How voice AI is revolutionizing the customer experience
Updated: Jan 13, 2023
All top companies have excellent customer support in common. But customers are becoming more demanding and knowledgeable. So companies need to use more advanced resources in their customer strategy to keep up. That’s where voice AI can help. Voice AI contributes to customer retention by providing CX solutions that avoid mistakes, are available 24/7 in multiple channels and languages, prevent problems, and increase sales conversions.
Today’s telecommunication incorporates many digital tools for enhancing the customer experience, including voice AI (artificial intelligence). Unlike previous methods, digital voice AI can integrate into several areas to revolutionalize how an organization handles customers and supporting tasks.
Some strategic places where voice AI is beneficial in an office or a customer experience setting include:
Automated FAQ handling
Automated scheduling
Data collection and enrichment
Diagnosis and troubleshooting
Intelligent call routing
Reservation management
User authentication
One cannot ignore artificial intelligence and its implications in today's world. AI must be an integral part of the customer strategy for any industry. Voice AI programs and services can revolutionize an entire organization.
At the center of AI, and customer experience is relationship tools like image recognition, personalized communication, chatbots, and recommendations. Over 90% of successful companies use AI to boost exceptional customer service and improve organizational branding (https://www.techrepublic.com/article/91-of-top-companies-use-ai-to-boost-customer-service-improve-branding/, 2017).
Therefore, artificial intelligence solutions are the secret ingredient to the future of customer satisfaction and will help all business types achieve the best results.
What Is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence is the facet of computer science focused on studying software and hardware systems to mimic similar capabilities to humans. In addition, it can independently conduct tasks and make decisions on behalf of human beings. (https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence, 2022)
These four categories help describe the human capabilities of artificial intelligence systems:
Natural Language Processing: For understanding and processing language
Machine vision: To process and understand images
Predicting and decision-making: The ability to make predictions and decisions
Automation and acting: The ability to automate and perform actions autonomously
Understanding the Voice AI Customer Experience
Consequently, the voice AI customer experience is an integrated view of how artificial intelligence augments the human customer experience rather than replacing it entirely. AI CX technology uses machine learning, deep learning, and natural language understanding to automate every interaction that makes up a customer's experience.
The main difference between AI customer experience and AI customer service is that the former does not limit itself to quick resolutions to customer issues and questions.
How CX Functions
A chatbot powered by AI is an example of AI enhancing customer experience. Chatbots are one of the CX solutions that can be used digitally on messaging platforms like Facebook and WeChat. In addition, users will find them as well with email and voice assistants such as Google Assistant and Alexa.
Research shows that AI customer support chatbots offer the most benefits, such as reducing wait times and helping customer service specialists work more efficiently. Automating mundane tasks allows humans to focus on more complex matters. Organizations can use conversational AI chatbots to improve customer service and create loyal customers.
How Voice Technology and AI Have Advanced
As more individuals work from home and conduct business online, voice technology and AI have drastically appeared in small and large companies worldwide. According to an Oberlo study, 270% more organizations have enlisted in AI technology over the last four years. (https://www.oberlo.com/blog/artificial-intelligence-statistics, 2022)
This significant growth means the AI market will account for over $641 billion by 2028. Furthermore, as AI continues to integrate into several industries, digital automation and conversational voice technology will revolutionize the customer journey, improving satisfaction overall.
In 2020, Gartner's analysts predicted that by 2022, 70% of customer interactions would use the latest technologies, such as chatbots and machine learning. (https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/top-cx-trends-for-cios-to-watch, 2020) This number is almost 15% more than in 2018.
Ways Voice AI Is Revolutionizing Customer Experience
Voice AI can enhance the customer experience in a myriad of ways. From avoiding errors to being available 24/7 to speaking in the client’s language. Let’s explore these advantages in more detail.
Customized Error-free Interactions and Recommendations
One out of three people is willing to spend more with a business to have information customized to their specific needs. Proper AI voice technology implemented within an organization will:
Improve customer engagement
Solidify brand loyalty
Increase sales
Some voice bots can even collect payments from clients by sending links that users can follow to pay. Also, personalization lies in what the users communicated earlier. A voice bot can access crucial data available with CRM integrations before responding correctly. They can do this without human assistance.
Provide Immediate Attention Every Day and Night
Technological advances make it simple for customers to receive the immediate attention they seek when needing assistance. Voice AI makes it easy to serve potential customers any time, day or night, even outside regular business hours.
Although 75% of customers may abandon a brand due to long queue times or delayed responses from organizations, employing AI can drastically reduce these numbers.
A voice bot and other AI tools can help deliver an immediate response to customers' questions rather than navigating complex IVR menus. For example, using AI for CX allows companies to provide quick answers anytime when customer support specialists are not available or busy. The result is zero hold times and faster resolution times for typical customer queries.
Here is how artificial intelligence helps deliver a smooth customer experience:
Reduce customer churn: Voice technology can be the main point of contact to reduce customer churn
Automate common queries: Using Voice AI is perhaps the best way of providing instant support for constant inquiries, ensuring customers do not wait long for answers
Improve brand value: Voice AI can provide relevant instant responses to customer questions, make recommendations, direct more traffic into a sale funnel, and create a lasting personalized impression
Efficiency and Productivity
Exceptional customer experience means offering quick and hassle-free interactions that value customers' lives. Artificial intelligence helps companies to provide customers better in various ways.
When companies automate routine processes, customer service productivity and operational efficiency increase
Cognitive computing allows companies to understand their customer base well by allowing for faster decision-making analysis and providing innovative advice and support to deliver near real-time and consistent experience
Digital AI tools can provide instant reporting on customer’s purchasing habits, previous communications, and more to enhance customer retention
AI can help to proactively understand customer issues even before customers know and provide smooth experiences promptly
By eliminating mundane and standard queries through voice AI, customer service agents can focus more time on complex requests. This way, an organization’s employees will be more efficient and productive in their roles.
Better Reach With Diverse User Bases and Multilingual Support
With voice AI on diverse user bases, you can create a system where customers feel they are heard on their preferred channels. In addition, receiving multilingual support allows users to feel heard and understood. This voice AI solution can deliver a seamless user experience along the customer journey thanks to its multilingual support across many social media platforms.
Voice technology is becoming more powerful and accessible to enterprises worldwide. Forward-thinking businesses can quickly deploy various applications, including voice-enabled chatbots. This technology offers several benefits, including improved two-way interactions with customers, fraud detection, and enhanced customer experiences.
Platforms with voice recognition can be crucial in serving a more comprehensive range of users. For example, apps that employ state-of-the-art speech recognition can help you serve a larger number of people from different languages and dialects across more than one channel. Additionally, businesses that use voice-enabled technology to service their entire customer base overall media will reap the benefits of technology that is as broad as possible.
Voice AI Helps To Boost Sales Conversions
AI technology can help enrich business transactions with high-quality leads by improving the customer experience. Voice AI can also automate appointment scheduling and allow customers to book online from the website or through their social media platforms. It also makes placing orders easy, contributing to higher customer retention overall.
Here are some ways digital voice technology will increase sales conversions:
Automated Sales FAQs: Use voice technology to automatically create a sales funnel by prequalifying leads through specific questions and directing them to the appropriate department or automatically set up an appointment based on their responses
High ROI: Artificial intelligence for CX creates an effective chat experience for users and improves overall efficiency by minimizing costs of live customer service employees
AI is available anytime: Instant answers to customers' sales queries, helping to increase sales conversions
Final Words
Voice AI is becoming more sophisticated and is rapidly gaining popularity among companies of every size and industry. According to an Opus Research study on Voice Technology, 99% of key decision-makers across various industries recognize voice technology as a crucial part of its successful customer experience management strategy. (https://opusresearch.net/wordpress/2022/02/10/opus-research-report-2022-state-of-voice-technology/#:~:text=Key%20findings%20from%20the%20report,State%20of%20Voice%20Technology%20Report.%E2%80%9D, 2022)
Voice technology aims to enhance the CX in as many ways as possible throughout various platforms. By enlisting AI tools, an organization can reach potential customers on diverse user bases that customers are comfortable interacting with, improving brand loyalty and trust.
Voice-based customer support is already yielding many benefits to enterprises. They can offer a great customer experience and see clear sales, productivity, and ROI improvement. In addition, the return on investment for voice AI is substantial, as this technology provides a more productive and efficient way to generate a revenue stream.