AI Meets CX

Losing a customer because your response time isn’t fast enough or your sales and service teams appear to be working from a different playbook simply isn’t acceptable in a customer-centric world. In fact, in today’s world of digitally savvy, connected consumers, it can serve as a company’s epitaph. For organizations of all sizes, using the latest technologies and service techniques to deliver an exceptional customer experience is crucial for staying competitive—as well as for keeping the company alive.

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According to a Salesforce study of more than 6,700 consumers and business buyers, customer experience is the top key performance indicator used by sales organizations to measure success. Unsurprisingly, two-thirds of customers are likely to switch brands if they feel they are being treated like a number and not a person, and nearly 80% of business buyers believe it’s “absolutely critical or very important” to interact with a salesperson who is considered a trusted advisor and who adds value to their business.

Customer-service leaders recognize the importance of adopting the latest technologies, such as AI, to grow their businesses.

Digitalization is improving and expanding the role of customer service in managing and shaping the entire customer experience. As companies scale, a growing number of leadership teams are relying on digital technologies to provide faster, easier, and more cost-effective support, which helps free up resources that can then be reinvested back into the company.

For leading businesses, this means investing in artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, such as chatbots, virtual assistants, and other channel-management-automation tools, to power their customer experiences. The goal is simple: to give customers what they want, where and when they want it. Some interactions call for humans. Some don’t. It’s not about using one or the other; it’s about finding the right balance.

Boosting Brand Loyality

Omnichannel organizations are becoming increasingly dependent on AI-powered solutions to perform a variety of functions that address high-urgency and low-value customer interactions across multiple channels and devices.

And as AI becomes increasingly more sophisticated, its role in the customer experience will only continue to expand. According to Gartner, 25% of customer service operations will integrate AI-powered technology across engagement channels by 2020, up from less than two percent in 2017. Additionally, 55% of established companies have either started making investments in the potential of AI or are planning to do so by 2020.

AI-assisted automation tools such as chatbots help provide quick, intelligent responses that learn from customer interactions, ultimately improving the customer experience and strengthening customer relationships. That’s because AI-based tools don’t just make customer-service interactions more user-friendly and efficient. They also make them more intuitive. By analyzing historical data and user preferences, AI helps businesses anticipate customer needs, allowing them to identify issues more quickly, minimize complaints, define customer behavior, and provide personalized offers and discounts.

If done well and in the right circumstances, these tools can free customer-service employees from routine tasks, such as answering frequently asked questions, to refocus their efforts around the buying process, which often requires a level of empathy only available through human interaction. By unlocking customer insights, they can also build critical team synergies by removing internal silos and better connecting sales agents with frontline service representatives to supercharge sales together.

Service Over Size

Customer-service leaders recognize the importance of adopting the latest technologies, such as AI, to grow their businesses. After a long period of relative economic stability, contact centers now view growth in terms of improving service rather than expanding size, according to a recent Deloitte survey. As companies set new, higher standards for customer experience, the best results are coming from contact centers that provide accurate service and information as well as seamless interactions.

It’s obvious, then, why customer service specialists are starting to play a greater role in many businesses—from managing sales channels to designing customer-experience solutions that drive new forms of operational efficiencies. When armed with new technologies powered by AI, these specialists can provide even more visibility and flexibility across the entire customer-service spectrum.

AI and machine learning have the power to interpret what a customer wants, even before he or she asks for it. In customer interactions, having AI as a service partner can help empower companies to build better experiences overall, ultimately bringing businesses closer to their goal of delivering an incredible customer experience.