8 Ways to Turn Up Customer Satisfaction with Conversational AI

Conversational AI has quickly evolved as arguably the most powerful tool to meet modern customers’ demands for accessibility, personalization and responsiveness. As marketers scramble to figure out how to fill this need, IPsoft’s Director of Cognitive Implementation, Tracey Robinson, shares eight ways conversational AI can delight customers in entirely new ways.

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Businesses have used  IVR phone systems, interactive websites, onsite kiosks and other technologies to automate customer engagements for years, often with the dual goal of increasing operational efficiency and improving consumer experiences. Now, these projects are taking on new dimensions with the introduction of comprehensive conversational experiences delivered via Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Specifically, conversational AI encompasses a wide spectrum of solutions ranging from simple rules-based chatbots at one end to intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) with advanced natural language functionality at the other. The commonality for all of these solutions is an ability to bolster customer satisfaction through enhanced features – ones that are in increasing demand among consumers. A recent consumer survey found that the majority of respondents expected that chatbots would provide them with “easy communication” (51%), “answers to simple questions” (55%), “getting an instant response” (55%), and “24-hour service” (64%).

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Conversational AI is a means to meet modern customers’ evolving demands for accessibility and responsiveness in any interaction with any retailer, manufacturer or services provider. Here are eight of some of the inherent benefits these technologies can deliver to your customers.

No More ‘Regular Business Hours’

Before the advent of internet technologies, customers usually were forced to wait for “regular business hours” to make an inquiry or purchase, or otherwise engage with a business. Conversational AI, on the other hand, is always available regardless of if it’s 3 am Christmas morning or 3 pm on a regular Tuesday.

These technologies are available 24/7/365, and also scale to meet demand, so consumers never need to wait for the “next available representative.” Not only is this increased accessibility useful during anticipated peaks in volume (e.g., technical support inquiries for a new gadget in the weeks after Christmas), but it also allows companies to be more responsive in the face of unanticipated events (e.g., insurance customers attempting to contact their provider in the aftermath of a regional or localized natural disaster).

Convenient Access Points

Conversational AI can be designed for a variety of platforms -- voice, web, social, mobile, kiosk, smart speaker, auto, or whatever ascendant mediums appear in the future. From a brand perspective, this agnosticism enables a CX uniformity across mediums (i.e., you hear the same voice on company X’s app as you do when you call customer support directly). For consumers, this technological flexibility means that they can engage with businesses wherever it is most convenient for them. This will become increasingly important in the IoT/5G era when consumers will expect an ability to engage with companies through all the connected devices in their lives.

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More Dynamic Engagements

Conversational AI can “live” in a number of platforms as detailed above, but they need not be contained to a single platform bucket. For example, if you ask Alexa a question through your smart speaker, she may send a relevant link, image or information to the Alexa app. This cross-platform functionality allows for dynamic, multi-faceted user experiences. A customer could, for example, engage with a clothing retailer’s virtual agent through their phone while in transit to the store to inquire about a “plain red shirt,” and the system could automatically email or text relevant products for viewing upon arrival.

Faster Resolutions

While simple chatbots are useful for answering basic questions, more-advanced IVAs, like IPsoft’s Amelia, use secure back-end integrations to resolve issues on users’ behalf at machine speed. This means that users can use these technologies to not only find information, but execute complex processes, e.g., make purchases, schedule appointments or transfer funds between accounts – all just by asking.  

Also Read: Did You Get the Message? Conversational Commerce Is Here

Hyper-Personalization

Using conversational AI, companies can inject casual and relevant up- or cross-selling into their customer engagements (e.g., “Thank you for purchasing your new grill. By the way, we’re having a sale on charcoal this week.”). This functionality will also provide useful and personalized consumer experiences, providing an important avenue for building brand and customer loyalty. Many digital systems already know quite a bit about a customer based on past interactions, which means for example never having to enter a home address again for a delivery. An AI system with a conversational front-end interface could take matters one step further and provide relevant purchase upgrades on the fly. For example, when a customer purchases a child’s airline ticket, an IVA could automatically inquire whether it should reserve a child’s seat for the rental car from the airport.

This functionality can even allow companies to pair the right experience with the right customer. For example, a bank might offer a different conversational experience (with a more casual way of speaking, if not a completely different voice altogether) for a recent college graduate who is applying for a new credit card, compared to the experience for a recent retiree who is about to pay off their 30-year home mortgage.

Making Human Agents Better

While conversational solutions are relentlessly improving and gaining capabilities, few companies will be able to completely automate all their customer service needs with AI – nor should that necessarily be the goal. Most companies will form a hybrid service function in which conversational AI will automate high-volume regimented tasks – with a secondary benefit of freeing experienced human agents to address complex or unique customer needs. 

Robo-Confidants

In certain instances, humans may feel more comfortable speaking with a machine than a human, particularly when dealing with private or culturally stigmatized issues. This makes conversational IVAs ideal for engagements touching subjects such as personal finance or health history. According to a recent Penn State University study, users tended to trust machines more than people when it came to private information and financial data. This trust, the study’s author says, may stem from the fact that “people believe that machines do not gossip, or have unlawful designs on their private information.”

Real-Time CX Refinement

In a conventional service department, there is an inherent lag in updating company rules, information and protocols related to CX simply because they require time to be properly disseminated and/or may entail new agent training. With conversational AI, changes to the CX can be implemented instantly at scale. This immediacy will be useful in highly-regulated industries like finance, insurance and health, but it also can benefit consumers via the rapid introduction of new products and services. This same scalability allows companies to A/B test different customer journeys to determine what CX approaches work best. Furthermore, real-time monitoring could instantly alert system engineers of a problem that needs to be addressed, e.g., a sudden spike in users who are abandoning sessions when they attempt to purchase a particular product could indicate a system failure that needs immediate attention.

We are entering an exciting technological moment where intelligent systems allow customers to engage with business systems through the medium most natural to them: conversation. This technology can open the door to new operational efficiencies while providing customer service improvements that we are only beginning to imagine. How will you use AI to benefit your customers?