How AI Drives Customer Experience

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic term that has the ability to send shivers down our spines as it brings back memories from the movies we have all watched with robots taking over the world. AI is now perceived as a beneficial and friendly word of the 21^st century and it is yet to grow even more in popularity. Corporations of all sorts and sizes and turning an eye towards the potential benefits of implementing AI into their business strategy and expectations are that the use of artificial intelligence will prevail in the coming years.

Predictions by Gartner from seven years ago show that by 2020 85% of customer relationships will be managed without the involvement of human interaction. Although this may have seemed impossible and even frightening a few years ago, we are now seeing it become reality and it is more comfortable than we had expected. We are seeing AI enter the worlds of large corporations but can be applied by smaller companies in responding to queries, nurturing leads or managing complex incoming data.

Artificial Intelligence – What Is It?

We can imagine artificial intelligence as the machine inside a robot, or its intelligence. AI today has the ability to perform thought-making activities, simulate human mimicking and acting, comprehend large sets of structured or unstructured data, and perform numerous tasks, assigned by humans. The idea behind AI is to create machines capable of replicating human behavior and analytics with the aim of saving time, performing difficult for human tasks and improving results in any given sphere.

AI and Customer Experience

One of the most important areas that AI is being applied to today is customer experience. Today, the most important area of growing any type of business is data and the ability to use it in a productive and time efficient way. The customer journey online is becoming more and more diverse, connected along devices and requires an integrated and omnichannel strategy. Artificial intelligence can help businesses with an online presence in a range of ways but could also be used in customer service as chatbots, for example, to answer questions and solve problems quickly and provide relevant information to individuals. Communication between customers and the business can be made more personal and comfortable to users.

Let’s look at a few ways in which AI drives customer experience!

Immediate Use of Data

The information that we can collect from visitors to our site or customers with previous purchase patterns or browsing behaviors nowadays is infinite. However, the problem with this vast pool of available information is the actual ability to make use of it at the right time, in the right place.

Relying on human analysis to comprehend the collected data from customers usually takes time and substantial effort to purely collect, let alone understand. This is where AI can come in and save the day. The use of artificial intelligence gives businesses the opportunity of improving customer experience by using real-time insights to provide real-time solutions or suggestions to customers.

Analytics is one of the most important fields of focus for any business as they put a quantitative perspective on business and show what works and what could be a risk. AI simplifies this process and gives an immediate response to your business and to your customers.

Making Predictions

Another way in which AI will dominate customer experience is by providing your business with predictive personalization or providing a completely individual customer experience based on the user’s behavior and specific interests. While shopping online before was associated with long hours of browsing, today’s AI alternatives allow businesses to create tailored online journeys for users by using data on previous preferences, shopping trends, browsing behavior, and other data.

For example, AI allows your business to spot a shopper who was on your site yesterday and returned today and personalize their experience based on their search the previous time. It is basically a way of almost manipulating the user’s next step by showing them exactly what they want to see. Cool, right?

Being Human Where Humans Fail

However, customer experience is not only about the purchase making process. Chatbots now have the ability to comprehend and respond to human emotions, showing sympathy and other human traits that are highly valued in customer communication. This increases the level of comfort when communicating as it eliminates the chance of a human customer assistant failing to read a customer’s tone of voice or respond negatively to a query because they’ve had a hard day at work or are stressed.

Most of us have had the necessity of contacting customer service regarding a product or service we have purchased and are familiar with the long waiting time and the unpleasant experience of asking a question that the employee on the line is unable to answer. This uncomfortable process can be substituted with the use of AI. Pre-coded machines now have the full capability of having conversations and answering complex questions in a quick and friendly manner, immediately improving customer experience and satisfying users.

The evolution of artificial intelligence is an inevitable next stage of life and it is only beneficial for businesses to make the most of this alternative now available. Customer experience can now obtain a whole new level of sophistication, where users receive what they desire at a glance, without the need to experience stressful searches, conversations, or make complaints that seem to never be understood, while businesses, on the other hand, can finally make use of the endless quantity of customer information available.

About the Author

Donna Moores is a successful blogger and CMO at Handmade Writing. She has gained an outstanding marketing experience within the biggest industries and businesses, which she pleasantly shares with the readers.

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