Presented by Cognigy

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Are you keeping customers or losing the battle? 

Our fast-paced, tech-centered world has fostered the expectation of instant gratification. When we have questions, concerns and issues with a supplier, we do not expect to wait for hours on hold. We do not want to be bounced around to different customer service agents, re-explaining our story over and over. No, we want fast and friction-free services. When we do not get a prompt satisfying resolution, we move on to another supplier or service. It is a battleground.

Suppose this sounds familiar; your call center teams are overwhelmed and struggle to deliver service excellence. In that case, you are at risk of losing valued customers. Furthermore, your trusted agents may also burn out, constantly feel under pressure, or get bored doing the same old same old, day in and day out.

There is no doubt that customers prefer frictionless, rapid solutions.

Customers today will gladly speak with a bot if it results in a smooth, fast interaction. A growing mountain of data now supports the idea that, in certain circumstances, consumers prefer chatbots for specific interactions.

For example, one study points out that 69% of respondents prefer chatbots for receiving instantaneous responses. Similarly, 69% said they’re most likely to use chatbots for service-related inquiries (The Future of Chatbots in Insurance (cognizant.com). Knowing this, of course, doesn’t change the fact that businesses need to understand the individual preferences of their customers.

Meaningful and effective self-service is being delivered with a new generation of voice and chatbots powered by conversational AI. Conversational AI bots communicate in natural language, meaning human-like dialogs that do not feel robotic, which makes interactions easier, faster and ultimately more pleasant. Combined with machine learning, conversational AI bots continually learn from their interactions to improve accuracy, and through the power of machine translation, more service languages are enabled. Consequently, the more it chats with customers, the better it is at answering their questions and identifying intent.

Utilizing AI and conversation design are fundamental in crafting natural language specific to your customer’s needs and expectations

Let’s say your company decides to move to an automation-first customer service model. Which service inquiries and areas do you tackle first? Conversation design maps out interactions and overall experiences between virtual agents, live agents and end users so the best possible experiences can be visualized, developed and delivered.

Take common inquiries for example. Customers often forget passwords. Conversational AI is designed to recognize the various ways a customer would express this. Some customers say, “forgotten password,” while others ask about login information or use language like “I need help getting into my account”. In harnessing conversation design, customer experience teams can build out conversations with keywords and phrases, enabling virtual agents to recognize how to help the customer and solve their inquiry.

Next, layer in scenarios where inquiries can take place over multiple channels — voice, mobile apps, live chat. Conversation design enables teams to framework those experiences. As a result, self-service can function across customer channels, delivering a satisfying experience all while reducing stress placed on call centers and agents.

Whatever route, whatever channel, the conversation must be fully orchestrated, giving the customer a faultless experience

It is becoming very clear to forward-looking enterprises that conversational AI is the key to positive customer experiences, automated self-service and real-time agent support. While virtual agents are designed to handle repetitive and common inquiries, live agents are made available to handle more complex inquiries. This handover is a critical piece of CX.

Backend connectivity is important so that the bot is powerful and transactional. When AI is fully integrated with back-end systems, customers are seamlessly passed on to an agent when asked, and with all contextual content, so that the transition is smooth. Customers should never have to repeat themselves, even if they step away from the conversation for a minute or a few hours.

A smart virtual agent should always know its limits and bring in human support whenever the interaction requires it.

So, how does your customer experience compare?

Have you dipped your toe in with one or two bots, or are you ready to examine what building blocks are needed for you to deliver a fully orchestrated self-service environment?

A good resource to start with is Cognigy’s CX Transformation Maturity Quiz. Knowing your maturity level will help you understand the experience you are giving today and the potential to deliver a fully integrated self-service AI-powered environment. This online assessment will help you analyze the solutions you already have, illustrate the impact of your current customer service and help you decide where possible improvements can be made.

You may be wondering who Cognigy is and why this quiz is worth your time! Cognigy is the market leader in conversational AI and has grounded itself in helping enterprise contact centers deliver on the promise of automated services that work and that satisfy customers. With a single platform, the enterprise has the agility to flex and scale to address its diverse customer service and agent support use cases while increasing the efficiency of the contact center and delivering on the promise of providing the best possible customer experience.

Learn more about Cognigy and delivering the CX of the future by visiting Cognigy.com.

Philipp Heltewig is CEO and Co-founder of Cognigy.

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