How significant advancements in AI and ML will help businesses taking a customer-first approach.
Improving the customer experience (opens in new tab) (CX) is a high priority for many organizations, and rightly so. Poor service costs businesses around $4.7 trillion a year worldwide, and more than half of consumers state that they would leave a brand after just one or two negative support experiences. Empowering service agents is central to any CX strategy, but many organizations aren’t equipping their customer (opens in new tab)-facing teams with the tools they need to succeed. This is leading them to feel deflated, frustrated and burned out.
Increasing enquiry volumes, rising complexity and a lack of talent are just a few of the challenges unlikely to be solved at scale without artificial intelligence (opens in new tab) (AI) and data (opens in new tab) analytics. While the use of AI in customer experience scenarios isn’t new, the technology has been thrust into the spotlight of late. Companies are investing billions into bringing the technology to the mainstream via tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, sparking fresh debates around the impact AI will have on our everyday lives.
Businesses looking to take a consumer-first approach need to understand the benefits AI and data analytics can bring to the company, and to the staff working at the heart of it. As conversations around AI have progressed in recent months, so have discussions around the impacts – both positive and negative – that it will have on our jobs. To alleviate the worry for customer service agents, it’s important that they understand what AI can bring to the world of customer service, and how it can have a positive effect on their performance to deliver a higher level of service.AI and the customer service industry
In customer service, AI-powered support enables businesses to develop deeper insights and build a better user experience. Chatbots are one of the most popular approaches to AI in customer service, undertaking various activities such as reminding customers to check out during the purchasing process or to write reviews. Chatbots also provide 24/7 support – something we, as demanding consumers, have come to expect. Other technologies such as machine learning (ML) and interactive voice response (opens in new tab) systems are creating a new paradigm for how agents can deliver customer service.
Central to these AI models is data – they are only as good as the data they are being fed. Businesses have a huge amount of customer data at their fingertips that can be utilized to deliver a more personalized, effective experience for every consumer. By using technology to analyze this data and inform AI models, organizations can boost operational efficiency and identify opportunities, thus delivering impact at scale.
