New Cognitive Conversation Platforms Improve the Customer Experience Through AI and WhatsApp

Forrester points out that agents ‘must be upskilled to keep up with new product introductions or emerging issues’, and that AI will ‘require skilled agent resources to solve the issue and temper customer frustration. Emotionally resonant superagents emerge to solve complex issues.’

New Cognitive Conversation platforms improve the customer experience through AI and messaging services like WhatsApp

When it comes to revenue, customer service is the make-or-break factor for any company. Poor service has led to tens of billions in losses for businesses, highlighting the importance of great service, which motivates customers to return and positively impact your bottom line.

Therefore, the billion-pound question is: How do we achieve customer satisfaction? In short, customer satisfaction is firmly linked to happy customer service agents. This means that by ensuring the wellbeing of our agents, we can achieve an excellent customer experience that boosts ROI.

The main source of dissatisfaction for agents is due to mundane, repetitive tasks, which leads to low morale. However, through long-term investment in AI and Automation, it is possible to cut down on – or even eliminate – such banal operations by monitoring customer trends and reading their emotions, allowing agents to respond more quickly and appropriately. The result is better support for both customers and agents.

According to Forrester, the three megatrends to consider for your business in 2020 are:

1. Allowing AI and Automation to take over repetitive tasks.
2. Creating super-agents who are supported by AI.
3. Rethinking staffing practices to be successful from within.

When incorporating these technologies into customer service offerings, it’s important to utilise their preferred communication channels. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are increasingly proving to be the best way to connect to customers alongside AI and Automation. This can be done by a new breed of platforms, cognitive conversation platforms, which can recognise the desire and intent of customers when connecting through messaging platforms and translate those into transactional requests to back office systems or hand over to a human agent, making the process much more seamless and faster.

AUTOMATION AND AI SERVE AS THE FOUNDATIONS FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE

According to Forrester, ‘AI is the foundation of customer service operations’. They will read data, analyse customer sentiment and facilitate customer inquiries with enhanced speed, all the while cutting down on repetition for agents. Forbes predicts that AI will increase by 143% in customer service teams.

Self-service technologies allow companies to remain competitive by acting as the customer service gatekeeper. RPA (robotic process automation) digitalises common agent operations, while AI eliminates agent monotony by taking over repetitive tasks and interacting with customers.
For example, WhatsApp opens a conversational platform through which AI takes over easy interactions, allowing agents to focus on personalised discussions. This particular platform has over 1.5 billion users who send 55 million messages per day. Such AI technologies, Forbes claims, will make operations more efficient: ‘It will help monitor customer journeys and proactively engage customers at the right time to drive conversion.’

YOUR ORGANISATION NEEDS SUPERAGENTS AND THEY NEED AI

By eliminating repetition, AI and Automations allows agents to focus on more complex issues. Rather than taking away from customer/agent interactions, AI improves the experience by empowering agents to nurture relationships on a deeper level. AI interactions and data collection help agents to better understand their customers.

The Wall Street Journal predicts $3 trillion in business value to be created by AI tools in 2021. AI and automation on platforms such as WhatsApp can enhance efficiency by automatically responding to and engaging with customers, understanding their inquiries and passing them to agents, who can then respond genuinely and in a conversational way.

Humans are not being replaced but empowered as employees with more tools and information at their disposal. This trends will create super-agents at the service of customers.

Forrester points out that agents ‘must be upskilled to keep up with new product introductions or emerging issues’, and that AI will ‘require skilled agent resources to solve the issue and temper customer frustration. Emotionally resonant superagents emerge to solve complex issues.’

CUSTOMER SERVICE ORGANISATIONS MUST RETHINK CULTURE

According to Forbes, there is an art to balancing the culture of the workplace when incorporating AI and automation. Agent potential is increased by harmonising automatic systems with a human touch. The nature of work is transformed with the incorporation of AI as lower-tier agents are no longer necessary, resulting in an increased need for super-agents, thus creating new jobs.
When AI is introduced, the work culture must be reshaped to better support agents emotionally. By removing repetition, AI and Automation prevents agent burn-out. Companies also have more time to carefully select and hire a team that will create the work culture they seek. Forrester emphasises that companies must rethink staffing practices to ‘leverage unique skills that generations offer’.

By introducing AI, Forrester points out that agents become empowered with:

● Enhanced customer context for true 1:1 engagement.
● Adaptive agent desktops that facilitate work.
● Workspaces that facilitate collaboration and knowledge.

AI and Automation are the future of customer service, creating more efficient businesses and transforming the workforce. Super-agents will thrive with AI as their assistant, not their replacement. By fusing AI with the agents’ human touch, customer service experiences will improve and revenue will increase.

Platforms like Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger are the future of AI utilisation as they will take over SMS to forge more conversation-based interactions in CRM programmes.

With over 15 years’ experience as technical and consultancy CRM experts, including technology strategy and data. At redk, we are already implementing these types of technologies and supporting companies looking to enhance efficiency and profitability through world-class tools that optimise performance across organisations. Contact us to learn how to get ahead.