Retailers and businesses looking to improve their automation processes to meet customer needs may find that integrating artificial intelligence (AI) to build conversational customer experiences (CX) provides a competitive commercial advantage.
According to a Gartner poll conducted last year, 80% of executives feel they can apply automation to any business decision. It demonstrated how firms are evolving their usage of artificial intelligence (AI) as part of their automation initiatives, which are becoming ingrained in digital business operations.
“The survey revealed that enterprises are moving away from a purely tactical approach to AI and are beginning to apply AI more strategically,” said Erick Brethenoux, vice president analyst at Gartner. “For example, a third of organizations are applying AI across several business units, creating a stronger competitive differentiator by supporting decisions across business processes.”
According to the findings of this study, customer expectations have shifted dramatically, with a focus on rapid, personalized, and easy experiences across all communication channels, including messaging, chat, and voice. AI meets such expectations and can make customer interactions more conversational.
Rebecca Jones, general manager of Mosaicx, is using a similar strategy in delivering AI services to her company’s CX services. She is a big proponent of utilizing conversational AI to enable organizations to improve and adapt customer experience, hence increasing competitive advantage.
“I think it’s essential for leaders to understand all the latest advancements in AI and ensure that they’re staying ahead of the curve and understanding the implications for their industry or their business operations,” Jones said in an interview with CRM Buyer.
Making the Most of AI-Powered Customer Service
According to a recent Forbes advisor poll, firms are implementing AI across a wide variety of their operations, both internal and external, added Jones. Over half of those polled said they are now using AI for these goals.”Nearly two-thirds of the business owners polled said AI will continue to improve customer relationships over the life of their company.” “As a result, I believe it is critical for business owners to stay up to date on the latest advancement,” she said.cAI’s huge improvements in customer satisfaction over the previous generation of CRM bots are a crucial motivator for firms to stay current. The new playing field is understanding how to recommend the next product or appointment reminders and anticipate the customer’s wants. Understanding how to deliver real-time insights regarding the next things customers require is also important.
“Obviously, conversational AI enables omnichannel engagement and understanding, ensuring that all of your customers receive the same high level of service.” “That is available no matter when customers call, so it is 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Jones noted.
How Mosaicx Improves Business Performance
Mosaicx uses AI and machine learning (ML) to continuously improve the user experience in order to give the most predictive, personalized service possible.
The company offers high-end conversational AI products and solutions that allow organizations to use AI and ML deep learning technologies on the front end of their operations.
“We essentially create a brand-centric front door for their business by providing an intersection between their brand experience and customer experience.” “We do this by automating many of our customer interactions,” she stated.
One of the advantages of this technique is that it saves money in the long run. It keeps some of those unusual consumer queries out of a company’s contact center. This reduction relieves much of the contact center’s strain and allows agents to focus on higher-level engagements with their clients.
“We deflect much of the cost of low and quick turnaround questions for their customers,” he said.
Defying the Fear Factor
According to Jones, businesses switching to this type of advanced AI/ML-powered CX solution frequently face the dread of the unknown. They are unaware of how to use technology to their advantage.
She feels that the major worry for businesses is the hesitation or difficulty in constructing or deploying conversational AI technology themselves rather than purchasing a pre-existing solution.
If a company is thinking about implementing the technology, the costs include cloud service infrastructure licensing, development and integration costs, data storage, data gathering, and rotation security. Compliance and similar fees are significant technological expenditures on the back end.
She recommended that firms that want to implement conversational CX buy a solution that already has AI for the specific front function they want. They then pay for the service without having to invest the underlying technology, cloud infrastructure, ongoing maintenance, data solutions, or other associated expenditures.
Unwrapping the Mosaicx Platform
Mosaicx, which leverages cloud-based SaaS technology, can be used as a standalone application for enterprises that desire something less personalized. However, more is preferable. More access to the entire platform enables more personalized services that a company would like to have connected with its own CRM tool, according to Jones.
“The customers that we have today, where we get the highest degree of cost savings and the highest degree of personalization, are those where we have integration with their CRM, potentially with their back-end customer ticketing systems and other data points that are relevant to their business line or their customers,” she said.
Many Mosaicx customers, for example, use the platform’s payment services functionality, which allows their user consumers to finish their payment processing totally automated without having to speak with a human – that type of flexibility is important. “So it really depends on the needs of our customers, but we can do it either way,” added Jones.
To take advantage of some of those back-end activities, the Mosaicx platform runs on Google Cloud. Furthermore, it leverages unique software that blends multiple natural language processing AI and ML datasets, allowing for seamless human-computer conversations.
“Technology has advanced so quickly that in many cases, we can leverage voices from the computer side of the conversation, which are even deepfakes of agent voices and other such things.” “In many cases, it’s difficult to tell that you’re talking to a computer rather than a real person,” Jones added.
The Changing Role of AI in Customer Experience
The Gartner AI study mentioned earlier may be a little out of date, but Jones pointed out that it is still applicable to today’s AI breakthroughs with conversational CX. Gartner published its findings in August of last year.
“We have proposed with our clients that as we are adopting and integrating generative AI into our solution, they leverage that internally first as a way to automate engagement with their employees and lift some of the burden from their employees as they’re engaging with their end users and then leverage that externally,” she said.
Her organization has also adopted a very conservative approach in how it has barred or restricted the usage of generative AI large language models to guarantee that its use does not expose clients to risk. Mosaic Expert, a service that uses generative AI to allow businesses to automate question-and-answer FAQ types of encounters, is in the works.
She added that it’s a huge cost-cutting technique because it allows them to deliver what they normally offer their contact center agents.
This strategy allows for the controlled and responsible deployment of generative AI, ensuring users and clients of the technology’s safety and security.