Princewill Nwandire | Freelancer

Intelligent Sales: 5 Ways to Capitalize on AI For Improved Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty. By Princewil Nwandire Question: What do you get when you cross an optic with a mental object? Answer: An eye-dea. Ba Dum Tssh! This joke comes courtesy of the STANDUP project. A collaborative, loquacious AI project, which swaps jokes, chats and helps users construct simple jokes. But beyond jokes and ill-timed wisecracks by chatbots, t he value and use of customer-centric artificial intelligence can save businesses a lot of time. Time, which sales reps can ultimately channel towards closing more leads. But what if the biggest source of your customer’s satisfaction wasn’t totally from your sales agents? At least, not your human agents. Now imagine for a moment, that there was an agent of sorts who could be on duty 24/7. And if given the right data, and used correctly, could completely and positively reorganize and optimize your business for success. If such an ‘agent’ were to exist, it could change and revamp the sales and marketing landscape for quite some time. wouldn’t it? Then it may surprise you to learn that our imaginary ‘agent’, already exists. Because due to recent technological strides in artificial intelligence and machine-learning, neural networks have gotten a lot smarter. AI is no longer the exclusive preserve of sci-fi movies and fantasy books. Now, let’s take a look at how AI-powered customer service and sales, can help you increase customer satisfaction and boost their loyalty. We’ll start with... Personalized Consumer Marketing In a recent survey research, 29% of the respondents identified consumer personalization as the next big marketing trend. (Source: Adobe) In this scenario, AI is assigned the job of matching and recommending content and products to consumers. This is generally referred to as predictive lead scoring. And it is done by gathering the most data on consumers - from various touchpoints - which it also analyzes and sorts instantly. Finally, it helps you tailor precise on-site personalization experiences for users. And generate user-targeted content which answers the pressing questions your consumers have. For instance, a customer intends to look up one product on your site, she types a search term in your online store. AI’s machine-learning feature can accurately predict and display related search phrases and products associated with her initial search query. Thereby reducing the likelihood of search fatigue. i. The Case For AI in Customer Experience Analytics A customer's experience with your brand, ranges from a website visit, in-app purchase, unresponsive customer support, to dealing with search fatigue. Without a proper analysis of your user's journey across several touch points in your funnel, how do you intend to give them a personalized on-site experience that they’d value and maybe recommend to friends? First of all, customer-centric AI technology uses available data on your user’s journey on site, and across social media channels to predict their behavior and deliver appropriate, relevant and user-optimized recommendations which meets the utility requirements of the customer. Therefore with customer experience analytics AI, you can... 1. Fire rapid answers to client's questions. 2. Predict customer behavior. 3. Improve customer engagements. 4. Handle simple user transactions, and… 5. Analyze emerging trends in social media activity, and offer real-time business decisions for customer-based product development. Without breaking a sweat. ii. 24/7 Leads Response. “I’d love to work for 24 hours non-stop”, said no one ever! Face it, the number of productive hours available to your team, is limited. Can you, or a member of your team remain awake for a 24-hour stretch, responding to customer queries and complaints? I seriously doubt it. Nevertheless, customers want to feel that cozy small-town feeling when they engage with your brand. They want you to respond quickly and efficiently. And like it or not, they want you to have an answer to any and all of their problems - within the context of your business anyway. However, we all know there’s no ‘night or day’ on the internet, it’s one perpetual morning. Hence the consumer's need for a personalized touch, and their seemingly unending thirst for tailor-made experiences while buying, or transacting with you. Customers no longer value traditional personalization methods like the ‘good morning text’, and/or traditional account managers in banks. These are relics from a distant past. However, with the help of data-powered AI chatbots, speech recognition and natural language processing systems, you can say goodbye to old school traditional marketing methods. And welcome the future of AI-powered marketing automation. The good news is that, out of six thousand people who were surveyed recently, 73% are open to businesses using AI with them if it makes life easier. Similarly, 77% already make use of AI powered device, or service than they realize. ,(Source: Pega). AI powered bots are available to help 24-hours of everyday. The truth is, AI alone can pull up a customer’s purchasing history, GPS-based location, search history, social media activity, and content preference etc., offer assistance, and make user-specific recommendations without recourse to general user demographics. But here’s the clincher, most users are unaware that these recommendations, suggestions and assistance were actually proffered by AI bots (Source: Pega). Now, the implication is this, each of these scattered experiences across channels; which occur during the day or at night; when your humans are at rest; shapes the customer’s perception of your brand. What this means is, it induces them to either continue doing business with you, or stop altogether. But, bots - pun not intended - can give you an ‘unfair’ advantage. They can sift through your sales messages, website visits and marketing activities of the day. And help you spot qualified leads, high lead scoring opportunities, and dead leads which it’ll pass across to your sales team. iii. Optimized Customer Touchpoints Here's the big idea as proposed by Laura Patterson, the president of VisionEdge Marketing, “A touchpoint is any interaction (including encounters where there is no physical interaction) that might alter the way your customer feels about your product, brand, business or service.” So yes, considering the recent growth experienced in machine-learning and natural language processing, sophisticated bots with ‘natural’ chat abilities are becoming common place. Therefore, they can help you initiate conversations across each customer touch-point. In a 2018 survey, more than 1000 U.S. adults aged 18 to 64 were surveyed. 37% of the respondents said they’d use a chatbot to get a quick answer in an emergency. While 64% said the 24-hour service is the best feature of chatbots. (Source: Drift) This means chatbots extend the functionality of your sales and marketing reps beyond normal working hours. They also give you the ability to guide your customer through several touchpoints, and offers the opportunity to present a relevant series of professionally delivered content to your customers at the right time, and in the right medium. With the help of chatbots, consumer engagement becomes increasingly possible, inadvertently leading to increased customer satisfaction. Generate Personality Profile and Personalized Communication. It gets better. AI can help you generate personality profiles for everyone you come in contact with. In addition to that, it could also offer you suggestions on language preferences and patterns the customer would favorably respond to. Therefore, you can modify your message to each customer. At its nexus, artificial intelligence is less about technology, and more about delivering the perfect mix of content nestled within the right context for each customer. Moreover a study by R. Hallowell of the International Journal of Service Industry Management, shows that a boost in customer satisfaction has an impact on a customer's loyalty to your brand, which in turn influences the profitability of your business. Consequently, it is pertinent to note that brand loyalty emanates from similar ideals and experiences that work in our personal relationships viz, trust, appreciation, positive experiences and consistent communication. Remember, customers no longer value traditional personalization methods. Conclusion AI is not a set and forget system, for now, it still requires supervision. However as we have seen, AI can shoulder the burden of carrying out mechanical and unchanging tasks which can potentially free up more time for your marketers and sales reps to spend closing qualified leads. Has your brand used AI in it's marketing process? What worked for you?