In the contemporary world, customers have ample choices to make and hence, it is essential for businesses to put their heart and soul into retaining their customers. Having said that, the need for laying emphasis on incredible customer experiences is far greater than ever before. For even a little mistake your business makes in terms of customer service, you might see your customers switching. This gets even more feasible in industries where customer switching costs are incredibly low.

The question is, what does it take to create an experience your customers would love being a part of? Well, thanks to the stellar technological advancements of the contemporary world, today all that you need to cultivate great customer service is the prowess and charm of artificial intelligence. If we look around, AI is changing the way businesses operate and thrive ahead to be far more competitive in the ever-evolving business environment.

To substantiate, artificial intelligence is now being widely applied across different verticals and disciplines in the workplace to optimize operations and amplify business success. Specifically, in the context of customer service and experience, AI is playing a game-changing role in enabling businesses to deliver on customers’ expectations.

Thanks to AI that acquiring new customers and retaining the existing ones has become far more streamlined than ever before. In fact, the trend of AI in customer service is only going to get bigger and better in the times to come. To validate, as per Zoominfo, more than 95 percent of customer interactions will be driven by artificial intelligence by the end of 2025. To further add, the market size for conversational AI is anticipated to reach USD 18.4 billion by 2026 growing at an impressive CAGR of 21.8 percent.

Surely, AI is the future of customer service and you need to incorporate this trend as soon as possible. For that, you first need to comprehensively understand the benefits of AI in customer service. This blog sheds light on the various ways in which AI is changing the face of customer service metrics for the better.

5 Beneficial Ways AI Can Enhance Customer Experience

1. AI drives effective Personalisation

Gone are the days when personalization was just a trend that few businesses started, today the implication of personalization has become a necessity for businesses. To substantiate, as per Accenture, 91% of consumers state that they are more likely to purchase from brands that provide offers and recommendations that are relevant to them.

That being the case, AI is one of the most powerful tools that can help in creating personalized recommendations and suggestions for analyzing the online behavior of consumers. Effective personalization will assist in showing relevant content to the consumers which will assist in keeping them engaged.

Along with this, many businesses also introduced AI-powered assistants in order to enhance the overall consumer experience. These AI-powered assistants will help in suggesting to consumers which products to buy during their virtual shopping experience. These assistants will act as virtual salespeople to personalize the experience of consumers while virtual shopping.

2. AI can enhance predictive analysis

Increased competitiveness in the business world has encouraged businesses to adopt various strategies and tactics in order to attract and retain customers. Coping with needs and expectations has become another necessity for businesses to acquire customers.

Hence, it is really essential for you to conduct an effective predictive analysis in order to understand what people are expecting from your brand. When the desired expectations are fulfilled, it assists you in enhancing the satisfaction and happiness level of your target audience. Enhanced satisfaction and happiness will further add up to a positive consumer experience.  To validate,  82 percent of respondents from a survey expect that businesses will be able to cope with their preferences and expectations.

In such scenarios,  artificial intelligence can conduct predictive analysis using historical data and external data of your business and can forecast possible future trends. This can assist you in getting some strong insights on what will be the future preferences of the consumers. This can assist you in making more informed decisions about inventory stocking and supply chain as well.

Once you have understood the future trends, it will assist you in being prepared for your customers’ demands in advance. This will lead to customer satisfaction and will also enhance the overall customer experience of your business.

3. AI enables instant response

According to the stat given by Khoros, 83% of customers claimed that they feel more loyal to businesses that respond to and resolve their complaints quickly. This stat is pretty much evident that customers expect you to be available for them 24*7. They want instant responses and want you to resolve their complaints as soon as possible.

However, it becomes humanly impossible for chat representatives to be available in the chat support and provide instant responses to a large number of consumers’ queries every day. That being the case,  AI chatbots are the most effective solution to this problem. AI chatbots will allow you to be there for your consumers whenever they need you.

Moreover, recent developments have allowed artificial intelligence to respond in the most natural possible way. This will allow your customer service to be more interactive and responsive without interference from humans. All this together will lead to effective customer service.

Furthermore, better customer service will assist in retaining existing customers and acquiring new ones. To validate, 93% of customers state that excellent customer service encourages them to repeat purchases from brands. This implies that enhancing customer service through AI will contribute to enhancing customer experience.

4. AI provides powerful customer insights

We can all agree on the fact that because the ball is in the court of customers with so many options available to shop from, this encourages businesses to be more customer-centric. That is the reason it is very important for you to collect customer-driven data describing the needs and desires of your customers.

Having said that, AI’s ability to drive strong customer insights will help you in finding what exactly your customer wants. This data can be driven from various sources like the purchase history of clients, feedback, or engagement of customers through social media.

The collected data will allow you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your business that attracts or repel your consumers. Furthermore, you can boost the strengths and eliminate the weaknesses in order to enhance the customer experience. This will allow you to gain a competitive edge over all other competitors. 

5. AI automates repetitive tasks

As Richard Branson said, “If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers.” This implies that in order to enhance customer experience, it is essential for you to take care of your employees as well.

Moving ahead, employees often spend the majority of their productivity on completing repetitive tasks assigned to them. This will affect their productivity and will also negatively impact their attitude because let’s face it, nobody likes to do the same thing on a loop.

 In fact, according to Clockify, 90% of employees feel overburdened with repetitive and boring tasks. In addition to the same, the average global time people spend on duplicate tasks per week is 4 hours and 38 minutes, which amounts to about 10% of people’s time at work.

To continue, artificial intelligence can play a major role in solving this problem. AI can automate tasks that can free your chat and sales representatives from performing repetitive tasks and can enhance their positivity toward work. This will assist in contributing to their happiness.

Moreover, their level of happiness will clearly define the way they will treat your customers. Happy and satisfied employees will be more productive and encouraged to deal with the customers positively. This can contribute to enhancing the overall customer experience of the business.

To encapsulate, artificial intelligence has been making its space in almost every business operation. Moreover, the above-described ways prove that bringing artificial intelligence in order to enhance the customer experience will only bring benefits to your business. Hence, you should start investing in AI for the betterment of your business, if you already aren’t.