How AI is Changing the World of Customer Experience

Customer experience is that important, not just to double your revenue but also to beat your competitors. Many businesses including big brands like Microsoft, Amazon, and Adobe already trust AI for their customer experience initiatives. Here’s why. 

Customer Experience is The Powerful Differentiator 

Customer experience has become a new differentiator that can make or break your business. Though it has always been an important factor among customers, previously businesses focused more on improving product quality and price. 

But AI has shown a new angle making them realize it’s time to think from customers’ perspective. Prioritizing their needs and understanding their behavior is more important than focusing on simple facts like their age or location. 

However, knowing your customers means understanding their actual expectations from your product or service. How do they like to be treated or served? This type of knowledge helps you make a better customer experience strategy to serve their expectations. 

AI's Impact on Customer Experience: Explaining with Real-World Examples

AI has become a powerful tool to deep scan the customers’ minds and behavior. This helps businesses in planning and implementing strategies to enhance the customer experience. Here’s how?

1. By Influencing the Next Purchase

Simply marketing the latest products doesn’t guarantee sales. They may or not be useful for the customers. But when you display the products they need or can afford, you change their mind. 

Through AI recommendation systems, you can guess what type of products might catch your customers’ interest. Machine learning algorithms work in the background of these systems to understand the customers’  behavior or interaction with your website or e-store. This important data helps in guessing the right products for their next purchase. 

Real Impact: According to McKinsey, 35% of Amazon buyers purchase products recommended by their recommendation engine. 

Also Read: How AI Helped an Auto Manufacturer Achieve 81% Customer Retention Rate?

2. By Supporting 24x7

Millions of customers and billions of interactions. Helping each one on every channel they are, whenever they want, is next to impossible without the aid of technology. 

AI chatbots and virtual assistants are making this impossible thing possible for businesses around the globe. These bots are capable of responding to every query of customers quickly and that to be in natural language like us. 

Main advantage of using bots for customer support is they can serve beyond physical and time boundaries. 

Real Impact: Erica, a virtual assistant by Bank of America, is becoming human each day. It handles 1.5 million interactions every day to connect clients with the bank’s services and specialists. This AI-powered assistant is not only improving customer satisfaction but also increasing the bank’s revenue. 

3. By Understanding the Emotions

Not every customer writes a mail or contact service agents to share their issues. They express their opinions and experiences mostly on social media platforms. Knowing these emotions is very useful in improving their overall experience with your business.

However, with millions of customers active on multiple channels, it’s hard to analyze everyone’s sentiments. AI is the fastest route to do sentiment analysis from text, words, and even video feedback no matter where they come from. Understanding this crucial data helps you make necessary improvements as per customers’ expectations.

Real Impact: Amazon is heavily using AI in its marketing strategies. It takes the help of AI to read all the customers’ reviews and feedback on their products and services. 

4. By Personalizing Every Interaction

The one-size-fit approach doesn’t work when it comes to impress customers. They come from different backgrounds with different incomes and interests. Therefore, your approach should be unique for every customer. 

To ensure they leave your store happily and come back again, you must do more than just basic. Use AI to personalize their every interaction with your store or business. Whether they need help opening a new account or suggestions for their next purchase, AI ensures they get what they want.

Real Impact: KFC is taking personalization to the next level by using AI for customer service. They use facial recognition technology to personalize the next order of their customers. This saves their customers time in ordering food according to their taste preferences and budget. 

5. By Improving Decisions

Customers make quick decisions and by helping them to make correct decisions, you can win their hearts. How?

Many businesses are using artificial intelligence along with AR and VR to help customers virtually try on their products. They don’t even have to step out of their home to shop. 

This convenient shopping experience improves customer experience too as you are saving their time, money, and effort. Most importantly, this unique approach to attracting customers differentiates you from other brands that have not used AI yet. This means more customer engagement, increased sales, and business. 

Real Impact: Cosmetic brand ‘L’Oreal’ is changing the way its customers choose cosmetics. They can try thousands of shades of lipsticks without even purchasing them, right from their smartphones. 

Also Read: How AR in Retail is Changing Customer Experience and Boosting Sales

Wrapping Up!

Artificial intelligence is, undoubtedly, making businesses more customer-centric. The above-mentioned use cases and real examples prove it. However, businesses should strike the right balance between using AI and human agents to make a positive impact on customers. Human touch is still a powerful reason that motivates and differentiates how your customers will interact with your business.