Customer service chatbots and voice assistants, like Alexa and Siri, have been providing great user experiences for a long time. However, with recent advancements in artificial intelligence, especially generative AI, the buzz around this technology, and its promise for the future of customer experience, have everyone on the edge of their seats.

The implications in customer experience management

Artificial intelligence in customer service means high-quality responses to queries in real-time, a better understanding of consumer issues, and metrics that can take customer support to the next level. Leveraging professional software development services to integrate AI into customer experience tools allows for the creation of more sophisticated chatbots and voice assistants that can handle complex queries more effectively.

Since great customer experiences are key to fostering customer loyalty, it's imperative that your business harnesses the power of AI and uses it to its full potential. In this article, you will learn all about AI customer experience and how it can offer your customers fast, convenient service.

What are AI-powered customer experiences?

AI customer experience refers to using AI technology, such as AI Shopping Assistant , machine learning, and conversational UX, to make all touchpoints in the customer journey hassle-free and efficient for both customers and agents.

For example, support agents can benefit from a virtual assistant who can help them complete repetitive tasks. This means AI can help solve simple customer inquiries, and live agents can handle more complex customer issues.

How to use AI to provide better customer experiences

1. Route incoming messages or calls to the right agent

Routing a message or call means assigning a customer ticket to an agent based on the type of issue and the agent’s expertise. AI detects keywords in the customer’s message, evaluates the skills necessary to resolve the issue, and notifies the best agent or expert for that task. For instance, you can direct incoming customer messages in Spanish to Spanish-speaking representatives. This skills-based routing protocol can benefit the company as it helps connect customers to the agent who can best help them.

Skills can be defined per the company's needs, ensuring the algorithm routes incoming messages that fit the right preset conditions to the appropriate agent. It can be as straightforward as needed.

2. Deliver personalized recommendations

Companies can use customer data to analyze their audience’s demographics, behavior, and personal preferences. A consumer is more likely to become a frequent visitor after a personalized experience with a company.

This is why Netflix and Amazon use AI to understand the consumer’s behavior and pain points to provide the most relevant search results to their users. Based on a customer’s search history, these companies make similar product recommendations or cross-sell items that the customer may like.

3. Offer 24/7 customer support

Chatbots allow customers to seek support quickly and address concerns while learning about a product or service. Many customer problems can be solved without human interaction by giving a chatbot access to a knowledge base and customer information. Therefore, it doesn't matter if it's outside business hours; support teams can keep their ticket backlog manageable with AI-powered chatbots.

4. Use customer data for better services and avoid churn

A few AI tools can track and analyze unstructured data, such as customer sentiment, to see who is at a high risk for churn. This can help a business identify which customers they need to pay attention to right away. Sentiment analysis can also help a company better understand customer feedback and experiences, so representatives can prevent churn.

5. Minimize employee burnout

Several customer service representatives are burnt out and overwhelmed at work. Stressed agents are more likely to make mistakes and provide unsatisfactory customer experiences. Artificial intelligence can help decrease agent workload, establish better workflows, and independently direct clients to relevant knowledge bases. Businesses can further generate transcripts of successful client calls with AI for analytics, improving call scripts and enhancing training documents. Alternatively, IVR systems can address customer questions over the phone with pre-recorded answers and increase customer satisfaction with quick response times.

6. Anticipate customer needs and potential problems

Leveraging AI to identify common customer questions and problems can help businesses generate solutions for retention and prevent churn. For example, if several customers are having issues with your company's browser extension, you can set up resources on your help center to guide new users. AI can also group tickets according to keywords, so customer representative teams can see the bigger picture and prevent additional tickets or escalations.

Generative AI, in particular, can help even further

There are other use cases for generative AI that your company can benefit from:

Engage in various languages

By making your help centers available in multiple languages, you can make them accessible in different regions and markets, removing barriers. With generative AI, you can translate text in real-time during customer interactions or post website content, social media posts, or other forms of communication for better customer engagement.

Take advantage of predictive analytics

With generative AI, businesses can analyze and identify data patterns and trends to predict future customer behavior. For instance, analyzing customer behavior, market trends, and historical sales data can help you determine what products appeal most to customers. Predictive capabilities of AI can improve decision-making, and provide a valuable resource for client or customer reporting, offering a personalized overview of the value your business brings.

Create contextual advertising

Analyzing customer data can allow companies to generate ads that are highly relevant to a customer's preferences, interests, and needs. With a customer's browsing and purchase history, your business can identify their interests, including details like day, time, location, or device, and use generative AI to serve the right messages.

Generate content easily

By generating text from a natural language processing solution, companies don't have to worry about creating an extensive range of content for product descriptions, social media posts, and website copy. Generative AI allows you to customize and tailor the script for every platform, ensuring the style and tone of all content fits your brand voice, as well as your customers' needs and wants. AI can also be used to create content which is specifically optimized for SEO, driving more traffic to your website and increasing audience engagement. AI-powered SEO services such as Seeker's AI SEO solutions can help you tailor your content to a range of search intents, allowing you to capture users at every stage of the customer journey. It is also possible to create custom images using an AI image generator.

Provide exceptional customer experiences with 8x8’s AI-driven features

Better customer experiences are bound to attract repeat and new customers through word of mouth. To continue giving your customers the best service, choose a contact center solution that empowers your communications with AI. 8x8 offers a range of AI-driven functionalities and insights that can help you wow, and keep, your customers.

Talk to our 8x8 experts to learn more about AI-assisted self-service, pricing models, customization options, and more!