what customers see as wrong. This negative customer experience often comes when companies fail to focus on creating a positive customer experience or fail to focus on the experience at all.
Artificial intelligence can change that. AI can help you focus on creating an outstanding customer experience without losing anything. The trend of bringing AI into business is one that shows no sign of slowing down and for a very good reason. Here are just a few of the ways that AI can help you focus on customer experience.
You’ll Stay Up with Your Competitors
Experts anticipate that nearly 50% more retailers will use AI within three years, especially in the area of customer experience. Another report believes that over three-fourths of all customer interactions with businesses will be done by AI by 2020. Even if these expectations are off, one thing is certain: more businesses than ever will be using AI to handle aspects of their customer service, and you should, too. If you don’t, it’s likely that you will simply be left behind.
AI Can Take On More Sophisticated Jobs
AI isn’t nearly as basic as it once was. In fact, today’s AI can handle multiple complicated tasks at once, scanning data, placing orders, managing support tickets, and much more. While it’s true that AI will never replace humans completely, it’s also safe to say that we will eventually reach the point where AI handle a good amount of work for us. They may not replace employees, but they will change the nature of their jobs.
These changes will, in many ways, be for the better. AI can handle many of the time consuming yet basic tasks that employees often dislike doing. These repetitive tasks include things such as data entry, error-checking, and handling basic sales tasks. Many of these processes can be done interactively with customers. For example, many websites now feature a chatbot that customers can use to solve a number of different issues with their orders or get help with certain activities.
You’ll Be Able to Help Customers who Need It
With AI handling basic customer issues, your customer service team will have more time to work with those who have more complicated issues. Some customers will have problems that the AI simply isn’t able to understand or solve. That’s where your employees come in. They will be able to use creative problem-solving methods to help customers, but they won’t be doing it alone. Even though AI may not be able to solve these issues, it’s still there providing your customer service representative with information, suggestions, and customer data when needed.
Utilizing AI to Manage Customer Experiences
One of the key ways you can use AI is to manage your customer experiences for you. Customer experience has grown to be a multi-channel process, and that means its complexity has increased. An AI can help manage all of these experiences by gathering data about each customer interaction regardless of platform and creating one customer profile. They can use this profile to extrapolate information about that customer. With this information, the AI is able to create an experience that is relevant to the customer and is presented to the customer in a way they understand.
One such tool that can help you enhance your customer’s experience and help you grow is a voice AI based communication system. This is a great example of how an AI can understand what customers are saying and even learn how to better “hear” an accident or a unique way of speaking to actually engage the customer better. One of the areas customers often complain about is the wait time when they call into a customer support line and the automated systems they have to deal with. Using a voice AI can help reduce that frustration, making it a key part of your customer service strategy.
AI Can Help Customers More Quickly and in More Personal Ways
Because an AI can pull up customer information and digest it rapidly, they’re often able to help customers more quickly than human employees can. AI can multitask and never needs to go back to look up information it might have forgotten. It also doesn’t have any sort of faulty memory, nor will it have any sort of emotional response to customers who may be angry or upset.
In addition to working more quickly, AI can also be used to create a customized experience for the user. These experiences are more likely to be positive since the AI will use information about the customer to tailor the experience to their interests. This can improve sales, too, since the AI will be able to suggest various products related to what the customer likes, needs, or has purchased before.
The AI Customer Experience Is the Wave of the Future
Whether you believe that AI will be handling a large amount of customer experience in a few years or not, there’s no denying that it will help your customer service team create a unique experience for your clients. With implementing these technologies now which will help you get ahead from your competitors.
Customer Service Must Include Retention
Your customer’s experience isn’t over when they complete their purchase or have their issue solved. If it is, then you haven’t retained that customer, and that can be an issue that affects your bottom line. AI can help with customer retention by sending emails or reaching out in other ways at the right time. This is another area where AI can use the data you have on the customer to know when it’s right to contact them. For example, AI could look at a person’s order history and see that they bought items for a newborn a year ago and made several similar purchases in the months following. It could then send them an email advertising your products for children around a year old since it’s likely this customer does have a child that age.
Author Bio:
Michelle Breitstein is a Senior Business Associate working with industry-leading brands and new market entrants, enabling them design effective business strategies and make efficient decisions in the domain of technology and tech applications for business. She leverages different publishing platforms to share her rich experience and expertise through pieces of written content. She loves not only to write about several topics but also loves to explore new ideas well.
