A bad customer experience is more hurtful than most people believe. In fact, 73% of customers said customer service was the number one thing they considered before purchasing from a business and 49% of customers have left a brand due to bad customer experience. These numbers show that customer service is of the utmost importance.

With the ever-increasing speed of our world, the demand for fast, exceptional customer experiences that exceed expectations is at an all-time high. So, how can you keep up with the growing demand while increasing quality? That is where conversational AI chatbots come into the picture. These advanced automation solutions are quick to respond, can help with overall customer service demands, and ultimately improve customer experiences.
But to build a great automated AI agent experience, you must first create a great strategy. Without a strong conversational AI strategy, you could potentially waste a lot of time, money, and labor. Having the right plan can make things more efficient and deliver results with a quicker ROI.

In this article, we will discuss the best steps in defining a solid conversational AI strategy, what questions to ask yourself, and some answers to look for.

Clarify your End Result

The first step to any great strategy is to define your goals clearly. What do you want your conversational AI chatbot to do? Do you want it to be able to schedule appointments with your customers? Answer specific questions? Give your customers special offers? Do you want it to have the ability to make sales? What questions should your chatbot be able to answer well, and what would it need to handover to your live agents?

The best way to ensure you can improve customer experience is to know what result you are seeking. How will the chatbot benefit you and your company? One thing to consider is how much an AI agent can cut costs or improve the resolution time. How will you measure success? A specified reduction in live tickets? An increase in CSAT? Increase in speed of resolution?

It’s worth considering what experience you want to give with your chatbot as well. What tone of voice do you want the AI chatbot to use when interacting with your customers? A more casual modern tone or a professional tone?
Think of ways you can introduce more automation to your customer service flow. FAQs are a great first step in addressing repeated questions quickly, but advanced conversational AI agents capable of connecting to a company’s tech stack, can automate more intricate processes such as reschedule deliveries and create/update information in your CRM.

Lastly, think of who is responsible for this project. Are they technically skilled, or do they need help? Some conversational AI companies offer more technical, in-depth solutions, which could require more training, while companies like Moveo.AI offer drag-and-drop options that require no special skills.

Take Advantage of Your Data

A great way of including automation in your customer experience is with FAQ’s. Rather than taking away time from live agents by answering the same questions over and over again, AI agents can take over this repetitive task easily and offer fast and efficient answers to customers.
Advancements in generative AI enable you to consolidate your FAQ data and upload your knowledge base, allowing the bot to learn and answer these questions by tracking frequencies of similar inquiries and consolidating the answers to the FAQs.

However, simply uploading your help center does not guarantee successful results. The data provided should be well organized and written in simple, explicit language for the AI agent to comprehend.

Read Moveo’s best practices for optimizing your documents.

Craft Your Conversational Flows

For complex problems that require live agents, AI bots can still be helpful by being the first layer of contact and seamlessly guiding the customer to the right live agent to help them. Think of how the conversation will flow between the customer, the bot, and the live agent. What use cases should your AI agent handover? What would the bot respond with during moments of conflict or frustration?

Another great thing to consider is using A/B testing to try out different flows for different customer service experiences.

Integrate Your AI Agent With Your Tech Stack To Extend Its Capabilities

The transition to conversational AI will require work, but there is no need to multiply the effort by choosing a platform that could potentially not fit with your existing infrastructure. If you have pre-existing back-end systems such as CRM, ERP, Zendesk, Intercom, or others, consider choosing an AI chatbot that can integrate seamlessly with them without having to jump through hoops.

This will also allow your AI agent to perform actions beyond written responses. It could potentially open and close tickets, complete sales, record data, and communicate issues to the team through various social channels like WhatsApp, Zendesk, Facebook Messenger, and more.
Allowing your chatbot to automate complex operations can help create hyper-personalized experiences and improve your CSAT scores.

Analyze Your AI Agent To Improve Your Customer Service

The power of any company lies behind its ability to reflect, grow, and improve. The best way to do that is with analytical tools that give you a clear view of what is happening with your customer interactions.
Define a conversational AI strategy that allows you to easily analyze the responses of your chatbot and follow the customer experience end-to-end with a final understanding of customer satisfaction. This way, you can pinpoint exact issues that can be improved while maintaining what is currently working.
Some meaningful metrics include:

• Number of conversations per week or month
• Handover frequency
• Peak times during the week
• First response rate (FRT)
• Customer satisfaction rates (CSAT)
• Coverage and containment

Read more about how conversational AI analytics can improve your CX strategy.

Choose Your Next Steps

The success of your chatbot implementation lies heavily in the initial steps of building the right conversational AI strategy. With these steps, you will discover what exactly you need from a virtual assistant and the best route to get there. Moveo.AI can help you plan your conversational AI strategy and achieve up to 70% reduction in live-support tickets across industries such as Finance, e-Commerce and GameTech. Schedule your free consultation today!