We're now more than a month into 2022, and one thing we can say for sure is that the world hasn't "gone back to normal." For many of us, remote working and online meetings are a fact of life. App and subscription services deliver our music, television, and groceries. Compared to just two years ago, the way we work and live has changed drastically.
Remote employees are generally more productive and pleased with their careers, according to studies, and remote companies can absolutely be tenable and sustainable long-term. Employing remote employees who utilize their home offices to conduct their daily activities saves companies money on office supplies, space, and computers.
Today’s businesses are looking to provide customers with improved experiences while decreasing service costs—and they’re quickly learning that chatbots and conversational AI can facilitate these goals. By 2024, experts say the global chatbot market will reach $9.4 million. What customer service leaders may not understand, however, is which of the two technologies could have the most impact on their buyers and their bottom line.
A great customer experience features efficient and personalized interactions at each step of the buyer’s journey. But in order to achieve this, companies need a way to quickly analyze customer data and act on it. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report, businesses that leverage customer data see 36-percent faster resolutions and a 79-percent reduction in wait times; they also solve four times the number of customer requests.
These are painful customer experiences we can all relate to and top indicators of poor customer service according to Zendesk’s 2021 Customer Experience Trends Report. With 75% of people willing to spend more money on a brand that provides a great customer experience, companies now know that customer loyalty depends on delivering exceptional customer service. However, brands often go about trying to improve customer experience in the wrong way, despite their best intentions.
Artificial Intelligence has had a massive influence on everything related to business. It’s not just the tech industry that has felt its impact, but also pretty much any other industry thanks to the versatility that is so characteristic of AI. Likewise, the B2B sector has also been affected by the spread of AI and its common usage by business owners and marketers alike.
We often hear that Artificial Intelligence is the future. The truth is that it’s already here, and if you’re not already using AI for customer service, you’re missing out. Integrating AI into customer service can drastically improve CX. It helps identify customer pain points, automates processes, speeds up decision-making, and optimises service delivery.
Automation got a bad reputation pretty quickly in the customer service world. Since the 1980s, customers calling support have had automated tellers putting them on hold and repeating the unconvincing assurance, “Your call is very important to us.” Automated tellers turned into chatbots. This technology could be just as frustrating with bots conducting clumsy conversations that fail to provide real help.
Chatbots sit in an interesting space in the digital world. On the one hand, they clearly offer potential. The ability to answer queries and take the menial workload off means more work-hours saved. And yet, there are considerable hurdles to implement them. Firstly, AI-powered chatbots are hardly perfect. How many times have we had a hilarious encounter with a chatbot which keeps giving us answers we never asked? Often, the very utility of conversational AI-powered chatbots is questionable.
As children we believed in magic, imagined, and a fantasy where robots would one day follow our commands, undertaking our most meager tasks and even help with our homework at the push of a button! But sadly it always seemed that these beliefs, along with the idea of self-driven aero cars and jetpacks, belonged in a future beyond our imagination or in a Hollywood Sci-fi. Would we ever get to experience the future in our lifetime?
