Conversational AI: Impact on Retail Customer Experiences

Customer service always help deliver fast replies to enhance consumers’ shopping experience. No other period in the history of business has brought about such intense and significant changes in behavior quite like the past decade or so. There are multiple reasons for such change, of course, but experts agree a huge part of the credit goes to artificial intelligence and machine learning. Customer service always help deliver fast replies to enhance the shopping experience. No other period in the history of business has brought about such intense and significant changes in customer behavior quite like the past decade or so. There are multiple reasons for such change, of course, but experts agree a huge part of the credit goes to artificial intelligence and machine learning.

This is because today customers have intently focused on high-quality experiences no matter the channel through which they engage with a given company. This shift in expectations spelled a lot of challenges for retailers though quality help has been found in AI and other such modern technologies which have empowered modern-age retailers to adapt in accordance to customers’ expectations, new trends in the market, etc.

Today, artificial intelligence is becoming quite significant for customer service because since people cannot be available 24/7, and neither can they provide instant responses at all times. Retailers are using conversational AI to deliver fast service to offer customers a personalized experience. Even several experts believe that this would become more common as time goes on.

No other period in the history of business has brought about such intense and significant changes in customer behavior quite like the past decade or so. There are multiple reasons for such change, of course but experts agree a huge part of the credit goes to artificial intelligence and machine learning. This is because today customers are intently focused on high-quality experiences no matter the channel through which they engage with a given company. This shift in expectations spelled a lot of challenges for retailers though quality help has been found in AI and other such modern technologies which have empowered modern-age retailers to adapt in accordance to customers’ expectations, new trends in the market, etc. To further understand the potential and the scope of opportunities conversational artificial intelligence offers for the world of retail, let us explore the impact it stands to have on the industry.

1. Personalized customer experiences: Modern-age customers and their expectations from businesses are vastly different from what they were still just a decade or so ago. They want custom experiences nearly as much as they want convenience. The lack of such quality in the customers’ experiences can make sales a challenge, but not when you have conversational AI in your arsenal. Together with machine learning, natural language processing, etc. AI tools can help analyze the company’s data and use it to better understand customers and then leverage those insights to improve experiences via personalization.
2. Reduce costs: One more intriguing use companies have found for conversational AI has to do with costs — cost reduction, to be precise. You see, AI-based chatbots can be deployed to provide customer support in a sizable number of circumstances. Sure, not every customer service case can be entirely handled by chatbots, but the fact remains that chatbots can handle a significant part of the process, including answering queries. When chatbots are designed to handle such tasks at scale, companies end up saving a lot of money they would otherwise spend on hiring human agents.
3. Top-notch customer support: At this point, AI-driven chatbots are no longer a novelty; i.e. more and more companies are deploying chatbots across not just a website or a social media platform but across the wide spectrum of channels to foster a high-quality, omnichannel experience for their customers. What that means no matter the time of day at which customers need customer support, there will always be someone there to engage with them. In case the intervention of a human customer service agent is deemed necessary, chatbots can initiate a seamless process to hand over the case to an available agent.

There is not even a shred of doubt that customer experience is a critical factor in the success of a retail business in today’s cut-throat market. Unfortunately, achieving the requisite quality of customer experiences is easier said than done; well, without the robust assistance of modern technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence that is.

As the above discussion demonstrates, conversational AI as well as countless other such advanced technologies can lend critical value to a retail company’s efforts to garner better sales and grow their business. You too can achieve such benefits for your business, all you will need, then, is the expert guidance of a trusted retail digital transformation service provider. So, go and start looking, eh!