Telecom & Technology Consulting
Every few years a new technology comes along that alters the landscape for service providers. In the not-too distant past it was something called the Internet. Then came the smartphone. Today it’s Artificial Intelligence (AI). But although most service providers clearly see how AI improves their overall business operations, they may not realize how it can specifically enhance the customer experience. If you haven’t yet seen the light about AI and customer service, it’s time to take off your blinders: Gartner says that by 2020, 85% of all customer service will not involve a human being.
To be sure, AI deployment saves costs over the long run, but its real value comes from the high-touch experience it provides. Companies are increasingly battling for customers not based on price, but on fast and customized service.
AI fosters this goal in many ways. For one, you can go away from text-based chatbots to voice recognition assistance, which can speed up payments and security issues. Most importantly, voice assistants make tasks much more convenient for customers, creating a strong emotional brand association.
But AI can do more than create intangible benefits. Because AI provides the ability to deliver true personalized service, you can perform real-time upselling. For example, you can offer deals, service packages, and products based on a customer’s usage profile. In an instant, you can deliver a personalized offer and boost revenue, all at the same time.
You can also harness the power of AI through chatbots. With this mechanism, you’re able to reduce customer calls and a corresponding amount of employees, which delivers obvious cost savings. However, because AI means that you can instantly access customer data and profiles, you end up providing superior customer interactions – inquires are resolved quickly and efficiently.
As we know, customer service isn’t always about one-to-one interactions – it also includes the overall customer experience with your network. Your company can deploy AI for network maintenance, and if an outage or loss of service is detected, you’re able to instantly alert customers of the situation. You can provide updates about when the problem will be resolved, and what they can expect moving forward. This is yet another example of how AI improves the customer experience, as you’re informing them rather than leaving them wondering what’s wrong with their service.
In the end, as you can see, AI helps to reduce customer churn. By increasing both the speed and personalization aspects of customer interactions, you improve relationships. That builds more trust, more brand loyalty, and more long-term revenue. This technology might be called “artificial”, but its benefits for your business are as real as it gets.
