First Impressions Through the AI Customer Journey
First impressions count; the easier and more seamless an interaction, the more positively your customers will think of your organization. We’ve all heard customer experience horror stories; whether that’s a frustratingly long wait time in a queue, being routed to the wrong outcomes, or being turned away for failing an identification and verification (ID&V) check. If you can provide a seamless first impression to customers, you can set yourself apart from the competition.
AI can help here:
- In the past, customer routing was achieved through IVRs; pre-recorded lists of options that the customer had to choose between. These were clunky, time-consuming, and often complicated more than they clarified. Customers struggled to identify which option was right for them and were often misrouted as a result
- AI lets the customer skip this step. Through Natural Language Processing voice recognition, AI can identify customer intention when spoken aloud, no list of options required
- AI can also enable biometric ID&V; securely identifying customers based on their unique ‘voice fingerprint’. No more security questions, no more chance of false negative identifications that frustrate customers and slow down interactions.
An AI-powered customer journey automates many of the tasks that slow down customer interactions in those precious opening moments. Not only does this lead to an overall improved customer experience, but it lifts the burden of essential administrative tasks off the shoulders of agents. They are free to get straight into delivering an outstanding service.
AI Customer Journeys and the ‘Hyper-Agent’
Once the customer has been routed to the appropriate agent, the customer journey is in full swing. There is no excuse to drop the ball now; you need to ensure the highest quality of service, and AI can help your agents deliver it.
To deliver the best possible customer experience, agents need support. That looks like relevant customer data, tailored script suggestions, and real-time data on tone and sentiment.
- The AI customer journey is powered by data. Customer intent and identity, collected by AI prior to the beginning of an interaction, are presented to the agent alongside the interaction. From the start, AI provides agents with the information they need to provide a personalized greeting and dive straight into the interaction
- From here, the challenge becomes resolving the customer’s issues in a quick and satisfying way. Agents need to keep a careful eye on a customer’s emotions and choice of language, particularly when a customer is frustrated or tired. Real-time, AI-powered sentiment analysis can provide an increased level of insight, making agents aware of shifts in tone that might not immediately be obvious
- Not every customer problem has an obvious solution. Agents don’t always have the relevant knowledge to solve complex problems, and digging out relevant knowledge articles wastes precious time. AI can help here: identifying and surfacing the most relevant articles, and even generating script suggestions to guide the agent in real time.
AI-powered customer journeys still involve human agents, but those agents are more efficient and capable than ever before. Once an agent has resolved a customer’s enquiry, AI can take over the wrap-up.
AI-Powered Customer Resolutions
To create an outstanding customer journey, you can’t just be thinking about the present customer; you also have to be thinking about the next. Because the customer journey doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There are further journeys, before and after, and if providing an outstanding experience to one customer requires sacrificing the experience of another, you’re failing more customers than you help.
AI can help to ensure consistency across every customer journey:
- After every interaction, agents need to fill out post-call forms, update customer data, and send follow-up communications. These activities take time; time that could be spent speaking to the next customer
- AI can take these post-call tasks off the plates of agents. Interaction transcription and summarization, powered by generative AI, can automatically pre-populate post-call forms, saving precious minutes for agents and ensuring a high degree of accuracy
- AI can also send personalized follow-up communications to customers, ensuring that they have a record of the interaction and personalized next steps. The customer journey ends on a high note; with AI providing a unique, hyper-personalized send-off.
AI is set to transform the customer journey; highly efficient, highly personalized experiences at scale. However, successful AI implementation is a unique challenge. To bring AI into your customer communications, you need a dedicated AI partner.
