Existing customers are a company’s biggest asset, and dedicating resources to keeping them happy is one of the most important and fruitful investments a company can make. Recent advances in Artificial intelligence (AI) is making this easier than ever with innovative tools to improve the customer service experience. More and more businesses are taking advantage of this technology.
The online marketplace puts all the choices we could possibly want right at our fingertips, and meeting our customers’ needs and questions faster and better than the competition is a matter of life and death in the world of business.
Just last week I was shopping for software to create an ebook. I figured out which program I wanted to go with, but making my account, I ran into a glitch that kept me from downloading the software. I emailed customer service, and when I didn’t get the immediate response I wanted, I went to my second choice and bought their software instead. In the age of infinite choices, speed of customer service responses can make or break sales no matter how great your product is.
Optimizing the customer service experience serves several beneficial purposes: it attracts new business, retains old customers, and improves brand loyalty and reputation. Every interaction your business has with a customer leaves an impression and an overall feeling towards your business. If they have a frustrating experience, they will associate your brand with frustration. If they have a positive experience, they will associate your brand with positive feelings and happily come back for more (and hopefully tell their friends how great you are.)
AI uses customer data to learn their habits, predict their needs, increase sales, and keep customers happier. They’re able to respond to clients at all hours of the day and night and reduce the impact of human error when taking orders, which gives customers an easy, streamlined experience--no frustration or waiting. If that ebook software had an AI chatbot on their website to quickly solve my problem, they might not have lost me as a client.
In plain English, AI uses data collected from millions of past interactions to improve future interactions. This information is used to model and predict customer behavior for more targeted and optimized avenues to conversions, sales, and growth. For example, AI data is used to proactively present customers with more relevant products and services to increase sales.
AI programs are primarily meant to complement a workforce, freeing up humans to tackle more complex and difficult tasks while handling frequently asked questions and simple transactions in the background. There are now advanced AI systems, like IBM’s Watson Customer Care Agent Assist, which can be seamlessly integrated into your business to work alongside humans.
Novel insights gained from AI data not only improve AI functioning, but can also be extremely valuable in improving every aspect of your business; knowing more about your customers can make advertising and sales strategies much more targeted and fruitful.
It's clear that customer service AI systems are only the beginning of the AI revolution. We're already seeing applications in the marketing space, making a more personalized ad experience that targets consumers based on past behavior, and we are sure to see more creative AI applications emerge.