Customers are the only key to a company's success. We can agree on that, right? According to experts, by 2024 the customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.
According to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 86% of customers are willing to pay more for excellent customer care.
So if the trend keeps moving in this direction, companies have no choice but to adapt and shift their focus from what we want to sell to what customers want to buy.
There are many touchpoints between companies and customers. Customer experience is – we could say – the sum total of customers' feelings after dealing with the company. So it's about how users rate their encounters with the website, customer service, the store and so on.
A positive, pleasant customer experience is what convinces customers and encourages them to come back. If they're satisfied, they'll also be loyal to your brand. What's more, satisfied customers will spread the word, which benefits your marketing.
What does all this have to do with conversational AI?
The concept of CX has changed a lot in recent years. Not least because artificial intelligence and machine learning have enabled companies to improve their systems and processes in order to deliver ever deeper insights, develop better products and help marketers with targeting.
The changes we face can be overwhelming. Especially in a business context, if structures aren't renewed and employees aren't retrained. Conversational AI is just one of the innovations business owners should know about. They can use it to improve their customer service, make it efficient and keep pace with the needs of their target customers.
Conversational AI can take many forms and contribute to market development. That's certain as long as its pillars remain intact: the conversational element and artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence contributes to marketing as an active part of an interdisciplinary dialog. This happens because AI constantly has to be combined with other emerging technologies to create concrete applications. We've already talked about this here.
Customers are always at the center: the path users take when they get in touch with a company is long and varied. There are many different variables that determine the touchpoints: some come via an advertising campaign, some have been customers before and know the brand, some visit the website because they read the name and are simply curious. In short, there are many different customer journeys.
However, every customer experience consists of three moments. Let's look at how we can implement conversational AI in these three moments.
Getting off on the right foot: customer experience BEFORE the first contact
Most customer requests are repetitive and easy to resolve. However, they take up a lot of time. The same request that takes 2 minutes to resolve, multiplied by 100 users, already takes up the first three hours of work. This is exactly where conversational AI comes in.
With conversational AI, we can create a request filter that routes requests to employees. Requests that need longer handling and are more difficult can be assigned to employees.
Through data analysis, conversational AI can generate information about customers. With this information, your support center will be able to respond proactively to customer needs – and thus develop ever deeper, more personalized analyses of customers. Modern AI solutions can analyze large amounts of internal and external data and identify triggers for communicating with customers via their preferred channels.
#Benefits for companies:
Higher productivity, less time and money spent on administration and happier employees who can respond better to users' needs.
At the peak: customer experience DURING the interaction
Have you ever read bad reviews of a support center? Or have customers ever complained to you because they didn't like the employees?
As a rule, customers expect every employee to know all their needs and every product. They expect them to have the full service history at hand and every possible piece of information to solve their problems immediately. How can conversational AI help you improve the customer experience here?
Well, conversational AI can increase your employees' efficiency. How? AI knows both your customers and your employees. With external databases and internal CRMs, AI can assign certain employees to certain customers – creating a strong bond!
#Benefits for companies:
By measuring quantitative and qualitative parameters in real time (such as pauses, use of keywords and the mood of the conversation), conversational AI helps you make the best decisions at all times, always based on an understanding of your customers. All of this results in a positive customer experience.
When the party's over: customer experience AFTER the exchange
Conversational AI enables companies to take powerful proactive measures after contact with customers in order to anticipate their behavior, retain them, ask for positive reviews and build an authentic, caring relationship with people.
OK… and? AI can collect customers' contact information, preferences, trends and so on. This kind of data can be passed on to create tailored options and offers or, for example, to inform customers when anomalies occur in their electricity consumption. This helps detect and prevent possible damage.
#Benefits for companies:
Customers feel they haven't been forgotten. Even after their request has been resolved, a thin thread still connects the company and the customer. This often leads customers to come back.
Conversational AI & customer experience – conclusion
In short, in this article we've seen where conversational artificial intelligence and customer experience connect. We can therefore sum up the following benefits of AI for the customer experience.
CX benefits from conversational AI because AI …
#1 simplifies the relationship between customers and companies.
Anyone who wants to get in touch with the company can contact it via any channel and gets a fast answer to their questions. With conversational AI, long phone calls and unanswered emails are a thing of the past: it's back to direct conversation that's available at any time.
#2 offers the possibility of getting a personalized answer.
Personalizing the experience has a big impact on a company's competitive advantage. The ability to integrate conversational AI with other systems (CRM, ERP, e-commerce…) and use advanced AI technologies makes it possible to create personalized offers and ad hoc treatment, which makes it easier to win new customers and, above all, retain existing ones.
#3 is an omnichannel experience, available 24/7!
Conversational AI enables companies to offer superior, highly scalable, high-quality customer service. It allows communication systems and channels to be integrated into a single, native omnichannel interface. It ensures the same care and treatment for customers regardless of the contact method and channel. At CX level, 24/7 availability shouldn't be overlooked either.
#4 improves engagement.
There's no doubt that conversation is the most attractive form of contact between customers and company representatives. However, this must not lead to a dangerous boomerang effect. In fact, many chatbots merely give canned answers to equally standardized questions and don't satisfy customers. On the contrary, they frustrate them. This frustration leads them to
a) choose flesh-and-blood employees – and even accept the waiting time;
b) switch to a competitor who can guarantee a better customer experience.
Conversational AI, on the other hand, thanks to its particularly advanced technology, is able to understand customers' wishes, offer a quick solution or automatically forward them to real colleagues in more complex cases.
#5 creates new business opportunities.
Conversational AI makes it possible to create new customer journeys that present customers with personalized offers based on their profile, helping companies spot new opportunities.
#6 keeps pace with customers by listening.
AI identifies the topics customers discuss most across all touchpoints. This makes it possible to quickly spot any gaps in products and services and continuously refine AI solutions.
The applications of conversational AI are almost unlimited, customizable and suitable for all markets. In a world where users are better informed than companies and increasingly demanding, it's necessary to individualize communication as much as possible in order to be as competitive as possible.
