Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots – key to a great personalised experience?

We all have an idea about what the term “Artificial Intelligence” sums up, and for many it’s likely to be something like the supercomputer HAL from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. Which admittedly didn’t end well.

Today we’re beginning to see AI become an everyday reality through domestic devices such as Alexa and the IoT-connected smart car. As its maturity increases exponentially, AI is set to become of particular interest to those within customer service and marketing, specifically those who want to understand (for example) how customer interaction and support can be streamlined and scaled across social media platforms.

What is AI?

The Wikipedia definition (why not) of AI is as good as any:

“The term is applied when a machine mimics cognitive functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as learning and problem-solving.”

A lot of the commentary around AI in recent years has been around automation and the probable impact on job losses. But the more enlightened view around AI is that it should help people focus on what matters, not replace them altogether. This consideration is articulated well in a report published earlier this year by Constellation Research, on Salesforce’s AI-driven Einstein platform which included the following:

“The idea is to uncover insights, predict outcomes, recommend next-best actions and automate routine, manual tasks that keep people from being more productive.”

Why is AI important to Sales, Marketing and Service teams?

The Constellation report notes that an area of specific interest to Einstein is the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) which gives machines the ability to read and understand human language. NLP applications include information retrieval, text mining and question answering.

NLP and data mining technologies are being used by AI-powered applications to help marketing and sales professionals spot and react to customer behaviours using data collected to predict ‘intention-to-buy’ signals on websites and marketing collateral. This is enabling sales teams to focus their efforts and time on the leads most likely to convert (as identified by predictive modeling AI tech).

As the Sales and Marketing teams are seeing the benefits of using AI to improve their numbers, so too can Service departments. The “connected consumer” today expects a far more personalised and relevant level of engagement with the brand, beyond just tailored email and website promotions.

Increasingly, consumers expect the service department to have the same access to their profile information and history at touch-point, be that over the phone or email. With many brands now also having to provide customer support via their social media channels, the demand for resources to support the diversity of channels is far greater than many organisations can expect to support.

 Messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger, KIK and SnapChat are being deployed by organisations to provide customer support services.

A recent Salesforce report The AI Revolution included the statistic that “only 12% of customer service teams rate their ability to gather insights across the entire customer lifecycle as either excellent or outstanding” which shows that there is a long way to go, but there is also a keen and hungry user-base.

For AI the momentum is real, and the tipping point is approaching. The Salesforce report, which surveyed sales, marketing and support professionals, identified the fact that 22% are currently evaluating and piloting AI-powered technologies within their organisations.

Rise of the Chatbots

One compelling example of AI in successful action is chatbots. This is basically a computer application that can ‘hold a conversation’ with a human – usually via text. They’re increasingly popular in sectors such as retail and consumer banking. From the customer point of view, they can message a brand and receive a response in real time.

Although chatbots inevitably operate via a vast interlinked series of rules, increasingly they leverage AI and machine learning, so they ‘learn’ from each conversation to provide more useful and relevant responses.

Facebook launched its chatbot capability into Messenger in 2016 to automate basic enquiries, handing simple responses to basic questions or providing enough information to make the transition to a human agent as personalised and ‘connected’ as possible. Many of these simple bots have been replaced by far more complex and powerful Apps that can handle more than just delivery and refund enquiries. Messaging apps building on the social media messenger platforms are now fully established services.

Retailers including H&M have been quick to explore the potential and are now offering recommendations and ‘personal shopper’ experiences, recommending purchases and styles based on the customer’s shopping and browsing history data, taken from the website. 

At the start of 2017 Salesforce launched the LiveMessage Chatbot which is taking AI-driven communication to a new level. Natalie Petouhoff of Constellation Research says “LiveMessage will resolve consumer frustration caused by corporate solutions that limit two-way communications through text, which they're accustomed to.” The potential is there for LiveMessage to give companies enough confidence in their chatbot service to make mobile messaging nothing less than a cornerstone of their customer service strategy.

From ‘2001’ to 2100 – a positive future for AI

AI within the organisation will soon become an established component of all business and service operations – whether that be empowering staff to make better decisions and build deeper customer relationships, or streamlining when human agents need to engage with the customer.

“58% of consumers and 75% of business buyers say technology has significantly changed their expectations of how companies should interact with them.” – The AI Revolution

It’s important to state that AI momentum isn’t driven by software companies - customers now expect this level of personalisation, and so any organisation that hasn’t already started to explore the potential of Chatbots can’t really claim to understand the need to be customer-centric, and risks falling behind over the coming years.

I’d love to hear your take on AI, whether hopefully optimistic or jadedly cynical. Drop me a line – I’d welcome the opportunity to explore the potential for AI and Chatbots to better engage your customers.