Natural language processing (NLP), automatic speech recognition (ASR), enhanced dialogue management, and machine learning (ML) are all transforming the way humans interact with technology. Conversational AI and automation enable humans to converse with robots in the same way they converse with one another.
What’s AI doing in Customer Engagement?
Customer engagement, brand loyalty, and retention can all be improved with artificial intelligence. While it isn’t a replacement for humans, it can assist enhance efficiency and take low-hanging fruit off your customer support teams’ plates, such as answering commonly requested inquiries.
Other technologies, like machine learning, deep learning, and natural language understanding, can be integrated with AI to break down communication barriers and automate consumer interactions. Conversational chatbots and product suggestions based on customer behavior data are two well-known examples of AI in action. However, the possibilities are truly limitless.
The New Customer Engagement Rules
Did you know that in the last 12 months, 56 percent of consumers have ceased doing business with a brand because of a terrible customer service experience?
Customer expectations are rising, and modern customers expect timely, relevant, and real interactions with their favorite companies at all times and in all places.
Customers come to you for assistance. They are the critical components of any company’s growth. Customers, indeed, have the power to influence the survival and success of your company. As they spread the word in their family and social circles, happy consumers bring in increased retention rates, lifetime value, and enhanced brand reach.
Understanding and satisfying customers want the first step towards generating the types of customer experiences that result in pleased customers.
It’s difficult to build a customer-centric organization that actually listens to consumer requirements, and there’s a steep learning curve if you’ve never paid attention to customers before.
The Most Common Customer Needs
- Functionality
Customers expect your product or service to work as intended to solve their problems or fulfill their desire. - Price
Customers have different budgets when purchasing a product or service. - Convenience
Your product or service must be a practical answer for the purpose that your clients are attempting to fulfill. - Experience
To avoid adding to your clients’ workload, the experience of using your product or service should be simple – or at the very least obvious. - Service necessitates empathy
Customers expect empathy and compassion from those who assist them when they contact customer service. - Fairness
Customers expect fairness from a corporation in everything from pricing to terms of service to contract length. - Transparency
Customers want transparency from companies with whom they do business. Customers deserve transparency from the firms they pay their money to, and service outages, pricing adjustments, and item breaking happen.
Customer Engagement’s New Rules and How AI is Changing Them
Customers expect services that are proactive and individualized, and ML and predictive analytics are two AI applications that can detect frequent consumer issues and even provide insight into what’s generating problems for users. Leveraging information to create AI chatbots at key client touchpoints can help your company personalize real-time customer experiences while being proactive.
Pay attention to your customers
Listen to your customers attentively. Customers have high expectations of the businesses they choose to do business with. And, as it turns out, just one incident of expectations not being met can cause customers to switch providers in search of a better deal.
According to a recent study, 82% of customers claimed they would switch products or service providers if they had a terrible encounter with a company’s customer service department.
To avoid your firm becoming a statistic like this, it’s critical to actively listen to customers and analyze their input so you can address major issues that are creating customer churn.
Listening to clients entails more than simply hearing about their issues. It’s not picking up the phone or answering the service desk’s ringing bell.
Connecting with customers is listening to them. It entails paying close attention to their requirements and determining how you may assist them in achieving their objectives.
The best customer service representatives are great listeners. They are continually in tune with the customer’s emotions and can recall crucial details from earlier in the case. Customers will no longer have to repeat information, which will improve the service experience.
However, there are a couple of more benefits to consider:
- Lower Customer Turnover
Poor customer service is the second-most common cause for customers to switch providers when it comes to churning. Customers who don’t feel valued during a service transaction are likely to seek assistance from your competitors. In fact, 86 percent of your clients are willing to spend more for a superior customer experience from another provider. - Boost Customer Satisfaction
No matter how good your product or service is, it will always be vulnerable to churn. As previously stated, one bad interaction might force the majority of your consumer base to leave. - Customer Retention Boost
Service encounters are smoother when your employees listen to customers. Customers and reps are on the same page, so troubleshooting is a breeze.
Last thoughts
Conversational AI can give the hyper-personalized experiences that clients want in the post-pandemic society we are slowly emerging into. Conversational AI may facilitate true dialogues with clients because it is not scripted or rule-based, which greatly improves conversational marketing.
Conversational AI can also deliver real-time consumer information to service representatives, allowing them to manage larger, more difficult situations more quickly and efficiently, increasing both the customer and employee experience.
Want to create a delightful customer and employee experience in your organization with Conversational AI. Hit up for a free demo, CONTACT US