Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Improve Customer Experience Management Efforts
Artificial Intelligence is changing our world as we speak. The modern-day AI technologies coupled with augmentation and digitization is creating a whole new reality for us. This reality, popularly known as the Augmented Reality (AR) is soon going to be the next big thing in the market. Scientists predict that within the next few decades humans will constantly switch between physical and augmented realities. We are already seeing the boundaries between these realities blur out with the modern-day tech.
AI has already revamped the business world and is now slowly creeping into our personal lives too. It is growing at a staggering pace of nearly 130% year on year today. Businesses are using the AI technologies to do all kinds of stuff. Here’s how large organizations use AI as their daily go-to driver to improvise their customer experience management efforts.
Identification of Churn Rates
Large organizations often deal with a huge influx of queries from existing customers as well as new prospects. In the 20th Century, the biggest companies on the planet hired enough people to fill an entire building, just to serve their customers better. They knew that if the company wants to take quantum leaps ahead, it cannot do so without the support of its existing customer. In fact, every successful business owner knows the importance of customer retention for the sustainability of the business.
The main use of AI in customer experience management is to identify churn rates at an early stage in the customer experience cycle. The AI modules keep a track of the daily use of your product at the customer location thereby looking for pointers that will help them identify potential churn factors. The AI then suggests you act proactively and offer the customers a better deal or a better service.
Prioritization of Queries
The AI technology can identify the tone of written language when coupled with Machine Learning modules. This technology has totally revamped how we see chatbots and other customer experience management tools today. The Artificial Intelligence technology uses this information to help you prioritize the cases that require your immediate attention. This prioritization helps in the minimization of churn rates and helps you manage your human resources effectively.
Today AI is so smart that it can automatically allocate more human resources to the case wherein the customer is seriously pissed off and needs immediate attention of an account executive from your team.
Design of a Suitable Workflow Model
The main problem with enterprise-grade products is that your customers will most likely have several points of contact with your organization. A truly enterprise-grade product will set a dedicated team of account manager, sales engineer, support assistant, customer success manager, etc. for each customer.
When the customer approaches your organization with a specific problems statement, the query can go to any one of these people. For example, the problems with invoice management will most likely be handled by an account executive while the customer success manager will step in to provide technical assistance. AI has the potential to identify the problems of the customer using certain keyword-triggers. It will then redirect the request to the right person on the customer management team to shorten the length of the whole process. Thus, AI can help you design a suitable workflow model to cater to the immediate needs of your customers.
Humanise the Whole Process
Studies show that large organizations are quickly adopting the latest chatbot technologies to serve their customers better. The use of chatbots will move from just under 12% to over 90% within the next 3-4 years. The same studies also show that people prefer speaking to people and not robots/chatbots. This is where AI helps in humanizing the responses given by a chatbot.
The modern-day chatbots coupled with AI tech can understand the tone of the language that the customer types into the chat window. It can then program the answers quickly to pacify the conditions until an actual person steps into the chat. The AI tech is getting so good at humanizing the chat that people can no longer differentiate between the responses of a robot and an actual person. AI is now so advanced that you can ask the same question to a chatbot hundred times and still expect a slightly different answer.
Reduction of Turn Around Time
TAT or Turn Around Time is one of the most critical aspects of customer experience management cycle. The best companies have a TAT that does not exceed a few seconds. On the other hand, the companies with the worst customer experience management can take several days/weeks before responding to the customer’s grievances.
For example, Amazon, one of the most customer-centric companies in the world has scored the first rank in customer satisfaction rates for the 9th consecutive year! We also know that it is on the fast track to becoming a trillion dollar organization soon. The valuation of the world’s only trillion-dollar organization Apple is proof that customer experience management plays a major role in the success/failure of a company.
Scalability of Operations
AI is extremely helpful for large organizations that deal with thousands of customer queries every hour. Most companies that are signing new enterprise-scale customers every day need AI to improvise their customer management experience. The business owners know that AI will help them balance the focus on the retention and acquisition aspects of customer engagement.
Launch of New Initiatives
Upselling and reselling your products/services are key factors in the sustainability of a business. AI can help companies identify the upsell, cross-sell as well as resell opportunities within the existing customer database effectively. AI has data analysis algorithms to see how actively your customer is using the product/service thereby suggesting a chance of new initiative.
It is time that all small and large companies start investing their funds in the AI tech to stay competitive in the market. The companies that rely only on conventional methods of customer engagement will soon run out of business against the companies that are actively adapting to the new technologies.