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Being There for Your Customers 24/7 – How Can Conversational AI Maximize Customer Engagement?

By September 2, 2022March 12th, 2024Artificial Intelligence, Conversational AI, Technology5 mins read
Customer engagement & Conversational AI

Introduction

Conversational AI enables machines to understand human text and speech with context and intent for the statement and responds in a way humans will. It enables personalized experiences for the customers depending on the situation, product, or brand. It can engage in dialogues with customers advancing conversational marketing.

As a result of hyper-digitalization, instant responses and personalized experiences have become arduous. Brand hustle to succeed and stay ahead, trying to bring better value to customers at this instant, with maximum personalization. In this article, we will talk about how can conversational AI maximize customer engagement, why conversational AI is the best tool to use, why it has continued to gain popularity in the market, and how it can benefit your company, pushing it to the next level.

What is Customer Engagement?

Customer engagement is the degree of communication brands or service providers have with customers throughout the period they are with the brand by using its services or product. Constant interaction with customers is very important, and it helps strengthen the bond between the customer and the brand, so it goes beyond a transactional relationship and helps build loyalty. According to a survey done by salesforce that 80% of customers believe that their experiences with a company are just as important as the services and products they get from the company. Customer engagement has become an important part of any business over the years and now holds a central role in determining the relationship a company has with its user and how long the user will stay with that company. Customer engagement offers numerous benefits to companies which include

  • Improving the relationships brands have with customers
  • Increasing customer retention and loyalty
  • Increasing the bottom line of the company
  • Getting more customers etc.

How does being available round the clock add up to customer engagement?

The end goal of the products or services rendered by companies is customer satisfaction, where ccustomer engagement comes in and plays a huge role. According to HubSpot, an immediate response is favored and looked for by 80% of customers, and it is very important to get fast responses from companies. Customers can have requests or needs about the company’s services and products at any point in time, and to improve customer satisfaction responding as quickly as possible is very important, which is where being available round the clock comes in for customer engagement. Round-the-clock responses and customer engagement give the following benefits.

1.      Better branding opportunities

Being available around the clock makes it possible to respond to customers on time which lets them know how important they are to the business, which will then impress the customers leading them to recommend the brand through words of mouth to people around them, letting them know how well the company treats its customers.

2.      Shows good customer service

Fast responses to customers give the impression that the business is ready to do whatever it takes to put the customers first and provides good quality service. It also gives the customers peace of mind letting them know to expect similar service quality throughout the period they are with the company.

3.      Improves customers loyalty

It has been shown through different studies that fast round the clock responses can greatly affect customers’ loyalty to a brand. Customers feel like a part of the company when responded to on time as it shows the company cares about them and is interested in whatever they have to say or willing to fix any issues they might have throughout their course of using the service or product.

Why Conversational AI?

Many businesses now rely on conversational AI for customer engagement, sales, and marketing to be there for the customer throughout their time with the company, ensuring they have the best user experience possible by surpassing the limitations of humans. Conversation AI is adaptive based on the situation and doesn’t rely on scripts written to follow. They read the situation and offer highly personalized customer management at a large scale, making each person feel important, listened to, and heard while providing a solution or guidance as fast and accurately as possible.

Conversational AI also helps the company in many other ways asides from personalized customer management. It helps the company to analyze all the data it has gotten while conversing with customers and identify recurring problems to stop them from happening again so that fewer customers reach out about the same problems.

Conversational AI vs. Chatbots

There are a couple of differences between conversational AI and chatbots regarding their capabilities in performing the role of customer engagement properly, with conversational AI usually being the preferred and more effective choice after weighing all their strengths and weaknesses. Below you will find a table that shows a comparison between conversational AI and chatbots.

Conversational AI Chatbots
Doesn’t need scripting and can perform fluid conversations with customers Needs scripting and can’t perform any conversation outside its script
It powers, takes care of itself, and can be a source of power for chatbots Chatbots sometimes rely on conversational AI but can’t act as a source for Conversational AI
Ability to understand multiple languages Limited in the number of languages it can understand and reply with
Very high level of personalization when communicating with customers No personalization is available as it is the same system over and over
Good Security management Lacks security management
Conversational chatbots are capable of machine learning and evolving Chatbots aren’t capable of machine learning, and cant evolve

How Can Conversational AI Maximize Customer Engagement?

Conversational AI uses all the tools and means available to engage your customers as expected, either when they call, through text messages, email, social media platforms, etc. Conversational AI ensures that the customers don’t forget about the company and its products or services, so it is always in their minds. Some of the ways conversational AI engages customers are:

Customer Engagement with Conversational AI

Conclusion

Conversation AI has taken the front row in most companies’ customer management because it can be effective and reliable without any shortcomings humans or chatbots might have. This system of customer engagement is here to stay and is the future of the customer service industry as it performs a lot of the functions needed while keeping the customers happy and keeping costs down while also helping the company improve its practices.

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