In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, companies are constantly searching for innovative ways to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. However, despite advancements in technology and service delivery, customers often find themselves dissatisfied with the experiences provided by many companies.
McKinsey & Company describes customer experience as everything a business or organization does to put customers first, manage their journey, and serve their needs. Thus, customer experience refers to everything a business does to provide outstanding customer experiences, value, and growth. And it’s critical in an age where how a company serves its consumers is as important as, if not more important than, the products and services it offers.
So, the key point for successful business is good customer service creates good customer experience. In current’s competitive market, a positive customer experience is vital for building brand loyalty and driving customer retention.
According to the 2022 Zendesk Customer Experience Trends report, 60% of companies say that they provide good customer service, but almost half of customers answered that their frustration level has grown. Around 55% feel increasingly stressed, 52% state that support interactions leave them exhausted, and 66% consumers who frequently interact with support say poor interactions with businesses can ruin their day.
So, where is this error occurring exactly? Customers’ frustration comes from the fact that they often repeat their answers when dealing with customer service, resulting in spending more time to interact with customer service. In addition, what is equally annoying is that they have to wait because the agent has to search for the information they need. That struggle leads to irritated consumers.
In line with the Zendesk report in 2020 which revealed that the struggles faced by customers can affect the loss of opportunities to create loyalty and retention. More than 50% of customers say that the most frustrating aspect of a poor customer service experience is the long waiting time when interacting with an agent.
And, this is what is driving the emergence of intelligent customer experience as a promising solution to overcome these challenges and revolutionize the way businesses interact with their customers.
Before talk about how it applies to business, it is critical to understand the term of intelligent customer experience. We discovered that intelligent customer experience is a strategic approach that uses advanced technology, data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) to provide businesses and their customers with personalized and seamless experiences.
It aims to understand and fulfill customers’ unique needs, preferences, and expectations by leveraging advanced tools like AI, machine learning, and predictive analytics. By harnessing customer data and insights, intelligent customer experience enables companies to provide tailored experiences, proactive support, and seamless engagement across multiple channels.
Businesses can create intelligent customer experience that not only meet but also anticipate customer needs, resulting in improved customer satisfaction, loyalty, and long-term success with a number of key characteristics. These characteristics enable businesses to deliver personalized, efficient, and proactive interactions that align with the evolving needs and expectations of customers.
1. Personalization
Intelligent customer experience focuses on providing highly personalized experiences to customers. It leverages customer data and insights to understand individual preferences, behaviors, and context, enabling businesses to tailor interactions, recommendations, and offers accordingly. By personalizing the customer journey, businesses can enhance customer satisfaction and foster stronger connections.
2. Data-Driven Insights
Intelligent customer experience relies on the analysis of customer data to extract actionable insights. By harnessing advanced analytics, AI algorithms, and machine learning, businesses can uncover patterns, trends, and customer intent. These insights help organizations anticipate customer needs, identify pain points, and make informed decisions to optimize the customer experience.
3. Omnichannel
Intelligent customer experience ensures a consistent and seamless customer experience across multiple channels and touchpoints. It enables customers to switch between channels without losing context or having to repeat information. By integrating data and communication channels, businesses can provide a unified experience, allowing customers to engage effortlessly through their preferred channels.
4. Customer-centric
Businesses prioritize understanding customer needs, expectations, and pain points to design experiences that cater to their preferences. Intelligent customer experience places the customer at the center of decision-making and ensures that every interaction is designed to create value and exceed customer expectations.
Unleashing Smartbot’s Potential
In an era where customer expectations are soaring and competition is fierce, businesses face the ultimate challenge of delivering experiences that truly resonate with their customers. Traditional approaches are falling short, leaving customers dissatisfied and brands struggling to differentiate themselves.
Recognizing the dynamic needs of customers, one of Anabatic Technologies’s subholdings, KPSG Group, the best operational transformation solutions provider that has leveraged intelligent customer experience with an IP owned customer experience platform named ARSI. It is an intelligent platform that can transform business and consumer interactions by integrating various channels into one platform.
ARSI provides a consistent customer experience and ensures they get fast and precise service. This is possible due to the use of advanced technology, one of which is a seamless AI robot, Smartbot. With Smartbot, customer handling capacity can be increased with True Hybrid Operation, a hybrid operating model between real agents and AI technology. It allows a seemless transition between chatbot and agent, resulting in accurate and quick support.
The existing technology allows customers to connect directly with a real agent when the robot’s confidence level to answer is below 50%. So that consumer questions or complaints can be handled quickly. But the robot’s work does not stop there. During the interaction between the real agent and the consumer, the answer given to the consumer will be learned and recorded by the robot, so that in the future when a similar question arises again then the robot can give precise answers.
KPSG calls it, On-The-Fly Training. It allows agents to train Smartbot to answer unspecified questions with simultaneously serving the customers. This quick response demonstrates operational efficiency, which in turn increases customer satisfaction.
The advantages of this technology have been felt by a number of companies from various industries. One of the success stories of using Smartbot comes from a digital bank company. With Smartbot, KPSG helped improve productivity by automating routine tasks and maximizing operations to achieve higher efficiency.
This solution was implemented in a chat-based channel on the digital bank’s website and mobile application. After using Smartbot, more than 400,000 chats were recorded, 84% of which were successfully responded to by Smartbot, reducing the workload of customer service agents in answering questions that tend to be repetitive. In addition, the digital bank was also able to reduce the number of agents.
Another impressive story from the use of Smartbot came from a health laboratory that had previously used chatbot services from a different provider. The previous condition that this company had to face was the limited response and answers from the chatbot because the chatbot was menu-based. Thus, consumers were not free to ask questions to the chatbot.
Then, the implementation of the Smartbot was done by utilizing WhatsApp services as the most popular instant messaging platform in Indonesia. By using a free text-based technology, Smartbot and customers can interact with each other like a conversation between customers and online customer service without being limited by the available menu.
As a result, more than 400,000 questions have been successfully answered by Smartbot in free text. As much as 69% of them were responded very well and accurately by Smartbot, this number has certainly increased compared to before.
From these cases, we could see that the implementation of this technology can improve customer experience which can then be followed by increased customer satisfaction and lead it to more benefits. The following are the advantages that can be obtained when businesses utilize intelligent customer experience, chatbot.
Enhanced Customer Satisfaction
As we know, intelligent customer experience focuses on personalization, proactive support, and seamless interactions, leading to significantly improved customer satisfaction. By understanding and meeting individual needs, anticipating customer expectations, and resolving issues before they become problems, it creates positive experiences that leave customers delighted and loyal.
Increased Customer Loyalty and Retention
Satisfied customers are more likely to remain loyal to a brand, make repeat purchases, and recommend the business to others. The personalized and proactive nature of intelligent customer experience builds trust and creates a sense of value, encouraging customers to stay engaged with the brand over the long term.
Efficient Operations
By automating routine tasks and resolving customer issues more efficiently, businesses can free up resources, reduce costs, and allocate human agents to more complex and value-added tasks. Intelligent customer experience helps to leverage automation, AI-powered chatbots, and intelligent systems to streamline processes and improve operational efficiency.
Intelligent customer experience holds tremendous potential for transforming customer satisfaction in today’s dynamic business landscape. By leveraging advanced technologies and data-driven insights, companies can overcome the challenges that dissatisfy customers and provide personalized, seamless, and proactive experiences. Embracing Intelligent customer experience is not only a smart move but also a necessary one to thrive in the era of heightened customer expectations and intense competition.
