How AI Can Help Deliver Exceptional CX to Win Over Customers

The combination of ongoing global inflation, economic uncertainty, and supply chain woes create a potentially mixed bag for the retail industry in 2023. How will this environment affect consumer behavior and spending?

A recent Deloitte survey revealed that shoppers plan to spend most of their budgets in online channels. This finding echoes McKinsey’s holiday prospectus, which also noted that shoppers were particularly willing to switch retailers to take advantage of promotions or pricing. The shopping experience can, however, be stressful for consumers as they search for the right products at the right price, hope they’re in stock, and ensure everything arrives in a timely manner. Retailers will need to focus on providing exceptional customer experiences to maintain customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.

Exceed Customer Expectations for a Superior Experience With AI-Powered Technologies

Technology has been raising expectations for online retail experiences for years and a positive customer journey has never been more important. Today, 88 percent of consumers say that the customer experience is just as important as the products a company sells.

Success here begins with establishing a solid technology foundation for your contact center agents to provide the excellent service your customers expect. Artificial intelligence-powered CX solutions equip agents with relevant, real-time insights and recommendations to serve your customers faster, create valuable upsell and cross-sell opportunities, and resolve customer inquiries with greater accuracy.

For example, let’s say a customer engages your live chat to find out if a particular style of shoe is available in a different color. The agent-facing AI uses machine learning to monitor this chat, automatically displaying the answer to the question, saving them time in searching for the product. The solution can also serve up a menu of next-best responses, perhaps asking the customer which size they would like, reviewing inventory to ensure the selected size is in stock, answering follow-up questions about shipping and delivery times, and even suggesting personalized promotional offers (e.g., price matching a competitor or free shipping on two pairs of shoes) to help boost sales and customer satisfaction.

Improve Contact Center Agent Satisfaction and Productivity

Not only does your customer leave this interaction happy with the agent’s fast, accurate answers and completed purchase, but your agent is also pleased with how smoothly they could provide excellent service.

Contact centers can also reduce average handle time by depending on the AI’s speech recognition capabilities, which empower agents to effortlessly document post-engagement actions; capture client issues, resolutions and other pertinent details; and alert other areas of the organization when they have follow-up responsibilities.

Behind the scenes, AI-powered solutions also provide detailed visibility into every customer interaction in every engagement channel. These analytics reveal best practices that can be leveraged across the enterprise to deliver consistent experiences and service while uncovering opportunities for process improvement and agent training.

By investing in AI-powered solutions that create both positive customer engagements and rewarding agent experiences, brands can create loyalty and longevity among customers and agents alike.

Seb Reeve is the director of intelligent engagement business development at Nuance Communications, an American multinational computer software technology corporation.