AI For CX: 7 Reasons to Revamp Your Customer-Centric Approach With Smart AI

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Darshan Shah

October 19, 2022

Thanks to AI technologies, business productivity is expected to grow by up to 40% by 2035. To gather, analyze, and respond to customer sentiment and feedback, AI technologies such as machine learning (ML), natural language understanding, and natural language processing are proving to be revolutionary.

AI in Customer Experience

Using AI for CX involves providing an intelligently informed and improved user experience at every touchpoint. Automating tedious operations, expediting procedures, lowering the risk of fraud, and providing individualized options to each individual, among other factors, plays a significant part in enhancing the customer experience in the field of business.

5 Best Examples of How Brands Use AI to Boost Customer Experience

By giving customers the information they desire at the right time, artificial intelligence (AI) helps to realize the benefits of efficient assistance. Artificial intelligence (AI) can improve the customer experience in almost every area, from data collection to speech recognition and message response times, when used properly. Following are some of the companies that have leveraged AI for a better CX to the fullest:

IBM Watson

The Watson Assistant, an IVR system and NLP technology that transforms how contemporary businesses engage with their clients, is the brainchild of IBM. Thanks to the Watson Assistant, customers no longer need to interact with human representatives when they need problems resolved promptly. It provides both speech-to-text and text-to-speech interactions.

Volvo's Early Warning System

Volvo's Early Warning System examines over a million events every week to identify which auto parts may require replacement or repair. When a customer's vehicle breaks down, there is no need to hire a tow truck. Furthermore, Volvo has tested vehicles with sensors that report road conditions and transmit the information to the Swedish traffic authority. Beyond providing excellent customer service, the drivers' safety is at stake here.

Spotify Discover Weekly

An AI-powered personal playlist Discover Weekly is delivered by Spotify every Monday. Based on the individual listening preferences of each user, Spotify's algorithm creates the playlist. Spotify keeps customers interested and satisfied with streaming music week after week by assisting its users in finding new songs they may enjoy.

Each year, in the end, Spotify delivers Spotify Wrapped to its customers to enhance the social listening experience. The user's most-listened-to songs, genres, podcasts, and other items are listed in Wrapped. Every December, Wrapped becomes a social media sensation as users (including influencers and celebrities) publish their statistics.

Starbucks Product Pairs

Customers probably aren't aware of the AI magic when they use the Starbucks app to place an order. But it's no surprise that when they purchase their preferred beverage, they're enticed by an image of a sandwich or pastry that would go well with it. That's the DeepBrew AI technology from Starbucks at work, weaving its charm. The Starbucks AI platform uses contextual data from the location of the customer's order, such as product availability. It also takes into account things like the local climate and the current season.

Airbnb Search Feature

People surfing Airbnb might believe their accommodation search is limited to the city or region they entered. But it turns out that a lot more activity is going on beneath the surface. When a user searches on Airbnb, the company's algorithm determines the best match for them based on more than a hundred different criteria. Along with geography, these variables also take into account the user's preferred price range and the length of their vacation. To present listings that the user is likely to book, it also takes into account information such as listing views, reviews, and past guest stays.

Why Focusing On CX In AI is the Best Move?

1. Divide the Decision Load

36% of executives believe improving internal business processes is their top priority when using AI. Around the world, 79% of executives believe artificial intelligence will make their work simpler and more effective. Decision fatigue poses a danger to any organization in the modern era of what seems like unlimited options and demands for immediate results. By leveraging its deep understanding of you as a customer to search through thousands of possibilities and condense them to a reasonable amount, AI can hyper-select the ones you choose.

For example, the majority of regular activity is handled by platforms and bots driven by AI, freeing up the staff to work on more productive tasks. The technology automates repetitive activities through chatbots and self-driving software, which reduces the time and effort needed to do repeated tasks by half.

2. Improve The Buyer Journey

A hybrid service powered by AI that provides direct human access would command a higher price, according to 43% of millennials and 28% of business executives, compared to a human-only service.

Following the maxim "know your consumer," which is essential currently, is becoming easier thanks to AI. It aids in determining customers' intentions and feelings. Business executives can use AI to measure customer happiness and spot risk factors throughout the buyer journey. This intelligence makes it possible for agents to be empowered, solve issues before they arise, and deliver exceptional experiences.

For example, many people add items to their carts but never check out because of the website's poor loading times, difficult checkout procedures, and other factors. In this situation, artificial intelligence helps recognize customer challenges and deliver a flawless purchasing experience.

Furthermore, artificial intelligence gives you useful insights into the areas where customers struggle and the doubts/questions that cause them to contact your support staff. Using these insights, you can offer customers certain options or FAQs that give them the impression that they have discovered the answer to their problem independently or, better yet, without assistance.

3. Develop an Integrated View Of Customers' Needs & Wants

51% of executives believe that improving their goods' features, capabilities, and efficiency is their top priority when using AI.

"To better understand the customer experience, brands should stop asking questions to their customers. They should also stop asking customers to perform feedback-related tasks, like filling long and annoying surveys. Instead, they should start listening to what consumers are saying on social media and online reviews using dedicated AI tools for user-generated content (UGC)," says Alon Ghelber, CMO, Revuze - in Clootrack’s CX Report.

AI is having a significant impact on how businesses can more efficiently and safely:

gather data, comprehend it, and produce valuable intelligence that can be used to drive personalized customer experiences, modern workflows, and user journeys
develop a more comprehensive understanding of the needs and wants of their customers

With a wealth of real-time user data, AI can assist you. You can collect and analyze user data in real-time using AI-driven technology, such as NLP (Natural Language Processing), allowing you to keep up with user expectations and behavior changes. Furthermore, you may introduce the products and ideas that customers desire in the ways they want to connect with them with the aid of this real-time data.

On top of it, facial recognition technology and virtual assistants are making it easy to understand users' feelings and sentiments at any given moment and find methods to instantly improve their lives through offers, refunds, and other initiatives, so businesses make long-term profits.

4. Personalize Customer Platform Experience

According to an IBM-commissioned Forrester study, 19% of businesses have implemented AI and machine learning for B2C personalization.

"New data and AI-driven methods are needed to engage and influence today's sophisticated and socially hyperactive consumers. To remain relevant, brands need to provide new value for existing customers with elevated and rewarding experiences across all touchpoints, while acquiring new ones with contextually tailored precision. Hyper-personalization moves an enterprise from targeting segments of its consumer base, to surgically targeting individual consumers, and wowing them with signature experiences at high-value moments," Lance Moncrieffe, AI Expert Practices Leader, Cognizant - in the Clootrack report.

A new level of personalization is being achieved. Famously, Netflix chooses variations of their content thumbnails that showcase your specific interests to tempt you more. It could influence you to watch something you might otherwise pass over if you know a certain artist is in it or a dog or baby is in it.

This way, artificial intelligence can develop improved customer engagement strategies by employing the appropriate technology use cases and precise insights derived from the data. Artificial intelligence does this by predicting the context of user interactions.

Moreover, startups and well-known organizations can provide customers with the appropriate promotional offer by studying customer interaction patterns and predicting their next step. And they increase both their profits and customer engagement in this way.

5. Anticipate New Products

The technology evaluates both recent user interactions and current market trends. AI can assist in predicting what products a consumer may be interested in or notifying them when to place a new order. This ultimately gives them information on the feature(s) and functionalities to add to their business solution to obtain significant market traction.

This way, an AI technique called predictive personalization can make a customer's experience seem specially designed for them. For instance, streaming services can recommend new music, podcasts, movies, and TV episodes.

More specifically, just turn to Amazon to see a fantastic example of AI in the customer experience. You can find what you might need quickly on the website because it steers you toward things based on previous purchases that you might be interested in.

6. Enhance Interaction With Customers

70% of users who interacted with a chatbot had their questions answered. Improved sales conversions (26%) were cited as the top benefit of deploying a chatbot, followed by more qualified leads (20%), a good customer experience (22%), and increased brand affinity (19%).

AI can assist firms in improving upon previous customer interactions. More words and accents may now be distinguished by technologies, including speech recognition software, which can also react to natural language.

To make similar product recommendations to customers, AI can examine their demographics, recent shopping history, and documented customer preferences. Chatbots and conversational interfaces can assist with feedback gathering and sentiment analysis to gauge customer engagement. You can later convert this feedback into profitable measures.

Providing an omnichannel experience is also streamlined by AI. Whether customers prefer to engage via social media, text messaging, websites, chat, emails, print mailings, phone conversations, in-person, or a combination of these, they can have smooth and uniform experiences.

7. Detect Fraud

AI assists companies in identifying oddities. As a result, the smartest firms are using AI to help safeguard customers and their data. A consumer's environment can be quietly detected and marked when something has changed. Credit card fraud alerts are the most obvious example, but it's crucial to notice if a customer's account goes beyond their budget.

This could be one of the main applications of artificial intelligence in retail, financial, and other fraud-prone industries. In fact, businesses such as banks use AI regularly to warn customers of suspected fraud or unauthorized access.

The ability of the technology to collect, retain, and compare user data in real time can simplify the process of spotting any changes in user behavior, aiding in the timely prevention of fraud. But without the right adjustments and supervision, these systems can incorrectly block transactions.

The Key Takeaways

When you start utilizing AI to enhance the customer experience, strive to create a vision for the customer journey before learning how AI can enhance your customer experience and help the business. Moreover, classify, arrange, and analyze customer data using AI technology.

Furthermore, pinpoint the areas where recent and historical data are regularly generated. Next, identify the KPIs you'll need to measure the impact of your AI/CX strategy. Investing in AI to provide a great customer experience is becoming a natural goal, given that the value of the customer experience is a plain fact.