Great customer experience is all about making it easy to avail of services from anywhere at any point in time.
Nearly 80% of the companies have either implemented or are implementing conversational customer engagement to improve customer experience (CX) within the next two years, as per the latest study from IDC. This reinforces the case for a good conversational customer experience (C-CX) to futureproof CX and increases ROI for the entire customer lifecycle.
Customers are communicating with brands via newer means, and the contact centers are evolving, becoming an interface that allows messaging to become the primary mode of communication. The data that flows can feed machine learning models capable of delivering algorithm-driven, bot-based, one-to-many customer interactions that can completely transform the CX, what experts call C-CX.
Let’s have a look at how C-CX is onboarded across five industries:
Retail
Imagine a plan to serve guests an apple pie in the evening and realize the kitchen is nearly out of sugar. Then remember how easy it would be to use the smartphone or digital assistants at home to add sugar to the cart, schedule the delivery, or pick up using the same assistants. This is precisely what Store No8, the incubation arm of Walmart and their global tech teams, have worked upon to design and build new voice and text shopping experiences. It’s an entirely new way for customers to interact with Walmart.
According to the Microsoft Voice Report, 69% of respondents across the US and UK have used a digital assistant. Over half of consumers expect their digital assistants to help make retail purchases within five years.
Hospitality
Travel planning is typically onerous and time-consuming. Travel and hospitality brands such as hotels, airlines, and travel agents that make this process as quick and easy as possible will considerably improve their CX. This is where AI assistants, in the role of virtual travel assistants, guide customers from the initial stage of planning to the final stage of booking with a personalized flavor. A virtual travel advisor assists people in searching for hotels and flights and checking their availability. It enables people to organize their excursions more thoroughly by locating restaurants, activities, and tourism attractions at their destinations.
At Hilton Hotels & Resorts, guests can use the smartphone app to book the room of their choice, order meals in advance, set check-in and out, and use a digital key to unlock rooms and elevators. Many operations are streamlined for the hotel and its visitors, allowing front desk personnel to focus on more valuable face-to-face contacts. At the same time, guests don’t have to worry about losing their hotel room keys.
BFSI
According to research, the operational cost savings from using chatbots in banking are expected to reach $7.3 billion globally by 2023. Banking and insurance organizations use conversational AI to determine which sectors make more money, which zones demand investment, who their competitors are, and innovative ways to develop new products for customers. Moreover, it automates the most repeated inquiries from customers. Besides processing a refund, paying premiums, changing credit card limits, reporting stolen cards, or checking an account — now, with AI-based chatbots, it is possible to monitor warning signals of any sought of fraud.
Wells Fargo, for example, installed Pega’sPega’s Customer Decision Hub to provide real-time modeling that helped the bank to have personalized real-time conversations with its massive customers base. Further, customer engagement rates increased three to 10 times, depending on the channel and use case.
eCommerce
Before the pandemic, the first thing a customer experienced while entering a physical retail outlet was a greeting by an in-store sales assistant. They understand what all a customer wants to present them with options for a personalized experience. Similarly, a virtual shopping assistant fills the void. It engages in conversation with a customer, decrypts their preferences, provides relevant product recommendations based on their present needs and prior purchase behavior, displays user reviews to persuade a consumer of a product’s suitability, and responds to their FAQs.
H&M employs Kik, a chatbot that serves as a personal digital stylist. The bot gives customized recommendations after asking the user to answer multiple-choice questions to assess their preferences. The recommendation can be for an outfit or for the latest fashion trends.
Healthcare
Most healthcare providers fail to improve their CX due to a lack of patient recorded information (through text, voice, and email) and a 360-degree perspective of the patient, resulting in disconnected care. C-CX is a tool to disseminate accurate and essential information, especially in healthcare. A well-designed conversational assistant reduces human intervention, provides 24/7 assistance, and performs repeated tasks, thereby letting human support focus on critical aspects only. Recent developments of empathetic AI-based chatbots pave the way for individuals to speak freely about their health-related problems.
Consider Andy, a virtual assistant chatbot powered by artificial intelligence (AI) from Johnson & Johnson, which allows users to obtain answers to their contact lens-related questions at any time of the day from the convenience of their computer or mobile device.
Conclusion
To sum up, it’s vital to note that consumers want consistency and continuity while interacting with businesses. Consumers want to maintain the discussion as they browse, buy, and return for more. Hence, C-CX is an enabling factor in healthy competition among players in the market.
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