Reimagining CX Nightmares with Customer Service AI

In 2024 customer experience (CX) is worsening. 39%¹ of brands have declined in CX quality. And only 3%² of companies are considered to be customer obsessed. In short, “US consumers are having, on average, the worst experiences in a decade³,” per Rick Parrish, VP and research director at Forrester.

Offering the best service possible is the most important driver for the contact center industry. Customer obsessed organizations report:

• 41%⁴ faster revenue growth
• 49%⁵ faster profit growth
• 51%⁶ better customer retention

Luckily, using the right technology can rapidly improve CX and resolve the worst customer service experiences that drive consumers away.

In this blog we will review some of the worst CX stories and how using customer service AI technology like AI agents and CX workflow automation can transform contact centers and digital customer engagement today.

Long wait times

Waiting on the phone or any other channel for too long is one of the biggest causes of customer dissatisfaction and attrition. 60% of consumers will wait no longer than two minutes² while the same percentage would choose another company after one negative experience. 

Contact centers are currently turning to innovative ways to reduce wait times on their channels and have found exactly what they need in communications automation with customer service AI solutions. What does it look like?

Using communications automation with customer service AI, organizations can use chatbots and AI agents to handle routine and frequently asked queries, providing instant responses to customers. This resolves simple issues quickly and efficiently without human intervention since automated systems can use customer data to significantly reduce time to resolution. 

Frequent transfers

Customers get frustrated when they’re constantly redirected to areas within the contact center. On top of all the time wasted, they frequently end up speaking to the wrong department and have to restate their need multiple times to different agents and departments.

Today, contact centers are driven to reduce transfer rates and offer customers quick query resolution. They can rely on communications automation with customer service AI to achieve this feat. What does it look like?

Using communications automation with customer service AI, contact centers can analyze incoming customer queries to understand their intent before directing them to self-service. If they need to speak to an agent, the technology can intelligently route the customer to the right resource quickly, stopping customers from ricocheting to different departments and decreasing resolution time.

Disconnected multichannel support

Another cause of significant customer frustration is having to switch channels for query resolution and starting the complete process again, every time. Inconsistencies in brand and service quality across different communication channels —phone, email, chat— lead to a disjointed CX that affects loyalty. 

After deploying communications automation with customer service AI, what does it look like?

Communications automation platforms with customer service ai solutions host all channels in a single platform. They then aggregate and analyze data from the channels to create unified customer profiles. This ensures that, regardless of the channel a customer uses, the system has a comprehensive view of their history, preferences, and previous interactions. This helps in providing a consistent and personalized experience on all channels.

Inadequate self-service options

No customer wants to feel like they are interacting with a machine that doesn’t understand them. Over 60%³ of customers prefer self-service; contact centers lacking user-friendly channels force consumers to rely solely on live agents for assistance, creating a bad CX.

This is driving contact centers to bolster their self-service offering, and turn it into a synchronized bundle of smart, automated channels that can offer fast call resolution and a more humanized interaction. The result? Customers feel understood, which will increase their satisfaction with the service. What does it look like?

Today, communications automation with customer service AI solutions offer self-service options that tailor to consumers’ needs. The system can identify intent, sentiment, and language nuances and respond accordingly for successful query resolution. Customer service AI can adapt to the interaction in real time offering a truly human-like experience.

^1-6 Forrester Releases 2024 US Customer Experience Index