Three ways AI will improve customer intelligence in 2023
AI has revolutionised many aspects of the business world, including customer experience. As demonstrated by the recent growth in prominence of generative AI outside of the IT industry - from media and entertainment companies, to retail, and even farming - there is a huge opportunity to leverage AI so businesses can gain a better understanding of customer needs, personalise their experiences and make processes more efficient. As AI continues to advance and become more commonplace in business, we’ve identified three ways this technology will improve customer intelligence in the months ahead.
1. Fostering innovation and streamlining operations
One of the key benefits of using AI for customer intelligence is that it allows teams to focus on innovation. By automating tasks and processes, businesses can free up their teams to work on more critical tasks and devote more time to improving the customer experience. Customer service agents, for instance, spend a significant amount of time manually entering and retrieving customer information; however, through the power of AI, agents can obtain customer information instantly. Agents can now provide a more personalised experience, focusing on customer pain points and quickly resolving enquiries.
By way of an example, we can look at how WeWork utilised real-time voice insights and call coaching to help its sales teams increase conversions and improve standards. The provider of office space solutions leveraged AI to generate conversations and decision prompts in real-time to assist customer service representatives in their communication. WeWork is also able to access the data behind each call in order to enhance performance and workflows.
As consumers, we will start to notice a growing divide between businesses that leverage and embrace AI and those that don't.
2. Uncovering and responding to customer needs
Businesses need to understand customer needs faster and in a more detailed way, and in this current economic climate, they risk falling behind if they struggle to do so. With the pandemic and the economic fallout drastically changing behaviour, businesses need to leverage customer intelligence to understand how their consumers shop digitally as online shopping continues to surge.
In the retail sector, businesses can examine purchasing patterns to identify which products will be popular in the upcoming season, allowing them to stock inventories appropriately and increase sales. Chatbots, for instance, can provide customers with quick store navigation assistance and tailored product suggestions. AI quickens and simplifies checkout by making personalised suggestions. Businesses that use AI in this manner demonstrate to customers how much they value their time and that they are willing to go above and beyond to ensure the best possible experience.
In addition, businesses today need access to real-time data and insights to monitor their sales forecasts. This includes tracking website traffic, which can provide insightful data on customer behaviour, help businesses determine which products and pages are the most popular so they can optimise their websites and help businesses decide which offers to display to ensure they maximise sales.
3. Enhancing and personalising the customer experience
Speech recognition, also known as speech-to-text, is the process of converting spoken words into a text format through AI and advanced algorithms that recognise patterns in spoken language. Customer calls and messages are transcribed to gain a wealth of data which can be analysed to understand customer behaviour, needs, preferences and pain points. Additionally, virtual assistants and voice-activated interfaces have been made possible by speech recognition technology, which can boost productivity and provide a more efficient and simplified user experience.
Similarly, natural language processing (NLP) helps break down human text and voice data to enable computers to understand and interpret human language. It is used for sentiment analysis of customer feedback across various industries, which can offer insightful information for enhancing customer satisfaction. NLP has led to the development of chatbots being used for customer service, and analysis of customer feedback to uncover trends in text data.
To track how pleased customers are with an interaction, businesses are using tools such as the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) to measure how satisfied customers are with a product, service or experience. CSAT can be augmented with AI to enhance customer service through real-time transcription and sentiment analysis. The functionality enables every audio chat to be evaluated and rated based on customer satisfaction, giving agents precise and timely feedback to enable them to perform their jobs better.
Companies will be well-positioned to win in the digital economy if they adopt AI for customer intelligence. Businesses may increase productivity by automating operations, leveraging AI to better understand consumer needs and personalise the experience. If companies can keep up with the changing market and resources available, they will be able to build customer loyalty and in turn increase revenue. AI will certainly continue to rise to the forefront of customer service as it develops - making it crucial for organisations to understand the ways in which this technology can enable them to improve their services.
