Artificial Intelligence. It’s been around for years; dating all the way back to the 1950’s in fact. So why has it only – in the last few years – become such a hot topic of conversation?
Most likely because we’ve recently tapped into AI’s highest and most useful potentials. Although, 72% of people are afraid of AI, and 24% out of those believe robots will overrule us.
In the same study, it was also concluded that we have evenly split emotions when asked about businesses using AI to interact with consumers. The study was conducted with 6,000 people and; 1/3 said they’d be uncomfortable with this, another 1/3 unsure, and the last 1/3 were all for it.
Subsequently, what on Earth does this mean for the future of customer engagement? There are numerous possible answers to this, but of course, we’re going to look at AI being used to enhance customer experience.
Experience links to customer loyalty
A customer will only become loyal to your brand if they’ve had good experiences with you.
Only then will they emotionally invest in your brand – which is exactly what you want. Using Artificial Intelligence to improve customer engagement, ultimately aims to create better experiences that the consumer will relate your brand to.
AI is obviously clever and because there’s no room for an AI to forget an answer (unlike our minds that forget to pick up loo roll, more than once).
They’re fast at finding information, have a great eye for recognising patterns and learn every time we speak to them.
They can develop and learn similar to us, but much quicker. This is what makes AI so fit for customer engagement, they can learn what consumers like, dislike and predict their behaviour, just after having a chat!
Customer behaviour insights
Not only can their expanding understanding of customer behaviour be handy for the customer, but it can also relay back the insights they gather. This information has the power to encourage much more personalised customer engagement and connect businesses with what consumers want.
With this said, there’s a large grey-area regarding whether this is an invasion of privacy or a useful insight. But this is just one of the issues with AI, people also are concerned about:
- Data-privacy
- Employees losing jobs
- How intelligent they can become
- Becoming reliant on AI for fast information
- AI not being able to deliver customer experience as well as a human
The benefits of AI customer engagement
Although there are still doubts about the ethics of AI collecting information on customers, there are many alternative points to consider:
- Real-time assistance
- No human-error
- Personalised recommendations
- Builds useful and detailed customer profiles
- We already use AI and so far, all has gone well
Although not many of us realise it (only 34% think they use AI, yet 84% actually do), we already use AI in our daily life a lot. Just look at the Google Dot or Amazon Echo, they’re Artificial Intelligence. And it goes further than just these home adaptations…
Hotels using AI
There are in fact a few hotels that have already started using AI for customer assistance. Edward, for example, is an AI bot who assists guests.
He can give guests suggested places to visit, tell them local locations, order room service, order new towels and even respond to complaints. All you need to do to submit a complaint is text Edward and he’ll reply within seconds! Now that’s pretty impressive.
Should we use AI for customer engagement?
What’s your opinion on using AI for customer engagement? Give us your insight in the comments below, as long as you don’t let Black Mirror sway your opinion.
(P.S if you haven’t already, you should totally watch Black Mirror!)