From data analysis to automation of routine tasks, there are a variety of ways that businesses today can use AI to improve and streamline their operations. One of the most impactful ways to employ this technology is in the area of customer communication.
This might seem counterintuitive. After all, customer interactions are one place businesses are often advised to provide a personal touch since a customer journey that’s too impersonal can drive people to take their business elsewhere. The truth is, it comes down to how you use it. While AI can make interactions feel robotic, it can also expand the ways you personalize the customer experience.
Integrating AI into your customer communication can also boost your team’s efficiency and productivity by simplifying your workflow and taking some repetitive tasks off of your team’s plate. This gives them more time to devote to complex customer issues and other higher value tasks. The data analysis capability of AI can help here, too, providing deeper insights into the customer’s needs, preferences, and emotions that can help human agents guide these conversations to a faster, more productive outcome.
If you’re considering integrating AI into your customer communications, here are some of the top tools for doing so and some tips to help you use the technology to its full impact.
Top 5 AI-driven tools for customer communication
1. Chatbots.
The main power of a chatbot is that it enables you to offer 24/7 support without having a human team member working at all hours. Chatbots are also designed to learn from their interactions with customers, which means the accuracy and relevance of their answers improves over time. They can also draw on data about the customer to make personalized recommendations and tailor their interactions to match the customer, sometimes even better than a human agent could.
Granted, chatbots aren’t perfect. They can’t always answer or resolve more complex questions or issues, so you can’t expect them to replace a human customer service team. However, for answering simple questions, data from PSFK shows 74% of customers prefer a chatbot to a human interaction. This makes them an excellent way to both provide personalized, timely service to your customers and to automate more routine tasks, freeing up space for your human agents to focus on more valuable work.
2. Voice assistants.
Most people by this point are familiar with personal voice assistants like Alexa and Siri. This same technology and concept can be used in a customer service context, too. The most common form this takes is the use of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) to answer incoming phone calls to the customer service line.
These systems present callers a list of options and understands both numerical input and voice replies from callers. Based on that information, the system can answer their questions or route them to the correct department or agent to get the support or service that they’re looking for. This can be an easy way to automate customer interactions like paying bills or scheduling appointments, while cutting down on the wait time for customers who are calling to get the support of an agent.
3. Real-time personalization and recommendations.
The greatest strength of artificial intelligence in its current form is its ability to gain useful insights from a large volume of data. This can be put to great use in the customer service realm. One common form this takes is personalized recommendations for customers. The algorithm analyzes the customer’s buying and search history, then suggests products or services that may be of interest to them, increasing the potential value they get from doing business with you. You can also combine this with a chatbot interface to converse with customers about their needs and really home in on what they’re looking for from your company.
Sentiment analysis can be beneficial for this, as well. This technology allows an AI system to identify customer emotions from their chatbot messages, email communication, phone call transcripts, or reviews and social media posts about the business online. It can then adjust how it responds to customers based on this, or pass this information along to your support team so they can adjust how they engage with the customer. The result is more empathetic communication that builds trust and loyalty with customers, while reducing the stress and negativity experienced by your support team.
4. Advanced analytics.
The power of AI for data analysis isn’t only valuable for real-time interactions. You can also use this to make deeper improvements and adjustments to your customer service process. For example, you can have AI analyze all of the customer feedback and reviews that are left for you to identify recurring issues. This tells you what areas to focus on and improve to provide the most benefit to the customer experience. A human employee could do this, as well, but it would take them a lot longer to come to the same conclusions.
You can take this a step further with predictive analytics. This uses data from past customer interactions to predict future outcomes, allowing you to resolve potential customer service issues before they even happen. One way companies use this data is to identify customers who may be about to stop using a service based on their behavior, allowing you to reach out and offer a personalized incentive or similar perk to retain their business. This can help to reduce the customer churn in your company and build more user loyalty over time.
5. Biometric security and face/voice recognition.
For financial institutions, healthcare providers, and others who handle highly sensitive customer information, it’s critical to keep that data secure. Artificial intelligence expands your options for preventing unauthorized access to customer or patient portals. Biometric AI can be used to detect unique facial features, fingerprint patterns, or voice and speech patterns in order to verify a user’s identity. This enhances your security over traditional methods like passwords and 2-factor authentication.
Tips for using AI in customer communication
Remember the human
The most common complaint against AI is a valid one: that it makes the service process feel too robotic and impersonal. Customers don’t want to feel like they only interact with machines when they engage with your company. You can avoid this by making selective, smart use of artificial intelligence. View it as a way to enhance rather than replace the efforts of human staff, and make sure that customers can still get in touch with your team when they need to during your regular business hours. Used the right way, AI can actually make the customer experience more personal through customization.
Provide AI training to your team
You don’t need every member of the customer service team to have an in-depth understanding of how AI works. However, it is important that they all understand the specific AI-driven tool that you’re using and how to use it to its full effect. Some people are intimidated by high-tech tools like AI and will need some extra guidance to break through this hurdle. Even willing adopters should get instruction in the various features and functions of the program, along with basic troubleshooting strategies they can employ if something goes awry. The bottom line is, you shouldn’t just throw a new system at your team and hope for the best. Training them fully from the start is the best way to maximize the value of the program for your organization.
Consider your unique needs when choosing AI tools
Not every type of AI will be a good fit for every business. When you’re deciding the best way to implement this technology, start by analyzing your current customer service process to identify its weak points or common issues. Then, look for programs that will specifically target those areas. Approaching your AI adoption strategically is the best way to set yourself up for long term success.
