As the COVID-19 pandemic hit the global market, the percentage of customer inquiries has gone up, which puts enormous pressure on the company’s support and communication processes. Due to a lack of quick interaction between colleagues regarding queries of the customer, there are so many unnecessary steps involved between the customer or even between the employees.

78% of the contact center professionals believe that AI has a positive impact on call center applications (Source)

The customer expects a prompt response from the companies for their queries. If the companies cannot deliver that, the customer gets frustrated, and the company loses its trust factor and reputation.

Five ways AI can improve customer experience

AI has elaborate applications in customer experience, from applications in customer support to the applications on the websites integrations. Below are five ways AI is implemented in customer experience.

1.Automated Deflection for Self-Service

Deflection is the process of resolving customer queries using self-help resources. It’s already known that most of the customers try to solve their questions on their own without talking to anyone. Nobody wants to talk to customer service anyway.

The self-service portals provided by the companies are generally overloaded with the information. Which is even more tiring than filling out the “Contact us” form and talking to the customer service executive. Which precisely what customers end up doing.

Here AI can help companies to reduce the number of forms filled out by the customer. By integrating a powerful recommendation system to your “Contact Us” form, companies can deflect the emails sent by the customers, By recommending the simple solutions while the customer is filling out the form, and only the queries which require solid support gets through. Hence providing it will improved customer experience.

2.Integrate FAQs into Chatbots with Knowledge Automation

We all have tried finding answers from chatbots, but unlike real agents, the chatbots are really very specific with what they can offer, which doesn’t really resolve anything. The problem with traditional chatbots is that they need a strong knowledge backbone to be able to provide any reliable solution.

67% of customers used chatbots in the past year- Invespcro

Introduction to knowledge automation(KA) and combining it with the chatbot helps create robust FAQ and full documents. KA is a type of MLA that combines content with analytics and helps fill the knowledge gap and correct it with curated content. This breakthrough allows chatbots to solve more complex queries by connecting your existing content with KA technology.

3.Implement AI Agent-Assist bots

AI Agent-Assist bots are like a personal assistant to your agents and is a game-changer for reducing agent and customer effort while driving customer satisfaction. It enables Agents to quickly access the information they need and provide an optimal solution to the customer. As the name suggests, an agent assist helps your agent to promptly show the right knowledge at the right time.

Below are some of the functionalities of an AI Agent-Assist bots.

• Intent detection & call resolution support
• Knowledge injection & script production
• Enterprise knowledge & system integration
• Live agent assistance

AI-powered recommendation engines can give real-time information to the agent. This decreases the time required by the agent to solve the query and also helps with the absence of coworkers or managers.

4.Connect Knowledge Automation to Your IVR

Stats suggest that normal IVR’s are generally frustrating for the customers as the menus are lengthy, there is a lot of waiting involved, and IVR doesn’t connect to customer executives. These issues can be resolved using smart IVR solutions, which is achieved by combining AI and IVR together.

An AI-driven IVR system improves customer experience. AI in IVR helps enhance customer journeys and enables the customer to solve their problems with ease. AI in customer service is not only improving customer service but also improving customer loyalty and overall brand reputation.

Knowledge automation can help the Agents to automatically recommend answers based on the customers who came through IVR to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the contact center. Passing customer purpose of the call through knowledge automation and agents receive precise and guided information, to which the agent can answer without any communication gap between customer and agent.

5.AI for Stronger Customer Engagement

In the old days, Customer support was measured by the amount of time they take to resolve a customer query or end a conversation. Nowadays, Most of the customer support being handled online creates a lot of communication barriers between the customer’s intent and the agent’s understanding of the matter. Companies are also looking to have more lengthy conversations with their customers and get some feedback as well.

Below are some of the ways AI is improving customer experience

AI Facilitates a Better Understanding of the Customer

With the help of AI and data science, we can leverage the data of each and every customer that is stored in a company’s CRM. A program is based on a prediction model that can help agents quickly get the information that they need to solve any customer query or even understand customer behavior.

Real-Time Decisioning and Predictive Behavior Analysis

There are many examples of predictive analysis out there that is used for personalized experience for the customers. There is another technology that takes predictive analytics to a whole different level called real-time decisions, which can accurately produce results in a matter of milliseconds, based on the most recent data available on the customer. It can be integrated with the websites using an API.

Conclusion

AI-enhanced customer experience applies to a broad range of areas to improve the experience with customer support, customer service, enhancing returns, troubleshooting problems, improving the website experience, messaging, and customized offerings.

 25% of all customer interactions were automated through AI and machine learning- Gartner

Artificial intelligence is no longer science fiction. Companies have started leveraging AI for better customer experience and as we move towards the future. The machine-dependent services are inevitable, and the world is already seeing so many implementations.

In this competitive business world, businesses need to stay ahead and be proactive in solving customer problems. Artificial intelligence has provided the companies to do just that.