Turbo for the customer experience: ten reasons why artificial intelligence is so important

CX managers recognized the potential of AI earlier than many others and used it to offer their customers a better service. After all, customer experience is ultimately about one thing: using new technologies to serve customers and make their lives easier. IT analyst Gartner even predicts that CX will have the largest share of the AI market by 2020. As this market is already estimated to be worth 1.2 trillion dollars in 2018, the sums involved are enormous.

Here are ten reasons why artificial intelligence is so useful for CX managers:

1 AI is there for the customer - always

There is no more CX-friendly technology than the chatbot. A chatbot is there for your customers 24 hours a day and solves any problem, no matter when it occurs. But that's not all: by analyzing the customer interaction in question, you can learn how to solve bigger problems and improve the customer experience for future customers. With chatbots, limited call center service times, queue music and automated announcements such as "Your request is important to us" are finally a thing of the past.

2 AI creates an attractive customer experience

Used in the right way, artificial intelligence can give customers a real "wow" experience. Because it combines speed with user-friendliness. Here are a few examples:

• Whole Foods: The organic supermarket chain's Facebook Messenger bot offers its customers the opportunity to search for recipes by entering ingredients or using emojis.
• Domino's: Using the pizza delivery service's Facebook Messenger bot, customers can order by simply typing "pizza" (what else...).
• eBay: Like a personal shopper, this voice-only bot helps users browse the entire eBay marketplace.

3 AI understands what your customers think, feel and want

With the help of artificial intelligence, your CX teams are now able to filter out important statements from millions of words written by current or potential customers. Whether it's surveys, reviews, social media posts or call center transcripts, you can use natural language processing to analyze customer messages written in free text and filter out topics such as sentiment. This allows you to find out what customers think of your products, prices, functions or your brand as a whole. Automated responses can even be issued for certain scenarios, such as replies to negative posts on social media. This way, you learn more about the problem and can fix it.

4 AI brings the customer more into focus

In the past, "time" was always the limiting factor when it came to listening to customers and responding to their feedback. But now there are no more excuses: thanks to the speed at which data is collected and processed via AI, companies can no longer ignore the needs of their customers. The cost-benefit ratio has changed; in a market where everything revolves around experience, no one can afford to neglect the customer experience. With artificial intelligence, it is cheaper and faster than ever before to provide customers with an optimal experience.

5 AI uses data for CX improvements

For CX managers, it is probably nothing new: the big data hype has not delivered what it promised. The enormous technical possibilities for collecting customer data have achieved relatively little in the area of customer experience. But with AI, we can use what we know about our customers. And the speed at which companies translate customer data into concrete measures will become an even more important differentiator in the coming years: This is because it is estimated that the global volume of data will reach 175 zettabytes by 2025 (ten times the data generated in 2016).

6 AI enables optimal personalization

Artificial intelligence does much more than just collect and implement feedback. It helps you go one step further and use historical and behavioral data to deliver a unique experience to each and every customer. Whether it's new offers, product recommendations or a homepage tailored to user interests, AI means we no longer have to ask customers what they want - we can find out for ourselves and do the hard work for them. And increase brand loyalty and customer satisfaction at the same time.

7 AI avoids problems before they occur

With the help of predictive modeling, we can identify problems in advance. This is a kind of invisible customer experience measure - a method of guiding customers away from problems that we can foresee but they cannot.

An example of this would be an online store that uses artificial intelligence to record how regularly a customer buys a product and then notifies them when they might need it again. Or that asks them during the checkout process whether they would like to add the item to their shopping cart.

With such - minor - measures, companies can prevent their customers from churning, increase their satisfaction and boost their loyalty.

8 AI makes every single interaction smarter

With AI, customer interactions and customer conversations do not have to take place in isolation from each other. They can be embedded in a diverse data context and linked to millions of other interactions. For example, the customer does not have to explain what the issue is each time they call the call center: whether by chat, email or voice, companies can use modern APIs to merge all communication channels into a single strand, evaluate them and respond.

9 AI gives the customer the opportunity to ask questions in their own way

AI also opens up new possibilities in the area of image recognition: The customer provides a picture of the product they are looking for and you find it for them. This is a huge advantage for fashion retailers, for example, as customers no longer have to struggle to describe shoes they have seen in the shop window.

10 AI ensures more differentiated human interaction at important touchpoints

The entire company should strive for a good customer experience. But if you're busy answering the same questions and solving the same problems day in, day out, you can't focus on the activities that should have a human touch. By leaving repetitive tasks to artificial intelligence, you can make human interactions more detailed, targeted and differentiated.