How Chatbots Use AI to Improve Customer Experience

A CNBC report stated that by 2022, between 75 and 90 percent of customer queries would be handled by bots. 

A 2020 Conversocial ‘The State of Consumer Experience Trends’ report revealed that 71 percent of customers are comfortable using a bot today if it helped improve their customer experience.  

During the pandemic, four out of five people relied on Siri and Alexa to help them feel less isolated.  

With lockdowns being the new normal, Covid-19 has accelerated digital consumption — interesting global e-commerce trade from 14 percent in 2019 to 17 percent in 2020.  

The increase in digital consumption has proportionately increased customers’ expectations for better customer service. 

AI chatbots offer contextual services 

Without artificial intelligence, the possibilities with chatbots can be very limiting. Other than a customary (generic) greeting and offering a preset list of options to the customer, chatbots are not built to offer more services. 

But with AI, chatbots can offer a lot more. Using AI (and Machine Learning), chatbots can understand the user journey, see what the user has searched for, what the user has been looking for, what the user’s queries have been in the past, and based on these past transactions across several touchpoints chatbots offer customized solutions to customers.  

This keen sense of understanding of the customer’s requirements from the chatbot could even be a sort of ‘sixth sense’ for customers. All that the chatbot is doing is learning everything there is to know of the customer’s past and current interests and tailor suggestions accordingly. 

AI chatbots increase efficiency across processes   

Companies understand the need to have a human connection. While companies that employ AI-based bots to handle customer queries assure that the bots will never replace a human interface — it would not be far-fetched to think that we might arrive at a future where bots will begin to sound like humans. 

Currently, bots are exceptionally good at taking information from the customer, assessing (through voice and text) if the customer is likely to get irate, and accordingly escalate conversations (by passing on adequate customer-related intelligence to the human agent) if necessary. 

Chatbots reduce redundant tasks and increase efficiency for human representatives as it is incredibly good at doing repetitive tasks efficiently without getting tired or making mistakes.   

A chatbot is only as valuable as the valuable data it is fed. To make it contextually intelligent, it needs to train with the right data sets and technologies such as Tensorflow and Dialogflow to develop a certain level of conversational complexity that allows the chatbot to streamline inquiries and direct them to the right support agent who has either successfully handled similar queries before and manage inquiry traffic effectively.  

AI chatbots are available 24/7 

A VentureBeat survey reported that 50 percent of customers expected businesses to be available 24/7. With call center jobs having the notoriety for being one of the most stressful jobs, it is not ideal for companies to have human agents at all times — even under different shifts or maintaining customer service offices in other parts of the world at different time zones to address customer service queries at all times.  

In the pursuit of meeting or exceeding customer expectations, human customer service agents have burnout as part of their job, resulting in reduced productivity, increase in errors, lack of enthusiasm, and a growing dislike for the job. 

As companies today are trying to keep customers happy and implement processes and technology that can help reduce stress on human labor, they have found out that chatbots can keep working all day and all night long without impacting productivity and efficiency. 

Chatbots are remarkably effective for meeting and improving customer expectations. They help build better relationships between the brand and the customer. 

For repeat tasks, AI-based chatbots take less time, as they are designed to deliver better results with constant learning. Instant/faster resolutions translate to a better customer experience.  

With chatbots built to a point where the customer gets to have the answer even before hitting ‘enter’ on the keyboard (after typing the question) is nothing but a brand trying to resolve queries quickly; in fact, even before the query is posted — makes not only the customer relieved, but it also eases the traffic queue for chatbots to answer other customers’ questions efficiently. 

AI chatbots do not just meet customer expectations; they in fact supersede expectations.