Transforming customer experience with AI

Chris Mills at Slack describes how human customer experiences are evolving in the age of artificial intelligence

AI is already an essential part of the customer service and sales toolbox. On the horizon, however, are advances that will outpace the standard voice assistant or chatbots many have become familiar with. With the rise of generative AI, we’re approaching a world in which ‘AI agents’, that require little guidance, will be working alongside us.

These agents will be able to operate applications, undertake complex tasks and operate almost independently. And they’ll have a dramatic effect on customer service. However, even with the rise of this next generation of AI, human experiences are in demand. In fact, when calling a company, the vast majority would rather wait to speak to a person, than immediately connect with an AI. 

At a time when improving the customer experience is the top priority of service professionals, striking a balance – between the efficiency of AI and delivering meaningful human connections – will be key. That’s because for customers, it’s not just about the product you’re selling, it’s how you sell it (and support them later) that makes the difference. 

Ultimately, getting it right comes down to addressing three key pillars: personalisation, consistency and trust. 

Personalising the customer experience 

Personalisation in the age of AI means more than popping a first name in a standard sales email. It’s something that should be weaved into every element of your customer’s journey. That could mean warming up sales leads with account-based marketing or ensuring high-value customers have dedicated contacts within your business.  

All personalisation requires rich insights. Tracking and managing information – from customer names through to sales history, preferences, previous interactions and more – is key to delivering a unique experience.

As your business grows, it’s not enough to simply accumulate this information through random notes, unwieldy spreadsheets or hearsay from coworkers. You need a system. One that’s easily accessible and ready for your teams to seamlessly draw on. 

This is only becoming more important given AI agents will need to draw on a company’s own data to rapidly create meaningful, trusted and usable results to personalise interactions.

Consistency across the customer journey

Personalisation goes hand-in-hand with the next core ingredient of great customer experiences: consistency. 

No customer likes to be bounced between sales and support, being put on hold and then having to repeat their original request all over again. Instead, the goal should be a friction-free transition between teams – both virtual and human – that make up a united front. 

This is where the communication platform a business uses becomes important. Relying on disconnected apps will result in a frustrating experience for customers. In contrast, with everything (for example, a CRM housing customer data) integrated into one communication platform, customers won’t feel the seams – even if they need to be transferred across departments. 

Fastly, an edge cloud platform, is just one business that’s embraced this ethos. Its customer service teams use Slack to collaborate in real-time with the wider business. It means that frontline reps can easily tap experts from product, engineering, sales, billing and more and connect their insights instantly with customers. 

This collaborative approach means faster resolutions and a smoother experience, while the support channels in the platform (dedicated spaces for discussions and work) act as a clear log for future reference. The results? Fastly’s customer satisfaction rating sits at more than 98% – a key differentiator in a competitive field.

Building trust in the AI era

Personalisation and consistency only go so far without the third pillar of great experiences – trust. Trust is the glue that holds every interaction with a customer together. And, as businesses hold more data on customers, and look to deploy AI, cementing trust is only becoming more important. 

However, like personalisation and consistency, trust is linked to how your business handles data. If we look at AI, a key challenge of the technology that AI agents will have to overcome is its potential to ‘hallucinate’, or in other words, give incorrect information. 

For sales or customer support teams, that’s a big problem. Yet the way around it isn’t abandoning AI. Instead, by deploying AI as a layer over existing data - like all those structured insights gathered in the CRM platform and rich context from communication tools – you can ensure AI is drawing data from the right sources. That means up-to-the-minute, accurate and relevant results that both your team – and your customers – can trust. 

With that trust, businesses can move from thinking about having a human in the loop, to having a human at the helm. With the next generation of AI crunching vast amounts of data, it won’t be realistic (or efficient) for service teams to review every single output.

Instead, by combining trusted AI with a human at the helm approach, those teams can focus on the high-judgement items that truly require attention. It means AI is helping to power the engine, but people remain firmly behind the wheel. 

Three pillars of customer experience

From changing consumer behaviours, to deploying new AI agents, how you engage your customers is rapidly evolving. In this new landscape, there’s a balance to be struck between using data to inform customer strategies, while maximising the human magic that makes customer experiences stand out. 

It all starts with technology that empowers teams to collaborate seamlessly, assists them with AI and, ultimately, accelerates customer solutions.

If personalisation, consistency and trust are the pillars your customer experience strategy needs to rest on – these workplace platforms are the foundations holding those pillars firmly in place.

Chris Mills is Global Head of Customer Success at Slack 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and krungchingpixs