We are living in an age of instant gratification and consumption. From the way we order food to book tickets, everything is immediate. Customer service is no different, and no one likes to wait. Today, customers expect quick and accurate answers to their queries, and have little patience for subpar experiences. Most customers log out of their calls after they get frustrated with the endless loop and waiting time for IVR calls that are still preferred by many firms.

Improving conversations and impacting costs

In this context, AI can be a big game changer for customer experience with automated chatbot responses that learn and unlearn from previous interactions, thereby reducing the number of queries directed at the call center. A report by Gartner has stated that organizations report a reduction of up to 70 percent in call, chat and/or email inquiries after implementing a virtual call assistant. This can lead to significant customer satisfaction and a 33 percent saving per voice engagement.

As response times shrink and customer volumes increase, AI has a vital role to play in obtaining insights which helps in ensuring that customers receive the best service experience possible. In an era where customers receive huge number of e- mails, AI can help organizations in personalizing messages that are most interesting and relevant. For example, by implementing geo-fencing technology with targeted data and locations on mobile devices, organizations can use customized content to target consumers in their local markets. Based on the browsing patterns of the visitor and recent engagements, AI-based algorithms can create a personalized landing page on the fly that can instantly appeal to the customer. Leveraging augmented intelligence

Augmented intelligence, which Gartner defines as a human-centered partnership model of people and AI working together to enhance cognitive performance, is set to become more significant as both humans and machines learn from each other. AI augmentation will create $2.9 trillion of business value and 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity globally, as per Gartner. New advances in AI can hence provide customer care executives with the required intelligence that can help them answer queries more accurately. For example, each customer care executive could be supported by a virtual agent that monitors the call or chat and provides the agent with personalized advice. The virtual agent can understand the intent of the customer and by utilizing the knowledge from his or her past interactions; it can equip the customer care executive with all the relevant information to provide the right answer. This could include sales scripts, customized offers or any information that helps the customer care executive create more intelligent and meaningful conversations.

Improving productivity

Conversational AI solutions can improve the productivity significantly by transcribing voice conversations in real-time and generate documentation and intelligent insights that can further be used to improve agent performance, call handling resolutions and for future training. These insights can be shared across the organization with functions or departments such as product development, back office or sales to improve the competitiveness of the organization, and improve the overall customer experience.

A McKinsey report says that by deploying conversational AI, organizations can create a twofold improvement in customer experience; reduce cost to serve by 15 to 20 percent; improve churn, upsell and result in a significant upsurge in employee productivity. AI-enabled systems can detect problems before customers do, and take proactive actions. For example, a telecom service provider or an ISP can immediately alert organizations of a possible interruption in service, if it detects a network breakdown, enabling the organization to alert customers and take immediate action to resolve the issue. This can make a big difference in improving customer service.

Empowering employees

AI can also help organizations in training and retraining their employees. AI can help in monitoring the call of the agent and provide real-time notifications to guide the agent towards a successful call resolution. By using the power of AI and NLP technologies, conversational AI solutions can help companies elevate their standard of customer service to a new level, by monitoring key parameters such as call volumes and first call resolution. Insights revealed by the conversational AI solution can further be used to automate agent tasks, and coach new employees.

Further, by understanding the key skills and strengths of different agents, supervisors can assign the right agents to handle different queries.

Every organization today has a huge volume of information that can be used to gauge insights and personalize user experiences. In an era of high competitiveness and less attention, AI can be used to accurately customize and elevate the customer experience at each and every step that customers interact with a brand.