The success of a business is no longer dependent on simply the quality of the product. Now, experience is key. The perceived value of a product is enhanced, and positive reputational impact allow for businesses to drive growth at an exponential scale.
Businesses that provide such an excellent customer experience (CX), along with their product or solution, gain a huge competitive edge.
Technological innovation is driving unprecedented growth
With Silicon Valley at the forefront, businesses now leverage the power of technology to understand their customers better and provide the necessary service that meets their changing needs and lifestyle. CX has become a battle zone of sheer competitiveness as the majority of brands become more focused on customer success and retention than customer base growth. After all, it’s much easier to retain a customer than it is to find, convince and onboard a new one. Satisfaction is a very worthy investment.
As the demand for more personal customer service experiences increases, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can become a powerful tool for customer service. According to Dataconomy, in 2022, AI will have progressed far enough to become the most revolutionary technology ever created by man. And the opportunities and predictions around it are forecasting it to become even more intelligent that man. It’s not simply an intelligent model – with exponential continuous learning, memory and self-optimisation, it’s set to completely change the world as we know it.
What is AI?
Mathematician Alan Turing asked the important question: “Can machines think?”
In 1950, Turing published a research paper titled “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” along with the famous Turing Test. This established the vision for what we now know as AI. Fast forward to 2023, and we can now answer Turing’s question with a very confident “Yes”.
There is no clear dictionary definition for what AI is, but it can be explained quite simply as a subsidiary of computer science that focuses on producing computers and robots that are capable of performing tasks that can usually only be completed through human intelligence.
As per Gartner, the enterprise use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning has grown almost 270% in the last four years. The stats don’t lie – AI is going to empower us all in one way or another.
AI can particularly play a significant role in expanding and improving self-service support.
AI automation in customer service
With AI, companies can continue to provide excellent customer service but concurrently reduce costs related to human resource. This doesn’t mean replacing humans in customer service – after all, most customers seek human interaction when they have a problem or request. But AI can be used to empower these human customer service agents, and help them fulfil requests faster, better, and with more overall efficiency.
For example, customer queries like password resets or ‘creating a new account’ can be more effectively dealt with using an AI response and doesn’t need human intervention.
By using AI, customer-facing companies can automate some of their mundane menial activities that agents would otherwise be carrying out manually. This not only alleviates the opportunity for accidental human error, as mundane tasks are often the tasks that result in a human mistake but could speed up overall business efficiency and allow for CX staff to spend more time innovating. Essentially, businesses can focus on designing an incredible customer journey and fixing more complex problems while automating the more repetitive low-level tasks.
AI understanding and big customer data
The combination of AI and a contextual data-rich dashboard providing a better understanding of each customer, like the single pane of glass dashboard that Liquid Voice provides, gives CX agents a chance to fulfil a more personalised experience for customers. By accessing this deep, contextual data, there’s an opportunity to understand problems faster and resolve them better.
At a more macro level, AI’s predictive capabilities and trend understanding can offer insight into customer behavioural patterns and journeys. With the loss of third-party cookies this year, CX teams will no longer have the website and online portal data to see a full end-to-end customer experience, so unlocking this predictive BI capability could be incredibly valuable.
There are already pre-defined AI algorithms that can track diverse customer data points, including on-site interactions, purchasing behaviour and referral sources, so it’s time to look into this today before the data gets lost.
Self-service CX is still a necessary option
Self-service will always have a place in the overall CX as sometimes customers like to resolve an issue themselves or can ‘fix it’ faster than speaking to a customer service agent. Of course, this shouldn’t be a customer-facing business’ outlook, as there should be a focus on availability and problem resolution efficiency, but in today’s climate, customers have grown to accept delays on business phone interactions and communications.
With plenty of AI-enabled self-service options in the market, customers are now able to identify the problem they are experiencing and find the support they need straight away instead of relying on a customer support agent to understand the problem and then point them in the right direction or solve it. Think of this type of AI like a GP. The job is to understand the problem efficiently, and then point the end-user in the direction of the correct resolution, whether that be a self-administered solution or another CX agent or specialist that can fix the problem. AI agents can detect specific keywords in a customer’s query and use this data to provide valuable sources for the customer to find effective solutions – whether that be tutorial videos, blogs, product specifications and guides, or a specific department’s direct contact details.
At Liquid Voice, we see a huge opportunity for AI and data in customer service, and we believe that it’s the future of the sector. Be mindful though that AI shouldn’t replace humans. AI should be used to empower humans and elevate customer-facing businesses as a whole. The human touch should never be replaced.
According to Salesforce, 23% of customer service companies are already utilising the power of AI. Are you ready to take the leap toward this major evolution in customer service?
By empowering customer service agents with the combined intelligence of Liquid Voice and AI, they can conduct quick, accurate and personalised responses, alleviating administrative burden and improving overall efficiency and efficacy.
Benefitting customers, management, and agents
Using Liquid Voice’s dashboard to bring clarity and actionability to your data benefits all stakeholders, inside and outside of the business through:
💰 Cost reduction
📈 Streamlined processes
❤️ Nurtured supported agents
📊 Simplified compliance monitoring and reporting
🖥️&📱&💬 True omnichannel compatibility
Whether you’re a business looking to improve your customer service operations or an agent that feels under pressure, combining the power of AI and Liquid Voice simply makes sense.
Get in touch or find out more about the Liquid Voice Single Pane of Glass Dashboard.
