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Using Technology to Improve the Customer Experience (CX)

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Companies that want to improve their customer experience are increasingly turning to advanced and intuitive tools like conversational voice AI, AI-powered chatbots, and robotic process automation.

It’s easy to see why this new generation of tools is so critical to reimagining the customer experience. These tools let even small and mid-sized companies compete with major companies in the race to successfully create customer loyalty. Add to this the fact that $35.5B is lost every year by US businesses in customer churn that's caused by avoidable CX issues (CallMiner), and it becomes obvious why so many companies are looking for ways to improve their CX.

This blog investigates how AI, machine learning, and analytics have to be used in conjunction with each other to boost the customer experience, and how while these tools are powerful, they by themselves will not boost your customer experience – any application that leads to improved customer experience must be thoughtful, methodical, and strategic. In other words, tech will help, but you still have to be in charge.

Why Customer Experience Is So Important in Business Today

First of all, let’s take a moment to drive home the importance of customer experience (CX) in modern business environments. Customer experience is how a business engages with its customers all along the customer journey – from discovery to sales to after-sales service and every point in between. It is simply every interaction you have with your customer.

Back in the good old days, some companies could get away with advertising a product, selling it, and moving on to the next customer. But things are different these days, and smart businesses now realize that to get to that sale, the customer needs to engage in a kind of marketing courtship that may last for years. The better the customer experience, the more likely the sale is, and if it’s really done right, then the customer is also more likely to keep coming back to you while raving to their friends about how great you are.

 This customer experience can include:

  • The tone you set in your social media communications
  • The ability for your customers to self-serve
  • How helpful and friendly your customer service agents are
  • How easy it is for the customer to schedule after-sales service
  • If your customer is “known” to every person and system they interact with in their journey, or if they have to update every person they talk to at your business about who they are and what they want

Powering the Customer Experience With Technology

Doing all of that is a big ask since it involves so many different departments, personas, and periods of time. Luckily, technology has stepped in with some helpful assistance.

Tools like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), voice assistance, chatbots, and more are emerging as valuable allies that businesses can use to automate many parts of the customer experience journey and provide an intelligent, seamless, and positive experience to customers.

 For example:

  •  Artificial intelligence can be used to power chatbots that handle routine questions from customers such as delivery dates, balance due, order status, and other key pieces of information that are stored in internal systems.

  • Robotic process automation, or RPA, can be used to intelligently gather data on a company’s customers, which cuts down on the need for staff to perform some mundane tasks and reduce the risk of error.

  • Machine learning, a subset of artificial intelligence, can mimic real-world behavior as feedback into a system and be used by companies to continually improve their customer experience.

Strategically Using New Tech Tools to Improve Your Customer Experience

While these tools are exciting and offer exceptional promise to the companies that choose to adopt them, they are not necessarily a plug-and-play option. Simply sticking a chatbot on your home page, for example, may offer some service and convenience to your customers. But it cannot lead to the sort of radical transformation that most companies are looking for. Instead, what is needed is the strategic use of these tools – with a broad, 30,000-foot view of what is being used, why it is used, what results are being realized, and how those results can be used in a feedback loop of continuous improvement. Think of it as a sports car – just having all that horsepower does not guarantee a fun drive. You have to know how to use it.

 To be useful in CX, tools like AI must be able to leverage the right data at the right time. The data that is collected must not just be numbers and percentages – they have to provide a useful, actionable basis for making important decisions. And through it all, the companies that are using these tools will need to keep in mind that protecting customer privacy is paramount.

Summary and Key Takeaways

Customer experience is helping to separate successful businesses from unsuccessful ones, and tools like artificial intelligence are leading the way. But any implementation of this technology has to be thoughtful and planned.

Here at Symplicity Communications we help companies deliver exceptional experiences across all channels of communication. Let us use our industry knowledge and expertise to help you find the right CX solutions for your business. Contact us to learn more about how to put this new, exciting wave of customer experience tools to use in your business.