IDEAS TO SHAPE THE FUTURE

Artificial intelligence is all the rage. How could it not be, when it seems to be the solution to all our problems?

When we think of AI, we commonly associate it with ChatGPT: a text interface with Google-like responses that are a bit smarter and more interesting, and almost as if they had been written by humans. However, AI is a technology that has been around for a long time and in various areas of our lives, such as voice recognition on our devices and predicting fraudulent transactions in our payment systems.

There is one area that has, so far, been largely overlooked and that is Customer Experience, often used in the context of sales, onboarding, after-sales, and customer service, flows more effectively, by enhancing customer relations and communication. These days, in a world where immediacy has taken center stage, companies have introduced automation tools in practically all their communication processes with customers. This is a valid approach, of course, but it has generated a vicious cycle of communication that lacks empathy, has a negative impact on customer relationships and damages their overall experience.

For example, faceless chatbots do not understand people’s natural language, at least not yet, and sometimes they simply respond in the best way they can, which is usually not the best. We are bombarded with contact forms that no one has time to fill out and pushed to contact call centers that do not solve problems, and instead make you wish you had never picked up the phone in the first place.

This contrasts greatly with the way people interact online, with influencers who understand that trust is essential to sales, and entails guiding their followers rather than aggressively pushing a product or service. The human factor is still essential when it comes to connecting with, yes, other humans. The success of influencers and streamers on virtually all social platforms bears this out.

AI’s ability to generate highly effective, fully automated content means that it will play an increasingly important role in the future of sales and customer experience. The only way for this to be a success is for communications to become more human-like, throughout each and every stage of the flow (prospecting, sales, post-sales, upselling.) And there is no doubt that companies will need to understand this; to treat their customers as unique individuals, making them feel like each message they receive is intended solely for them – even though the entire process was automatically generated. The bonus being that the effectiveness of this content will be analyzed and continually adapted for improved conversion rates and loyalty over time.

The reality is that, thanks to AI, the way companies communicate with customers has already changed and will continue to do so in the coming years. This is good news! More and more companies will use artificial intelligence to build new ways of business-customer communications and sales.

Those who do, will eventually take the lead.

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