How AI Can Improve Your Customer Experience [New Data + Tips]

62% of business leaders throughout industries have invested in AI to assist their workers. Of these, 71% have seen a constructive ROI, and 72% report elevated worker productiveness.

However how does AI stack up in terms of customer experience particularly?

Maintain studying to discover ways to leverage AI-driven buyer experiences — and why it’s best to.

How AI Impacts the Customer Experience

How You Can Leverage AI to Improve the Customer Experience

8 Tips for Getting Started

How AI Impacts the Buyer Expertise

Utilizing data-driven insights, we’ll present you ways AI can impression the client expertise by assist, advertising and marketing, gross sales, and extra.

We additionally share knowledgeable insights about potential drawbacks so you’ll be able to implement AI options the precise method.

Improved Buyer Service

A big benefit of utilizing AI in customer service is the potential to supply 24/7 help. In reality, that is probably the most important profit, in response to customer support professionals surveyed for The State of AI Report.

The third hottest use case for AI/automation in service is utilizing chatbots and self-service instruments to facilitate this round the clock assist. Routing requests to reps is the most well-liked AI use case cited by customer support professionals.

Additional, 84% of customer support reps say these options make it simpler to answer assist tickets. In the meantime, 64% say AI helps make buyer interactions extra personalised.

The impression: Chatbots present the assist infrastructure to supply 24/7 assist, and AI options assist reps reply to queries sooner. Which means prospects sometimes expertise shorter wait instances.

To high it off, they could additionally obtain extra tailor-made responses from service brokers.

General, this reduces frustration — and thus, friction — throughout the assist journey. And that makes for a smoother buyer expertise.

Potential Disadvantage: Threat of Shedding Excessive-Finish Prospects

“One of many essential downsides of utilizing AI in customer support is doubtlessly dropping high-end prospects as a consequence of a scarcity of ‘ample’ assist,” says Cath Brands, Chief Advertising Officer at Flintfox.

“Whereas folks at the moment are typically okay with, let’s say, speaking to AI chatbots, high-end prospects often count on devoted, human-run customer support, and so they get pissed off when met by AI bots.

“I actually suppose this can be a large draw back to utilizing AI in customer support, and I don’t suppose many companies can afford to lose their high-end prospects as a consequence of conditions like these,” warns Cath.

Advertising and Gross sales Journeys

Increasingly more folks desire to analysis services and products independently on-line. For B2B gross sales reps, which means they solely have round 5% of a customer’s time throughout their shopping for journey.

With fewer “face-to-face” interactions, reps ought to take any alternative to affect buyer selections.

It’s additionally vital to present prospects focused, omnichannel help all through their on-line advertising and marketing and gross sales journeys. Lengthy story brief? AI options could possibly be your best ally right here.

In line with 89% of promoting professionals surveyed, generative AI typically improves the standard of their content material. Then, 84% of bloggers suppose that AI/automation helps them to raised align net content material with search intent.

→ Download Now: The State of AI in Marketing [Free Report]

On the gross sales entrance, the most well-liked use case for AI is content material creation, intently adopted by prospect outreach. Of gross sales professionals, 86% report that utilizing generative AI to craft messages to prospects is efficient.

And 72% say it helps them to construct rapport with prospects sooner.

The impression: Higher high quality and extra focused content material improves person expertise. It additionally offers folks the whole lot they should know to analysis your services or products independently.

That creates extra constructive experiences when prospects interact together with your model throughout advertising and marketing channels (i.e., your social media or web site).

Then, efficient outreach messaging might help you affect a prospect’s gross sales journey. That, coupled with fast buyer–firm rapport, might help your gross sales reps make all interactions really matter.

Potential Disadvantage: Onerous To Discover Related Use Instances

“One setback for AI content material creation is that bots discover it exhausting to seek out real-life examples which can be really related,” says Will Rice, search engine optimisation & Advertising Supervisor at MeasureMinds.

“Everyone is aware of that simply explaining the speculation of one thing isn’t sufficient. Exhibiting a sensible instance of how this has labored within the actual world helps customers visualize how they will motion the purpose you’re making,” says Will.

For Will, having these actionable real-life examples separates good content material from nice content material. However “AI simply can’t do that nicely. Particularly for comparatively new issues, the place innovation is vital.”

Personalised Experiences

Of consumers, 56% usually tend to make one other buy after a customized buying expertise. And 62% of enterprise leaders report higher buyer retention due to personalization.

However, creating end-to-end personalised buyer experiences doesn’t simply enhance gross sales and retention. It additionally helps smaller manufacturers compete with business giants.

The crux? Most corporations don’t have the foundations to map out the detailed buyer image that makes personalization attainable.

Nonetheless, enlisting AI/automation instruments might help you construct personalised experiences at scale and throughout channels.

There are three essential ways in which AI might help your model create extra personalised buyer experiences:

• Superior buyer segmentation. AI-powered algorithms analyze buyer information and discover distinct segments primarily based on behaviors, preferences, and buy historical past.

• Actual-time personalization. AI-driven techniques course of real-time information corresponding to shopping conduct, earlier purchases, and site to supply quick personalization.

• Predictive buyer insights. AI analytics forecast buyer conduct primarily based on historic information and present developments, enabling manufacturers to anticipate wants and preferences.

Potential Disadvantage: Falls Brief With Creativity

“One key downside of utilizing AI in customer support is its incapability to be inventive,” says Tobias Liebsch, Co-founder at Fintalent.io.

“AI techniques function primarily based on predefined guidelines and algorithms, missing the pliability to suppose outdoors the field.”

Though AI excels at following set tips, it could “wrestle to deal with complicated or nuanced conditions that demand inventive and spontaneous problem-solving,” Tobias warns.

As a result of buyer points are sometimes distinctive and require modern considering, AI may lack the creativity for personalised options.

Information Evaluation

AI instruments can collect, analyze, and spot developments in giant volumes of information. Entry to those information insights means you’ll be able to spot (and have a good time!) your successes.

It additionally means you’ll be able to rapidly determine areas for enchancment — together with how one can ship higher buyer experiences general.

The State of AI Report findings present that AI/automation helped professionals analyze information throughout totally different departments/jobs.

For instance, amassing and analyzing buyer suggestions is the second hottest use of AI for customer support professionals. Then, information evaluation/reporting is a well-liked use case amongst gross sales professionals.

The impression: Traits from buyer suggestions and gross sales information may give you insights into how one can enhance buyer experiences. Equivalent to implementing a recurring suggestion from a buyer survey that improves buying experiences.

Or discovering widespread causes prospects cancel subscriptions so you’ll be able to enhance your providing and decrease churn.

Potential Disadvantage: Fewer Interactions With Prospects

Merchynt makes use of AI “for each step of our buyer journey,” says founder and CEO Justin Silverman.

AI has improved buyer satisfaction by “a near-instant personalised technique plan primarily based on data we collect throughout their sign-up course of.” However Justin warns the trade-off is fewer human interactions with prospects.

As such, Merchynt is “lacking helpful alternatives to assemble suggestions on how we will proceed to enhance our choices.”

How You Can Leverage AI to Enhance the Buyer Expertise

From account administration to content material creation, listed here are 10 methods your organization can leverage AI to enhance buyer experiences.

Account Administration

Good account administration makes prospects really feel valued, main to raised experiences. Higher buyer experiences enhance buyer retention and make cross-selling and upselling extra possible.

However account administration could be tough. There are lots of plates to spin and folks to maintain comfortable — particularly with a broad shopper base. AI options might help gross sales, advertising and marketing, and repair professionals full duties sooner.

Which means they’ve extra time to construct higher buyer–firm relationships.

An AI-powered device like ChatSpot responds to chat-based instructions. You may ask it that will help you draft follow-up emails to prospects or thanks notes to current prospects.

The device also can generate studies primarily based in your firm’s CRM information and add contacts with notes to HubSpot’s CRM.

Get Started With HubSpot’s ChatSpot

Discipline Buyer Questions 24/7

Hovia makes use of AI to ship nice experiences to its B2B and B2C segments. The model additionally makes use of the tech to assist them account for product outcomes, together with particular wallpaper mural necessities.

“Our service desk supplier has a first-to-market AI answer that permits us to reply complicated queries with little or no human enter,” says Jack Gibson, Head of Progress.

By means of AI, Hovia can precisely reply buyer queries at scale — making certain the perfect outcomes for each audiences. “Whereas we do reply these on our FAQ pages, it’s reassuring to know that we will subject these questions in real-time,” Jack explains.

Route Tickets to Reps

Routing tickets to reps is a well-liked use case for AI in buyer assist. You may depart fundamental tickets, like questions on your companies and even buyer returns, to chatbots.

(On that latter level, SurveyMonkey discovered that 59% of shoppers “would use AI to return a purchase order.”)

But when the chatbot can’t deal with the request, it could route the ticket to the right division or rep. AI instruments might also counsel a assist ticket if a buyer desires to speak with a human agent.

Prioritize Tickets and Queries

Not solely can AI route tickets to reps, however it could additionally prioritize the question primarily based on the extent of urgency. To do that, AI instruments analyze tickets primarily based on sentiment, intent, and language used. Then, reps can deal with probably the most dissatisfied prospects first.

Quicker question prioritization is likely one of the largest pros of AI in customer service. Speedier prioritization can forestall emotionally charged interactions from escalating and maximize every buyer interplay.

Each of which assist to create higher buyer experiences.

Content material Creation

Generative AI might help you streamline and scale your content material creation efforts. And when paired with human experience, it may give your prospects a extra tailor-made advertising and marketing/gross sales journey.

That creates a greater buyer expertise throughout your gross sales, advertising and marketing, and assist channels.

A generative AI device like Content Assistant makes it simpler to jot down buyer emails, together with prospecting, advertising and marketing, or service ticket responses. It might additionally enable you collect data, generate concepts, and construction weblog content material.

Get started with HubSpot’s Content Assistant

Take away Language Boundaries

The interpretation capabilities of AI instruments might help you take away language obstacles with minimal assets. For instance, you should use ChatGPT to translate customer support queries and provides extra tailor-made assist.

You too can use AI to translate articles out of your information hub robotically into a number of languages. This may assist your web site guests entry information of their native language.

Ship Related Messaging to Buyer Segments

“AI can analyze buyer information to determine distinct segments primarily based on conduct, preferences, and engagement historical past,” says Matthew Smith, Operations Supervisor at Ticket Squeeze.

The group at Ticket Squeeze makes use of this information to “ship extra related and fascinating messages” to totally different segments.

For instance, they used AI to phase electronic mail lists into classes like “Sports activities Fanatics” and “Live performance Aficionados.” Now, every phase receives content material particular to their pursuits.

Matthew cites “greater open and click-through charges,” “deepened buyer engagement,” and “diminished electronic mail fatigue” as advantages of a extra personalised strategy.

Proactive Drawback Fixing

AI analytics might help your model supply proactive options earlier than potential points come up. A proactive answer could possibly be so simple as restocking widespread gadgets to supply a seamless shopping for expertise.

You would additionally use AI analytics to determine demand for future merchandise, companies, or enhancements.

Personalised Offers and Suggestions

In line with SurveyMonkey, 47% of shoppers are eager about receiving personalised offers from AI. That quantity rises to 63% inside the Gen Z demographic.

Offers and suggestions are methods to create extra personalised buyer experiences. And as we highlighted earlier, that may enable you compete with main companies in your business.

AI-driven techniques/algorithms might help you supply personalised product suggestions and reductions earlier than prospects specific their necessities. The outcome? Your prospects will really feel valued.

Plus, you’ll save them time trying to find desired services or products, creating extra fulfilling shopping for experiences.

Prepare Staff

By means of sentiment evaluation and information base integration, AI might help you prepare your customer support and gross sales reps.

Sentiment evaluation offers your group perception into the intent or feelings behind buyer messages. Then, if AI can entry your information base (i.e., weblog content material or firm handbook), it should current related coaching situations to your group.

Lastly, AI can analyze how your group performs with each sentiment evaluation and your information base in thoughts.

8 Suggestions for Getting Began

We spoke to eight professionals who’re already utilizing AI to enhance the client expertise journey. They share their primary suggestions for these simply beginning with AI tech.

1. Automate smaller duties first.

“One essential tip for inexperienced persons is to start out small,” says Liam Lucas, CEO of Off Road Genius. Liam, who has actively built-in AI into Off Highway Genius’ buyer expertise journey, began by automating easy duties.

Liam cites answering often requested questions by chatbots for instance of how they began small. That straightforward automation saved the service group’s time, and the moment responses to prospects additionally improved “their general expertise.”

2. Refine AI content material in iterations.

Chris Evans, an search engine optimisation Specialist at E2E Studios, makes use of AI to jot down emails to non-techy prospects. Chris has been utilizing AI to clarify a product/service in layperson’s phrases and simplify gross sales emails to make them extra user-friendly.

Generative AI content material “is barely pretty much as good as you prime it,” warns Chris. “Out of the field, it is going to be ‘OK.’ However priming it with what you need and wish to obtain, and the specified final result produces a lot better outcomes.”

Chris’ primary tip is to refine the content material in iterations. “Begin with a tough draft, ask ChatGPT to enhance it … proofread it, tweak it, and once more ask it to enhance it primarily based in your suggestions.”

3. Begin with fundamental information evaluation.

CEO and Founding father of Linions, Kate Adams, has been utilizing AI-driven insights to form their advertising and marketing methods.

“By using AI analytics instruments, we’ve gained a deep understanding of our prospects’ preferences and behaviors,” says Kate.

Kate recommends that inexperienced persons begin with fundamental information evaluation like monitoring “web site visitors, social media interactions, and gross sales patterns to determine developments.”

Even beginning small can yield helpful insights that enable you talk together with your viewers meaningfully.

4. Entrance-load information enter.

Hovia makes use of AI to supply correct data to their prospects, which improves the client expertise. To do that, the corporate makes use of AI to subject queries about its product providing.

“Organising the device has been simple sufficient,” says Head of Progress, Jack Gibson.

“We’re in a position to present element on our product providing, materials varieties, manufacturing course of, delivery, designs, and so on., to make sure that the automated output is as correct as attainable,” he says.

However if you happen to’re contemplating including an AI answer to your enterprise, Jack advises “to just be sure you’re feeding as a lot data into the device as attainable.”

That’s as a result of the extra prompts it has, “the extra related the output might be.” Though it may be barely time-consuming within the brief time period, it creates “a greater expertise for the tip person.”

5. Experiment with current instruments.

Pinar Arslan, a Buyer Success Agent at Gameplan, has been utilizing an AI device “to find out which prospects to prioritize.”

“Now we have discovered that the GPT-4 plugin Superior Information Analytics by OpenAI may be very useful,” says Pinar. The group makes use of the plugin to determine prospects who’re prone to canceling their subscriptions, which helps with prioritization.

Get Started With HubSpot’s AI Tools

6. Undertake a customer-centric strategy.

“AI could be utilized to quite a lot of areas inside the buyer expertise,” says John Pennypacker, VP of Gross sales and Advertising at Deep Cognition. However, utilizing AI “ought to all the time be performed with a watch towards the client.”

John recommends that corporations use AI to enhance and improve their model voice moderately than take it over solely.

“It’s vital to make sure that prospects don’t really feel like they’re coping with an automatic system or getting generic responses,” John warns. As a substitute, “companies ought to try to create a singular expertise for every buyer.”

7. Use AI that will help you develop prompts.

“When you’re struggling to get the outcomes you need, ask the AI to assist write the immediate,” says Eric Mistry, Buyer Schooling Operations Supervisor at Heap.

Eric recommends that you simply “begin by explaining the issue, then ask it to ask you questions to grasp the issue standards, then produce a immediate.” Except for textual content manufacturing, in response to Eric, this strategy “is an effective way to provide improbable pictures in AI instruments like Dall-E or Midjourney.”

8. Keep the human contact.

COO and Head of Advertising at CanXida, Azi Azimi, has used AI in buyer expertise processes throughout buyer assist, gross sales, and advertising and marketing. “All through these processes, we made positive to keep up a human contact,” says Azi.

For instance, whereas AI performs a major position, CanXida all the time supplies alternatives for patrons to attach with actual folks when wanted. The CanXida groups additionally “personalised AI-generated messages to make them really feel extra human and genuine.”

Azi mentions this “stability between automation and human interplay” as pivotal in making a constructive buyer expertise.

Leveraging AI for Distinctive Buyer Experiences

From shopping to buying and aftercare, AI, when carried out thoughtfully, has the potential to positively impression the whole buyer expertise, from shopping to buying and aftercare.

For instance, AI instruments like chatbots might help you present 24/7 buyer assist. Which means folks can get fast solutions to queries no matter time zones or group availability, creating frictionless assist experiences.

AI tech also can enable you present hyper-tailored advertising and marketing/gross sales journeys to new and current prospects. That reduces churn, bolsters your model’s status, and encourages repeat purchases.

You can begin with AI-enhanced buyer experiences by first automating smaller duties, front-loading information enter, or experimenting with current instruments.

However whichever strategy you are taking, keep in mind to remain customer-centric and preserve the human contact for the perfect outcomes.