With the rise of digital channels and online shopping in the past decades, digital customer experience has become extremely important for companies around the globe in order to attract and retain customers. So as a business, how can you enhance that digital customer experience? One way is by using AI and customer interaction management tools like we provide at Inbenta.
What is digital customer experience?
The digital customer experience is the sum of all the digital interactions between a customer and a company, and the customer’s impression of them.
In the business world, the notions of ‘digital customer experience’ and just ‘customer experience’ are often confused or mixed together. Customer experience is a broad concept that covers both traditional communication channels and new digital interfaces for interacting with companies, whereas digital customer experience is any experience solely based on digital channels.
The reality is that customers don’t really pay attention to the type of communication channel they use. They just want to interact with companies in the simplest and most fluid way. We focus on the digital aspect, as this is where a majority of the customers’ interactions take place nowadays.
As mentioned before, there are many ways of enhancing digital customer experience. One of the most powerful ways is to lean on technology, and more precisely on Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing.
Customer interaction management to the rescue
Self-service tools such as chatbots, knowledge management, and search engines have become very common and most customers are now used to interacting with these online.
But not all of these solutions are powered by the same technology and this is where all the difference lies. Some are keyword based, some only use machine or deep learning, whereas others use Natural Language Processing coupled with symbolic AI. (Check out our article on the difference between symbolic AI and machine learning for a more in-depth understanding.) NLP coupled with symbolic AI is the most powerful way to fuel customer interaction management tools and to ensure they meet customers’ growing expectations in terms of understanding and results provided.
Indeed, Natural Language Processing ensures that the tool perfectly understands the customers’ intent and is able to match that intent with the adequate content or answer within the knowledge base, providing a customer experience that can’t be matched by keyword-based technology.
Applied to customer interaction management solutions, NLP can do wonders.
Self-service impact on digital customer experience
Customer interaction management tools fall into different categories, such as chatbots and live chat solutions, as well as knowledge management systems.
As a quick reminder, a chatbot is a program aimed at providing automated written answers to Internet users via a messaging platform without any human intervention.
A live chat solution, or HyperChat as we call it here at Inbenta, is a tool that allows us to seamlessly escalate a conversation from a chatbot to a human advisor when the need is detected by the bot or expressed by the user.
A knowledge management system is an IT tool that organizes knowledge, whether it is documentation or frequently asked questions, in order to facilitate its accessibility for external users such as customers, but also for team members within an organization.
A better understanding of users’ requests
As explained previously, when powered by a symbolic AI-fueled NLP technology, all these solutions have an increased understanding of users’ queries and therefore, can match the intent to the corresponding answer within the knowledge base. Customers then get the proper answer to the question they’re asking themselves, rather than no answer at all when no such tool is installed or unsatisfactory ones with other technology providers.
Immediate answers 24/7
The major advantage of these tools is that they are available 24/7, which means that customers can get immediate answers when they need it, whether it is the middle of the day or after hours. When you compare that to getting in touch with a call -center, having to go through several menus to be connected with the right person, and then having to wait for what can be a long time in order to actually speak to a customer representative, cutting wait times can significantly improve the customer experience.
Clarified customer journey
Sometimes the customer journey is not well-defined or clear enough for web users, which leads to interrogations or doubts. A chatbot or live chat pop-up can be timed so they appear when a customer has added an item to their basket but is taking a long time to check out, for example. This can be an effective way to reassure and remove any new customer doubts, whether it is on the product itself, delivery timeframe or guarantees.
Increased customer satisfaction
It is quite clear that perfectly understanding users’ requests, responding to these almost immediately at any time of the day and week, as well as clarifying any doubts customers may have, can lead to an increase in customer satisfaction. Improving resolution times and reducing the customer effort for getting things done are both critical drivers of the digital customer experience.
As we’ve seen, customer interaction management solutions powered by symbolic AI and NLP technology have a positive impact on customer satisfaction and are a great way to enhance digital customer experience. These tools can be implemented on several channels, thus ensuring that all of your contact points are covered. If you’d like to know more about how to develop an omnichannel strategy, then our guide is made for you.
