AI (artificial intelligence) is very much in the headlines at the moment.
ChatGPT has become very popular in the tech community. Google is making big plays in the space and Meta will use AI for its advertising business. Microsoft is also betting on AI in a big way, with plans to embed it in all of its products.
So it is safe to say that AI will be a big part of our lives in the next few years. Especially if you work in digital.
But how can companies use AI to improve their CX (customer experience) efforts?
This week we will look at how companies could use generative AI to improve their customer experience.
But first, let’s define what generative AI actually is.
What Is Generative AI?
Generative AI describes algorithms that can create content. This can include audio, code, images, text, interactive experiences and even video content. Text only generative AI is unimodal, it only takes in text input. While multimodal generative AI systems can take more than one type of input. Like images and text at the same time.
The two big tools that have gathered a lot of attention are ChatGPT and DALL-E. ChatGPT, which has already gathered over 100 million users, is the highest profile AI right now. Its website, openAI.com, gets 1 billion visitors per month. OpenAI has accomplished this growth in a very short space of time.
DALL-E, also an OpenAI product, is a tool used to generate AI art. It already has over 1 million users. DALL-E generated visuals generated 4.2 billion views in 2023 alone.
AI tools will soon become commonplace. If they have not already! While it might be scary, AI can increase productivity. One of the big areas that might see these productivity increases is CX (customer experience).
Ways You Can Use Generative AI to Improve CX
Generative AI could have an almost limitless number of business applications. Especially as AI systems improve and evolve over time. Here are some of the ways you can expect to use generative AI in your CX optimization campaigns.
Use Generative AI In Customer Service
One of the areas where generative AI will have a huge impact is customer service.
Many companies already use AI chatbots for basic customer support functions. But we can expect the application of AI in customer support to increase over time.
But in sensitive industries, sentiment among customers is not always positive.
Banks have been using AI for customer support. But customers themselves have some misgivings. According to Genpact, 65% of customers still want a human to help them and only 16% prefer chatbots. This is out of step with senior executives. 52% of senior executives believe their customers will prefer a chatbot to a human within two years.
Bias in AI is also a problem that customers are aware of. According to the same Genpact survey, 67% of respondents worry that technology will discriminate against them.
So there is an appetite among C-suite executives to install AI in support functions. But customers do not seem as enthusiastic.
If you want to use AI in your customer support functions the best way is to integrate it into your existing customer support team. AI can help to take care of more mundane support questions. Leaving agents free to focus on more complicated customer requests. In sensitive industries like banking and healthcare, customers will expect to always have the option to speak to someone.
Not having that in place could lead to negative customer experiences and brand damage. It may even cause customers to look elsewhere.
But well integrated generative AI can help customers have a better support experience. It’s up to CX teams to blend agents and AI in a frictionless way that gives customers the best experience.
Custom, Personalized Recommendations
Personalized product recommendations are something we all experience on a daily basis. If you use Spotify or Netflix, you already have experience of how they work. We have written about personalized product recommendations before. They can improve ROI and average order value in most product and service areas.
But using personalized recommendations in the right way requires a strong base of first-party data right now. In the future with more AI tools, this could change. This is an opportunity for more niche businesses. They can start to present real personalized recommendations to their customers. With AI-powered zero-party data solutions, powerful personalization technology will be available to small businesses around the world.
It will be the CX teams’ job to implement these recommendations in a way that benefits the customer. CX professionals can use Generative AI to generate hundreds of experiences. Each one for a different customer segment. They can combine this with personalized recommendations. So CX teams can deliver the sort of hyper-personalized experiences that have been, until now, only possible for the biggest players in tech.
Use Generative AI To Gather Feedback
The use of generative AI in customer surveys is going to change everything about gathering customer feedback.
While the channels companies use to gather feedback will be the same, the surveys themselves will be different.
With generative AI you can generate dozens of hyper-personalized, more interactive surveys. CX teams can even use generative AI to create interactive experiences that replace boring old surveys. For example instead of a survey, imagine sending your customers an interactive micro-experience. It then gathers feedback and entertains them at the same time?
Not only would you have the usual survey data. You could use this experience to gather behavioral, psychometric data about your customers. This can lead to deeper insights on what they like and do not like. Combined with AI predictive analytics, this could lead to powerful customer behavior forecasting capabilities. This can help you create new products and services.
Use Generative AI To Create Content. But Be Very Careful…
Generative AI can take a lot of pain out of content creation. Tools like ChatGPT are great to use for ideation and research. But there are businesses using AI to generate AI content. There are a few things to be aware of when you do this.
Generative AI, like ChatGPT, can often be wrong. This is harmless in a blog post. But if you are writing copy that, for example, has to be compliant with regulators, you can have some big problems. There is also the potential impact of giving your customers incorrect information. If you work in a sensitive industry like finance or healthcare, this could lead to disastrous results.
Your Money Or Your Life…
Google often calls pages that offer the user sensitive information “your money or your life”(YMYL) pages. Google states that YMYL pages cover topics that “could significantly impact the health, financial stability, or safety of people, or the welfare or well-being of society”.
Businesses and CX teams should apply the same focus when it comes to AI content. On pages where the content is sensitive and could affect customer wellbeing, the CX team should not use generative AI.
But if you need to, for example, scale up a huge number of product pages then generative AI can save you a lot of time and money.
CX teams should lead the business when it comes to the ethical use of generative AI content. They can represent the customer where they think the risk to the user is too great. Where it is appropriate to use generative AI, CX teams can use it to create amazing content that benefits and supports the user. Where there is the potential for harm, CX teams can stand up for the user.
Put simply, if the potential customer cost is too high, do not use content from an AI.
Come back soon for part 2 where we will discover more ways generative AI can help customer experience optimization. We will look at predictive analytics, analyzing feedback and how AI can boost customer retention. We will also look at the use of AI in contextual advertising. And how CX teams can use contextual ads to create better, tailored, customer experiences.
Talk to MAQE
Do you need customer experience help? Do you want to use AI, ethically, to create better customer experiences? Talk to MAQE. We have years of experience in creating unique customer experiences. Get in touch via [email protected].