How AI and Data Science are reshaping customer experience

Recently, Spotify, a global music content platform, introduced a new feature, Discover Weekly, as an intelligent playlist developer for its users. Based on a listener’s past history, preferences and the trends reflected by analysing data from music aficionados with similar tastes, the company implemented machine learning ‘best fit’ algorithms to provide its users with a delectable list of latest music that kept them glued to their headphones for hours.

This is one of the many instances where AI has transformed customer experience as we know it. The two most popular vowels on the internet, AI or Artificial Intelligence, are being implemented by various industries to learn from data, identify the most efficient operational processes and go beyond passive advertisements to enhance the customer engagement quotient. In fact, a report by Servion predicts that AI will power 95 per cent of all customer interactions by 2025. Gartner, on the other hand, says that 85 per cent of customer relationships will take place without human interaction by 2020. The benefit to businesses is obvious and significant, as estimated by Juniper Research which states chatbot conversations will be responsible for cost savings of over $8 billion per year by 2022, up from $20 million in 2017.

AI, the key to driving business in a customer-driven world

Today, customer experience has emerged as the key differentiator for businesses. Successfully implementing micro-targeted customer engagement plans which are linked to an overarching strategy is essential to develop positive customer lifetime value. Customers today seek highly engaging, easy and innovative first-time experiences from businesses, the standard of which then needs to be maintained throughout the lifetime of a customer. This is the essential difference between customer experience (CeX) and customer relationship marketing (CRM), and AI serves as a great bridge between the two.

Aiding the entire transactional ecosphere-Diverse advantages of implementing AI

Response time-Consumers want precise, concise and quick communication from businesses. In such a scenario, even a single missed query can lead to an opportunity lost. AI-based communication solutions can work 24x7 to ensure every query is attended to. Furthermore, by automating routine enquiries, AI-based systems can store and analyze data quickly to aid human agents make future conversations with these customers more enriched.

Standardised customer behavior-With human agents, an element of unpredictability always looms large on a business. Emotional outbursts are a regular occurrence over calls, and they might prove to be too much for human agents to handle. AI-powered chatbots however, can easily converse in a standard manner, yet incorporating elements that make it look like a personalized communication. With human assistance, chatbots are also able to quickly learn various speech and text patterns to identify the emotional state of a consumer at a particular point of time.

Personalised communication-One of the most important benefits of AI-powered customer experience solutions is their ability to interact with a mass audience in a customized manner. They can quickly complete the journey from recognition of given data to comprehending it and implementing the findings to make a conversation engaging. In fact, chatbots developed by Knowlarity, a global pioneer in creating AI-powered business communication solutions, are known to imitate human speech patterns and thought processes to such perfection that it becomes difficult to ‘spot the bot.’

Man-machine relationships-The cornerstone of future businesses

People are increasingly moving towards instant messaging to communicate with their favourite brands. In 2015, the number of people using messaging apps overtook those on social media, and the presence of more than 34,000 chatbots on Facebook Messenger alone reflects the growing opportunity of AI-powered chatbots to initiate a revolution in customer experience. From booking tickets to receiving fashion advice and psychological counselling, man-machine communication is at the threshold of a massive revolution. Businesses still observing the trend, and not actively inculcating it in their operations, are at the risk of losing the edge over their competitors, as it’s only a matter of time before AI becomes the most inevitable element of the global business ecosphere and more so of customer experience.

—by Ajay Srivastava, CTO, Knowlarity.