Last Updated on July 8, 2019
In today’s digital era, digital transformation is atop, gone are the days of offering courteous and superficial customer interaction. To satisfy the customer using the right tone of voice has no more space in this digital era. Earlier, businesses were required to ensure how their agents were hitting the target KPIs such as average wait time, average handle time, talk time, follow-ups – all of these metrics are still significant, but customer service industry has realized that CX – customer experience is king.
To enhance the customer experience one of the best ways is to set your business apart from the herd and leverage the benefits of higher ROI. As of 2018, 84% of organizations have surveyed in the Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report and acknowledged that CX is indeed key differentiator and 81% of them have identified customer experience as a cost-saving effect. However, customer service businesses, like call centers have a long way to go in delivering quality customer experiences.
Salesforce “state of the connected consumer” report 2018 surveyed 6,723 global customers and buyers. Salesforce identified that 63% of buyers and 66% of customers would no longer be part of the enterprise if they don’t have personalized experiences with vendors or businesses. 58% of the customers felt that the information received from the executives are impersonalized or scripted one. 68% of the customers wanted the agent to have in-detail knowledge of their history with the organization.
Fortunately, the customer service industry is successfully revolutionizing customer experiences. The advancement in artificial intelligence and rise in digitization of customer interaction have hatched innovations in bespoke customer service.
Digital Transformation:
“By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship with the enterprise without interacting with a human.”
Gartner, A global research and advisory firm
The phone has taken over the person to person and traditional customer service. The first and foremost seismic development was various available channels for communication. Customers are no longer required to get in touch with an agent though call; they can approach any convention medium for them like, live chat, email, video chat, fax, text, or any available social media platform. Not all of them are offering 360 omnichannel competences, but most of them are developing or have already developed for the best customer experience.
How is this beneficial for customer service providers?
Customers are more engaged and aware of their treatment and experiences across digital channels than ever as consumers are expecting personalization and reliability on their convenient platform while interacting with the agents. Thankfully AI – artificial intelligence and ML- machine learning is rising to meet this challenge and fulfill the criteria.
Demystify: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
AI is a computer program that programmed in a specific way to perform assigned tasks like, monitor customer buying behavior, identify spam email, assist the driver to take right route in rush traffic hours, and many more.
AI is all about the data – accumulate the data, examine it and make predictions.
AI is widely used in situations where historical patterns are covered in the data and accumulating those data future predictive actions is possible. This is where Machine learning comes in the picture. ML makes use of statistical techniques to educate computer systems to learn gradually to increase performance on the assigned task, without the need for explicit coding.
Is Machine Learning Just A Subset Of Artificial Intelligence or More?
With the evolving technology and the voices of Alexa, Siri, Cortana and Google Assistant everywhere, machine learning is not an unfamiliar term. Machine learning is a subset of Artificial Intelligence (AI) which more of lets the machine to evaluate the data and learn by itself. Machine learning has developed those algorithms which by itself collects data and learn by themselves.
Here are Five ways AI and machine learning can be used to give your customers the digital experience they deserve:
24*7 Customer Support and Chatbots:
There were times, whenever you order a product from an eCommerce website and want to know the delivery status or raise a complaint about refund or replacement in case of a defective product. You end up calling customer support holding the call for at least 15 minutes and waiting for the executive to explain your issue and get it resolved. However, the process can be automated entirely with NLP – natural language processing and chatbots.
,p>Amazon is the perfect example to understand the issue. Click on contact us form, select your problem from the list and go forward. I experienced product cancelation and refund procedure in under two minutes without having the assistance of a representative.
Highly-Personalized Customer Experience:
AI collects the data about what your customers do and educates about behavioral factors that drive their behaviors. You can consider Facebook’s Newsfeed as an example. The news feed of the most popular social media site uses machine learning to personalize the newsfeed of each of its users. If you frequently interact with any of your friend’s posts then the algorithm will show up your friend’s activity at first of your feeds. The background of the software will do an analysis of your activities, update the statistics and similarly prepare your newsfeed. If the algorithm finds any change in your activity then it will adjust the newsfeed accordingly with the desired changes.
Real-time AI for Customer Engagement.
Name any marketing company that has the potential to serve customers 24*7 in an engaging way- no one, right? However, AI consulting and machine learning can be used for real-time customer segmentation by personalized interaction and helping them to resolve their issues. Combining human and chatbots it is possible to escalate complex engagements, optimize efficiency and improve ROI.
Actionable Insights
Earlier, businesses were completely blind about when a customer might purchase and why didn’t. These fundamental questions were a matter of gut-thinking and assumption. Now you have accurate data about the customer’s previous journey. So you can leverage those data and build actionable insights with the use of those data. Even more, things can be done, and the market can be explored that was not at all possible earlier.
AI and Automation Makes Us More Human, Not Less
Chatbots are smartly programmed to assist us with our routine queries such as, help me reset my password, get me black Nike shoe, so we – humans can invest our time to deal with the issues that require human efforts to resolve. There is no need for a human in the call center and wait for 15 minutes to answer a simple question that can be fixed by the bots in less than 5 seconds. AI and ML are helping us invest our time wisely, instead of wasting our time to solve a query that can be resolved by chatbots.
Customer Experience is King and Robots Can and – Will Change Our Lives In Very Near Future
Even though it sounds similar to the 10th time remake of some odd science fiction flick – these predictions may not be wrong at all.
One thing is for sure that businesses are required to be revolutionized about how they are interacting with their customers. The customer experience is transforming, and the shift towards digitalization and personalization is in progress. Today’s customers are expecting that their history, preferences, current issues everything should be taken care of and based upon that solution is given, so he/she can make an informed decision.
This is where AI and machine learning comes in, and it seems like they will continue to shine. AI and machine learning development ensure to offer personalized experiences that empower your customers to leverage the digital expertise and deliver top-notch customer support in a more efficient, productive and enjoyable way.
