The pandemic has led to breakdowns in customer service, with contact centres still recovering from outbreaks and lockdown restrictions. Often, customers wait hours for a simple query resolution.

This is a customer service nightmare that businesses cannot afford, especially in this age where customers have abundant choices and alternatives, should they be dissatisfied with the business’ customer service.

The last two years have shown that disruption lies in opportunity, even if it proves how painful turmoil can be. The turmoil will continue to challenge how an organisation thinks about managing customer relationships and how to stay relevant amid changing customer behaviours.

Since the pandemic, we have seen automation and conversational artificial intelligence flood the market as organisations elevate the customer experience. There has been a surge in the adoption of Conversational AI-powered chatbots and voice bots by industries ranging from retail to healthcare to manufacturing.

Thus, it comes as no surprise that the conversational AI market is set to grow exponentially from US$4.73 billion in 2020 to US$18.5 billion in 2027 as 95 per cent of customer interactions become automated, as predicted by Servion Global Solutions.

Thanks to the 24/7 availability of conversational AI-powered bots, the customer support experience is enhanced. Customers can receive personalised assistance with their questions anytime, outside the typical 9 am to 5 pm office hours.

Coupled with the chatbots’ ability to handle an infinite volume of queries and topics, the number of tickets requiring a support agent’s attention is also reduced. For support teams, having significantly lower ticket volumes can translate to better service for customers they interact with and a decrease in handle times, wait times, and resolution times.

Additionally, chatbots can help reduce agent burnout and churn by eliminating monotony, thus leading to increased employee fulfilment and customer satisfaction.

Also Read: How voice AI is revolutionising the fintech scene

Onwards to advanced virtual assistants for improved CX

When it comes to increasing customer happiness, enterprises are going above and beyond basic bots to deploy advanced virtual assistants capable of integrating deeply with an enterprises’ legacy software not just to converse but converse to resolve the issue from end-to-end.

There is also high demand for advanced virtual assistants that can converse in multiple languages, be deployed across channels, and maintain the customer’s context to reach out to them proactively while being capable of Natural Language Understanding and Natural Language Generation-led responses.

With NLP, chatbots can resolve customer queries in record time and interact with customers much as a human support agent would. For instance, based on user utterances, these advanced virtual assistants are capable of auto-detecting and switching languages instantly for the current user session and the following sessions depending on its configuration.

The speed and accuracy in which chatbots can converse with customers deliver higher Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Self-Serve (Cost Savings).

Another area where AI is heavily involved in handling customer support requests, live-agent handoffs and exception handling. The AI-powered automation first approach helps streamline customer interactions from the various communication channels, such as voice, email, social media, website, and app, into a single contextual conversation, thus transforming customer support into a more logical and efficient process.

This is just the start of conversational AI potential, however. In an ideal future, advanced virtual assistants would be the first port of call for customers, potentially saving them hours in hotline wait times.

To gain that initial trust, though, conversational AI tools must not only be well-trained to steer the customer correctly but should have a voice that is friendly, dynamic and not just another robotic impersonation. Through this, the customer will encounter a seamless and even pleasant experience from the interaction and one that is more efficient for them, the employee, and the business as a whole.

A shift from silos to total experience automation

 While Customer Experience has been at the forefront of most digitisation efforts, the pandemic leading to a WFH culture and shortage of workforce has led to enterprises focusing on both:

• Organisations are investing more in their customer experience (CX) strategies for growth.
• They’re also focusing on employee experience (EX) strategies to compete for scarce talent.

CX and EX strategies, however, are often siloed and developed in a vacuum, and the need for Total Experience (TX) is emerging as a need in large enterprises. TX identifies both employees and customers’ digital and non-digital needs while simultaneously addressing their respective journeys, especially the intersecting parts.

This creates a superior shared experience for everyone. EX and CX initiatives should reuse the underlying technologies and compose the UX into a set of mutually beneficial multi-experience (MX) apps across devices, touchpoints and interaction modalities.

Also Read: How Shopee uses AI, data to build a marketing strategy that suits changes in user behaviour

The Asian challenge

When it comes to establishing a successful TX automation strategy, this process is more challenging than in the Asian market, which is highly diverse and brimming with a myriad of languages and local, cultural slang and sentiment.

NLP needs to catch up to the point that prevents AI from becoming entangled in this linguistic melting pot. This serves as yet another illustration of the need to invest in and innovate conversational AI technology continuously.

Brands must not forget the human touch in their digital transformation journey, even as they rush to provide digital self-service. Having AI and human agents working together as one team has become ever more important, with customer service agents mostly working from home due to the pandemic.

Brands that can combine AI-powered digital experiences with efficient and effective human-assisted service will be the ones to build stronger, more valuable customer relationships and thus, gain a significant competitive advantage over their competitors.

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