Are we really ready for an AI-driven Customer Experience? 

With customer experience a primary point of competition for many brands today, and the current stream of new products and features utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) based tools, a marriage of AI and customer experience (CX) seems like a perfect pairing. 

Although there is much promise in the integration of AI and the CX, there are also some challenges that can easily present themselves, so leaders and practitioners need to approach the opportunity strategically and pragmatically. In this article, we’re going to explore the benefits and challenges of incorporating AI into the CX, then provide some ideas for how to create the best approach.

The benefits of introducing AI-driven CX

Let’s start by exploring what you stand to gain by introducing AI elements into your CX.

Scalability

Artificial intelligence can benefit the customer experience through scalability in various ways. AI can help businesses automate tasks, score calls or other digital interactions and recommend the next best action to take, provide an increased volume of variations for personalized interactions, and provide insights that would otherwise require human intervention and resources. By using AI, businesses can scale up their customer service, marketing, and sales efforts without compromising on quality or efficiency. AI can also help customers find what they need faster and easier, by offering relevant recommendations, chatbots, and voice assistants. For BtoB businesses, this replicates some of the value of delivering expertise to the market, and can enable an always on approach that doesn’t replicates the traditional benefits of having sales reps closer to the customer.  AI can enhance the customer experience by delivering consistent, accurate, and timely solutions across different channels and platforms.

Pattern recognition

AI can benefit the CX through pattern recognition in various ways. Pattern recognition is the ability of AI to analyze data and identify patterns, trends, anomalies, and correlations that are not easily visible to humans. By applying pattern recognition to customer data, AI can help businesses understand customer behavior, preferences, needs, and feedback better. This can lead to improved customer satisfaction, loyalty, retention, and revenue.

A few examples of pattern recognition include:

Personalization

Segmenting customers based on their demographics, interests, purchase history, browsing behavior, and other factors. 

Prediction 

Forecasting customer demand, churn rate, lifetime value, and other metrics. 

Prevention

Detecting fraud or cyberattacks that may harm customers or businesses. 

Resolution 

Automating customer service tasks such as chatbots or voice assistants that can answer common queries or resolve issues quickly and efficiently. 

AI can benefit the customer experience through pattern recognition by providing more relevant insights into customers' needs and expectations. By leveraging these insights into actionable strategies or solutions that meet or exceed your customers' expectations. AI can help you create a competitive advantage in the market and foster long-term relationships with your customers.

Immediate responses to customer needs

One of the main benefits of AI is that it can provide quick responses and resolutions to customer issues, which can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. AI can help you automate tasks such as answering common questions, providing personalized recommendations, resolving complaints, and offering proactive support. AI also enables you to address questions earlier in the customer journey, for example by using AI to engage customers via automated messaging rather than waiting to issue a survey after the experience is finished.

By using AI, businesses can reduce waiting times, improve accuracy, and deliver consistent service across different channels and platforms. AI can also help businesses gain insights into customer behavior and preferences, which can help them tailor their products and services to meet customer needs and expectations. AI can thus create a positive feedback loop between customers and businesses, leading to improved outcomes for both parties.

We hope that this initial article in our series has given you a spark of inspiration to explore some high value use cases further to enhance your CX via AI.  

In the next article in this 3-part series, we’re going to explore some of the challenges that brands need to overcome when adopting artificial intelligence in their customer experience approach.