Every enterprise is dependent on making the first impression, their best impression, in the minds of customers as customer experience is a function of human interaction. Customer experience, after all, has become the new arena of competitive differentiator. From the first brand interaction on a website or store to ensuring full purchase to post-sale services, it has always been about impressions that employees leave on a customer. With artificial intelligence, this customer experience can be exponentially improved.

The concept of 'Conversational AI' is not new, however, its applications have been limited. Conversational AI can not only recognize text but speech too, understand user intent, and respond in a way that can be deemed as a human conversation. Using natural language processes, such AI implementation can elevate customer experience by breaking the lines between humans and machines. As a result, customers are no longer hesitant to interact with chatbot technologies.

As per Gartner's CIO Agenda Survey, leading organizations expect to double the number of artificial intelligence (AI) projects within the next year, and over 40% of them plan to deploy AI solutions by the end of 2020.

2020 was a year of many firsts, where global lockdown forced enterprises and businesses to think out of the box, mainly planning and implementing process automation to replace manual efforts. Conversational AI such as chatbots are appealing to organisations for it offers service outside of business hours without requiring extra staff. It also enhances repetitive, low-value tasks with automation, allowing customer service agents to focus on delivering better human service to their valued customers.

According to Business Insider, the global chatbot market is expected to grow from $2.6 billion in 2019 to $9.4 billion in 2024. The retail and ecommerce industries would experience the highest chatbot implementation due to the increasing demand of providing customers with seamless omnichannel experiences.

In this blog, we will discuss how conversational AI is helping brands improve their customer engagements and deliver impeccable customer experiences.

Quick Responses to Customer Queries

AI helps improve all customer interactions in real-time. Implementing automation intelligently is a convenient and cost-effective way of handling first responses on queries. AI-powered systems are adaptive to learning and therefore a great tool for question-answer format interactions, providing the modern connected customer with quick responses and solutions.

Personalized CX across Touchpoints

Based on previous/historical record of interactions with a customer, AI has the ability to predict and address customer queries more efficiently. Deploying conversational AI allows you the access a huge wealth of data highlighting customer preferences, which can be accumulated to deliver personalized customer experiences across multiple touchpoints. Such insights can go a long way in turning brand users into brand loyalists.

Leveraging Real-time Data For Delivering Intuitive Solutions

Conversational AI can gather key customer insights such as purchasing patterns and behaviour to gauge the intent behind a certain action by the customer. It can store information on the types and complexity of questions being asked, allowing for upsell conversations. Sales are a two-way interaction - where understanding customer requirements is as important as providing the right product, features and uniqueness. With machine learning, bots can provide intuitive solutions even if a customer is unsure of their actual needs - from showing the best travel destination to playing their favourite music. AI can easily leverage real-time data, analyse customer preference to deliver real-time intuitive solutions, improving the user experience.

Empowering Customers With Self-Service Portals

In our fast-paced world, customers no longer have the patience to wait in long queues on the phone to get their issues resolved. The tech-savvy customers of today expect their issues to be resolved with a tap of a button. As a response to this rising need of the customers, most enterprises are turning towards chatbots and deploying conversational AI to address the queries of the customers. Such self-service customer portals improve customer experience as it reduces the issue resolution time, it also enables the business to manage their service agents efficiently while saving costs.

In this information age, engagement has been at the heart of customer experience - to connect customers with the most relevant communications at the right time, through the right channel. It is the key to creating growth and engagement, building a brand and fostering sales. Conversational AI lies at the core of the answer to deliver an unmatched multi-experience to customers.

Join us in our process to digitally transform the customer experiences of our clients. At Espire, we are enabling above-par digital transformation & personalization by crafting awe-inspiring CX, with above-par solutions. If you would like to discover more about our work, you can connect with us on social media or get in touch at marketing@espire.com