Interactions Blog

There is no shortage of use cases where AI adds value to the customer experience. Whether it’s increasing automation to improve efficiency or providing personalized customer experiences, AI has the potential to improve how customers interact with brands on a daily basis. But for companies looking to justify AI investments, it can be difficult to know where to start.

There are many who would say that Natural Language Processing is experiencing something of a revolution right now. Across various industries, a number of advances — including new machine learning technologies — are coming out that support further advancement of existing artificial intelligence technologies. But what is Natural Language Processing, and what is its potential impact on the customer care industry?

Your customer experience is important. It sets you apart from your competitors, affects your ability to retain customers, and impacts your bottom line. But understanding the customer experience can be challenging. What is it like for a customer who interacts with your customer service technology?

Over the past few months, virtual assistants have quickly become a topic of conversation for C-level executives, engineers and brand managers alike. While the first generation of these chatbots — or whatever form the assistant took — may have frustrated consumers and pained marketers, they’ve more recently become a growing aspect of a brand’s customer experience.

Over the last few years, the word ‘omnichannel’ has been used (and overused) to describe a utopia of marketing and customer care. We all have heard and read about how an omnichannel approach solves all customer care issues and allows brands to prove their customer obsession. Then why do brands still pursue a better approach?

We’ve talked a lot at Interactions about exactly what chatbots are, and perhaps even more importantly, what they aren’t. As customers continue to put pressure on brands to deliver consistent, omnichannel experiences across customer care channels, automated customer care technologies like chatbots continue to gain popularity.

We’ve all had frustrating customer service experiences — dealing with awkward, robotic automated systems that don’t understand you or offer the right menu options. If we’re being honest, most of the time we probably end up rapidly pushing buttons or yelling ‘agent’ until we’re directed to a real person, just to avoid these systems. Companies actually put these systems in place to help the customer service process, but poor implementation and design often means they just cause frustration and often worsen customer experiences.

We talk a lot about the future of customer care and modernizing your customer care strategy. But what exactly does this mean? How can you tell if your customer care strategy is ready for the future? When building your customer care strategy, here are 4 important things to understand about modern consumers — who they are and what appeals to them.

There are a lot of considerations that go into developing a persona for your Intelligent Virtual Assistant. How do you set your IVA apart? Should you name your IVA? How do you know that you got it right? We’re answering these common questions — and more — that companies often has as they begin to develop personas for their automated customer care solutions.

As customer preferences continue to evolve and care channels such as chat become more widely used, there is sometimes a perception among companies that voice is becoming less important. This couldn’t be further from the truth, however, as studies have shown that voice is still king in customer care. And while this certainly refers to the fact that customers are still calling into customer care centers at overwhelming numbers, it also refers to the fact that voice and speech are becoming even more important in applications across other customer care channels as well.

Increasingly, the customer care industry is teaming up with technology to focus on delivering seamless and effortless customer experiences. But our industry often promises a better omnichannel experience and improvements to the customer journey, while in reality, many companies fail to deliver.

When it comes to customer care, the possibilities for applying artificial intelligence to increase efficiency, lower costs and improve the customer experience seem infinite. The question that most companies are facing is not whether they should incorporate AI, but how. Not all AI is created equal — and for the purposes of customer care, there are actually some specific characteristics that it’s important to make sure your solution has.