How full-stack conversational AI for customer service is elevating the CX game

Customer experience (CX) is one of the most contested spaces across any industry today. According to statistics, over 70% of consumers demand immediate service and expect companies to successfully meet their needs through ultimate personalization. 68% of consumers believe chatbots should have the same level of expertise and quality as highly skilled human agents. In this outlook, using Conversational Artificial Intelligence (Conversational AI) for customer service allows contact centers to overcome issues with scalability, costs, service consistency, and the ability to meet evolving customer expectations.

How is full-stack conversational AI for customer service changing the way organizations interact with customers to boost customer satisfaction (CSAT) and usher in a new era of proactive customer care, hyperconnectivity, and personalization?

Tackling critical pain points

Today, customer needs are in constant evolution due to the wide array of product and service options available in a globalized market. The influence of social media and the increased access to information also play a critical role, driving consumers to constantly demand service speed, reliability, effectiveness, and personalization. Contact centers that rely on manual processes cannot deal with the challenging market conditions and increased consumer demands.

One of the biggest pain points for contact centers trapped in traditional service models is the inability to scale operations. With the availability of various devices —smartphones, computers, or tablets— customers want flexibility when interacting with any business and expect consistent experiences across any channel. This puts pressure on companies to scale their operations and be able to deal with increased interactions via email, social media platforms, or messaging apps at the same time.

Ultimately, relying on manual operations has a direct impact on costs. Not only do agents require costly recruitment, onboarding, and training processes, but their inability to simultaneously deal with a high number of queries increases the cost per interaction. Manual processes also increase the likelihood of costly errors, which can prompt customers to look elsewhere.

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on CX

Full-stack conversational AI platforms are soundly improving customer experience by transforming how contact centers interact with customers. By providing a consistent omnichannel experience, systems can offer timely, accurate, and consistent information across email, messaging apps, telephone, or SMS text. This allows contact centers to scale operations and tackle a significant number of queries simultaneously by unifying data and integrating it with critical customer management systems and other business applications.

The sheer scalability and consistent communication also increase the quality of the contact center’s service delivery. Customers do not need to wait for the next available human agent since the virtual AI agent is able to provide accurate answers and deal with highly specialized queries 24/7 by quickly accessing and processing critical data. This reduces wait times and query resolution times, which increases CSAT scores.

Further, full-stack conversational AI platforms help companies save a tremendous deal in labor costs. While these systems have a high ROI, they can also reduce payroll costs over time by automating repetitive processes otherwise conducted by a human agent. According to statistics, contact centers can save up to $2.5 million in labor costs every year by deploying automated systems.

However, one of full-stack conversational AI’s greatest impacts is the personalization of customer service. This technology can pull customer data, understanding the context and tone of the interaction, and tailoring every response. Faster and more sympathetic than a human agent, these solutions make customers feel valued, increasing their satisfaction.

The power of virtual agents

Not all full-stack platforms leverage conversational AI to automate channels and enable virtual agents for customer interactions. Faster, more effective, and powered by omnichannel systems, data analytics, and Natural Language Processing (NLP), virtual agents can consistently deliver timely and accurate information around the clock, offering customers humanized interactions so they do not feel that they are interacting with a machine.

Virtual agents can understand and translate among a myriad of languages, retrieve and process customer data in real time, and make product or service suggestions for a superior experience. Large Language Models (LLM) train them to generate new content, including high-quality text, images, and sound, enhancing customer communication.

One critical aspect of virtual agents is their capacity to automate tasks related to a specific customer interaction. By integrating with CRM and other systems, they can orchestrate workflows to update customer data automatically, schedule follow-ups, and escalate issues to the appropriate department. Virtual agents also utilize conversational AI to continuously learn from interactions and adapt to changing customer needs and priorities.

Virtual agents also play a critical role in the scalability of contact center operations. Unlike human agents, who can only manage one customer at a time on one channel, their virtual counterparts can easily and consistently deal with an unlimited number of interactions at the same time via SMS, messaging apps, or social media platforms. This allows contact centers to increase their operational capacity 24/7 and scale down accordingly in less busy hours, reducing contact centers’ staffing costs.

According to statistics, almost 60% of business owners believe that virtual agents can help improve their customers’ experience. Conversational AI-powered virtual agents have emerged as a crucial differentiator for contact centers looking to modernize their operations and remain at the forefront of adapting to the new reality of a superior customer experience, characterized by immediacy, effectiveness, and personalization.

Many organizations are changing their CX by filling the gaps in with conversational AI for customer service. You can learn how they’re doing it in this on-demand Expert Interview on “AI’s impact on customer experience.” Watch the session now.