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Whatever the product or service, customers have many options to choose from. Many of them are willing to do their research and carefully compare products and prices, and they don’t have an issue with switching brands. To truly stand out to these customers and earn their loyalty, brands can benefit from forming a real, emotional connection with the customer throughout the buying journey — something that can be difficult to accomplish with the wrong conversational CX technology.
It’s not always possible to give customers a human experience with a human agent. Chatbots aren’t human, and sometimes the experience can be boring, impersonal and unsatisfactory. The best conversational experience platforms will utilize the technology that allows these virtual conversations to be natural and engaging — helping the customer form a bond with the brand even when they can’t speak to a person.
Technology Is Transforming Customer Experience
More than ever before, AI-chatbots, virtual assistants and voice-activated devices are becoming essential parts of customer experience. The old ways to engage in conversations with customers are not sufficient anymore. Recent research from the Capgemini Research Institute found that 61% of consumers prefer voice assistants for simple tasks. Other research from Salesforce found that among young, tech-savvy consumers in Gen Z, 52% trust AI to help them make informed decisions. These statistics show how significant technology is becoming in how customers interact with brands and make purchasing decisions.
In today’s landscape, one bad experience can make customers leave a brand — even brands they love. That means that there’s no room for mistakes when utilizing these technologies to create an elevated customer experience. Creating great CX is complicated but also worthwhile. Brands must carefully learn about customers and what they want, and then invest in the right technology solutions to accomplish specific goals and metrics. For example, many customers expect relevant, personalized communications and recommendations from brands, and they don’t want their time wasted with irrelevant information. In this example, a conversational AI solution with access to individual insights will help brands deliver relevant experiences at scale.
Benefits of Conversational Technology
It’s important for marketers to find a smart way to elevate the customer experience while also driving impact and improving KPIs. Luckily, the latest types of technology solutions like AI chatbots and virtual assistants accomplish many tasks that are difficult to do with human agents alone. Customers don’t like waiting, and they want to be guided through the buying process with personalized recommendations and get direct answers to their questions when they do their research, wherever and whenever they want. Intelligent, AI-enabled conversational technology lets them make their buying journeys easier and immediately get access to a virtual sales assistant that understands their needs, rather than waiting for the next live agent. This helps improve valuable CX metrics like response time, customer satisfaction (CSAT) and net promoter score (NPS).
Conversational AI can also access vast amounts of individual customer data and provide tailored recommendations to anyone who reaches out. It can accomplish this mass personalization to all customers any time of the day — something essentially impossible for human agents to do. Being able to create a highly personalized shopping experience at such a high scale will help more customers than ever before feel a personal connection with a brand, especially with younger, digital-first customers like Gen Z. For example, fashion retailer H&M uses AI-enabled chatbots to recommend outfits based on personalized data and introduce customers to new fashion trends, helping people feel more engaged with the brand and more excited about the latest fashion trends.
Access to Conversational Channel Wherever Customers Are
Another major trend in customer interactions is that customers are now using many more channels than ever before to engage with brands. They can access support through their computers or phones, and they can reach out via company website, social media pages, mobile apps, messaging apps, email, phone, video calls, chat and more. With customers spread across channels, it can be difficult to keep personalization top of mind for each and every potential channel.
To enhance engagement, brands should incorporate conversational interfaces across channels, including their website, apps, social media platforms and more. Not only will this accomplish the baseline benefits associated with conversational AI like quicker answers to consumers' questions and higher CSAT, but also customers will appreciate the consistency of experience across channels, making their buying journeys easier.
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Understand All the Trends Impacting CX
Conversational experiences have the power to foster genuine connections and bridge the gap between customers and brands. As the use of AI grows, chatbot technology is getting increasingly better at delivering amazing experiences. As CoreMedia noted in a recent whitepaper, the technology “is getting frighteningly good at understanding, [and] this will become the norm for interfaces.” Brands that want to keep up with the competition and take their CX strategy into the future will keep trends like this in mind and continue to invest in the latest conversational AI technology. To learn more about the major trends in CX that will inform brands’ CX strategies moving forward, download CoreMedia’s white paper below:
To help companies address these CX trends and rising customer expectations, CoreMedia extended its CMS and DXP offerings with a Cloud Contact Center to facilitate automated personalized conversations with a human touch, from one single platform. Get a demo to learn more.
