Customer experience is the next competitive battleground

Jerry Gregoire

How many customers would rather stop using a product, than call customer support? ✋
How many customers have waited for hours, until an agent becomes available? ✋
Customer Experience is crucial to a business and Artificial Intelligence can help you skyrocket it. But let’s take it step by step…

Customer Experience 101

Whatever the nature of your business is, prioritizing your customers and providing top-notch experiences is crucial in order to thrive. A successful customer experience (CX) can lead to repetitive sales, loyalty and word of mouth marketing (WOM). And who doesn’t want that, right? Nevertheless, many companies identify CX with support. As a result, customers are (partly) unhappy and managers struggle to understand why.

CX entails much more than pre/after sales support.
Your speed, personalization and even your employees, play a huge part in shaping this experience. It is created, as a puzzle, piece by piece, through every touchpoint your customer has with your brand. From product use and packaging to advertising and yes, the quality of customer care. The final puzzle will define your future relationship with the customer.

The Age of the Consumer

The business-customer relationship has changed. A few years ago, what mattered the most was customer acquisition. Sales was the No1 goal of every business, and customer retention was a neglected strategy. Since then, companies have realized that attracting a new customer can cost 5 times more than keeping an existing one. Of course acquisition is still a top priority, but retention has gained ground and CX is in the driver’s seat. Moreover, consumers have grown smarter and pickier. They have a plethora of options and all the means to search, compare and read reviews before making a decision. 1 out of 3 will leave a brand they love after a bad experience.

Companies have realized the role of CX in elevating their business and most of them invest in technologies like AI to create a differentiation point. These technological breakthroughs are not the key to a successful CX, but they are a powerful weapon and can help you create innovative and unique experiences for your customers. They can be your cherry on top!

AI + CX = Success!

Artificial Intelligence has sneaked its way into businesses and through technologies like Machine Learning and Natural Language Understanding (NLU), your business can deliver a phenomenal CX, at every customer touchpoint. Statista predicts that “the global AI market will see rapid growth in the coming years, reaching more than half a trillion U.S. dollars by 2023.” There must be a reason right?
But, how can AI be applied to CX?

• AI Virtual Agents
  Your customers can experience top-notch support, while your employees avoid burnout.
  
  Customer support is not equivalent to CX, but it is a part of it. An AI virtual agent can help your employees provide quick and personalized support to your customers. From human-like conversations and personalized solutions to 24/7, omnichannel support through integrations, an AI virtual agent can automate many repetitive processes and create unique and personalized experiences at every customer touchpoint.

• Hyper Personalization
  Stop spamming your customers and streamline their experience.
  
  Hyper-personalization uses AI technologies to provide the best product recommendations and content to the customer and can be applied throughout the customer journey.
  During the Awareness and Interest stages, you can use hyper personalized advertisements, and optimize your message to appear to the right audience at the right time. Deep learning models can analyze massive data and detect patterns, allowing you to target the right audience for your business. As a result, customers will not be bombarded with recommendations they are not interested in. 90% of consumers find personalized advertising appealing. During the Desire and Action stages, you can use recommendation engines to find out your customer history such as where they came from, preferences and geographic data. As a result, you can provide tailored suggestions to potential and existing customers, and intensify their desire for your products or services.
  
  Moveo.AI can help you achieve this level of hyper-personalization.
  By incorporating Moveo.AI to your channels and back-end systems, you can handle incoming leads and process enquiries of existing customers, perform transactions and even assign customers to live agents when needed.

• Self-Learning
  Your customer’s questions changes every day. You need to keep up!
  
  Your customer needs change rapidly and they expect you to stay up to date with them and deliver rich and relevant information. With self-learning, you can achieve that. Deep Learning algorithms can analyze datasets, find patterns and eventually “fill in the information gaps”.

Moveo’s self learning capabilities can provide you with the support you need and make your life easier. The more your AI virtual agent converses with users, the more it learns and improves, uncovering new customer needs and business pain points. This power-knowledge will enable you to better prioritize your goals and your employees to better serve your customer’s ever-changing needs.

Improving your CX may be an overwhelming task, especially in a competitive battleground where your competitors are utilizing all the means available to beat you. Find the right weapons to stand out and make the battleground a playground.