How Adding Artificial Intelligence Can Improve the Customer Experience

Expectations for customer care are getting harder to meet. Now, customers demand faster service, more empathetic responses, and clear solutions at all hours of the day and night.  

As a result, many retail and eCommerce businesses are turning to artificial intelligence to respond to customer support tickets and inquiries. But the question remains: how is artificial intelligence actually enhancing their customer experience? Here are 4 ways.  

Business Intelligence 

Responding accurately to customer support tickets and messages can be difficult if you don’t have all the information. For example, if you don’t know who your customers are, you might offer a solution they don’t want or give answers they don’t need. And if you don’t understand what your customers are generally interested in purchasing, you might recommend a product they don’t like.  

Business intelligence (BI) closes the gaps in your understanding, by delivering insights on both individual customers and your audience as a whole. You can gather details on your customers’ pain points, interests, and needs to improve product recommendations. By viewing customers’ previous purchases, you can determine which channels and products they’re likely interested in. BI solutions can even show you how previous interactions with your business — specifically your customer care team — have gone, which enables you to better solve their problems. 

Visual IVR 

Previously, retail and eCommerce businesses relied on traditional IVR phone systems to route their customers to the right customer care agent. But over time, these systems have grown outdated, inefficient, and irritating for customers to use. So much so, that between 20-30% of customers hang up before they ever reach a customer care agent.  

Visual IVR takes customer experience up a notch by allowing customers to visually interact with a previously auditory menu. Acting as a customer care agent, the artificially intelligent IVR system can ask for information and guide customers around the menu to get answers to their questions.  

Customers can even enter personal identifiers (like account numbers) to get information on their orders and click around the menu to view their account details, 24/7. And since all of it is accessible from the smart device they use regularly — this on-demand, self-service customer care option is faster, easier, and more convenient for many customers.  

Customer Service Bots 

While live chat and instant messaging have been a great advancement for customer care, there are still some small hiccups with it. Namely, customer care agents aren’t always available to respond to customers when they need help.  

With chatbots, your customers can get answers to their questions quickly, whether it’s your busiest time of day or the middle of the night. And the chatbot can use their answers to route each customer to the right support agent, during standard business hours. This means your customers can get the product suggestions, answers, and solutions they need, no matter who is available or what time it is.  

Natural Language Processing  

Customers are more interested in empathetic customer care than ever before. But since most customer care is provided via live chat, text messaging, and emails, gauging customer sentiment can be difficult.  

Natural language processing enables you to determine how your customers are feeling, by analyzing the emotion behind each message. At the same time, it can help you pinpoint the exact problems your customers are facing, by tagging messages based on their topic and importance. This helps your customer care agents empathize with your customers and solve their problems more effectively.  

To keep up with customer expectations for customer care, retail and eCommerce businesses need the support of artificially intelligent solutions. But these technologies aren’t just designed to help businesses reach the bear minimum standard for customer experience. In fact, by utilizing natural language processing, customer service bots, visual IVR, and business intelligence, you can effectively take your customer experience to the next level.