Improve CSAT with Generative AI and Elevate CX

This post first appeared on Sprinklr‘s blog in June, 2024.

In a world where the cost of operating a business has skyrocketed, CEOs are all trying to make their dollars go further right now. One tool that has emerged as a game changer that can significantly enhance an organization’s efficiency and productivity is Generative AI (Gen AI).

Some of the more fascinating applications of Gen AI I’ve seen lately include:

• a model that determines whether a firm should respond to tenders and then writes the tender response,
• a furniture store that uses Gen AI to turn low-fi product photos into high quality images (including backgrounds and even shadows) to be put in a digital showroom, and
• a multinational firm that uses a tool to translate sales and training videos into multiple languages for customers and staff in the many different markets in which they operate.

But Customer Experience and Customer Service departments are also benefitting from Gen AI. It is enabling them to improve the experience they’re providing to customers while giving these departments capabilities they could only have dreamed of in the past at a fraction of the price.

Here are four ways Gen AI is being used to revolutionise the way organizations are interacting with their customers.

Personalisation Precision

By integrating Gen AI with your customer data platform (CDP) or customer relationship management (CRM) system, AI algorithms can analyse customer data, allowing organisations to create hyper-personalised experiences. Some applications include:

1. Personalised Responses: Customise responses based on customer data (e.g., name, past interactions) to provide a more personalized experience.
2. Tailored Recommendations: Recommend products or services based on the customer’s preferences and past behaviour.
3. Follow-Up Communication: Send personalised follow-up communications after customer interactions or purchases.
4. Re-engagement Campaigns: Craft personalised messages aimed at re-engaging inactive customers or promoting special offers.
5. Customised Offers: Generate personalised offers or promotions tailored to individual customer preferences.
6. Order Tracking: Assist customers with order tracking and delivery status updates.
7. Interactive Quizzes or Surveys: Create interactive quizzes or surveys to gather customer preferences and feedback.
8. Personalised Content Creation: Generate personalised content (e.g., newsletters, articles) based on customer interests.

Of course, when working with customer data to personalise CX, you need to ensure that it is handled securely and in compliance with privacy regulations.

Continuous Improvement through Feedback Analysis

One of the most challenging things about analysing feedback is extracting meaningful insights from large volumes of qualitative data. Now, customer insight managers can use Gen AI to do this difficult task for them. Different Gen AI models have different capacities for the amount of data you can analyse; ChatGPT 4.0 for example is very limited – it can only cope with ~1,300 words. For large quantities of feedback data, you might want to consider Google Gemini which has a capacity for ~166,000 words.

Once you’ve uploaded the feedback data, use a command like: “Analyse the uploaded customer feedback data and provide 5 key themes from the feedback including verbatims from the feedback to support the themes. Also provide 5 recommendations for how to improve the experience of respondents”.   The output will identify areas for improvement and potentially what the organisation is doing well. It will also provide suggestions for how to improve customer experience that are based entirely on what customers have told you. As a CX Manager, if you really want to leverage the capabilities of Gen AI, you can then use it to write close-the-loop communications to respondents and even a summary email to your CEO.

24/7 Availability

One of the most well-known applications of Gen AI is chatbots that give customers round-the-clock support, addressing routine queries on websites and providing assistance even during non-business hours.   This accessibility has the potential to enhance customer satisfaction by eliminating the frustration of waiting for human assistance. However, it also has the potential to detract from customer satisfaction if the chatbots have not been implemented well.   In a 2023 survey of 1,554 consumers worldwide about their recent chatbot experiences, respondents gave their chatbot experiences an average rating of 6.4/10 or 64%. 50% of respondents said they often felt frustrated by their interactions with chatbots and nearly 40% of these interactions were said to be negative. So always give people the option to talk to a human.

Contact Centre Applications

There are a multitude of applications for Gen AI in contact centres that will make agents’ and supervisors’ lives easier and more productive. Here are a few:

1. Automating Note Taking – Gen AI jots down critical information as a customer talks, allowing agents to stay focused on what the customer is saying, and not try to remember what they said previously.
2. Simplifying Call Transfers – When a customer wants to escalate their enquiry, they will often need to repeat their problem and the information they shared with the first agent – a common source of frustration. Gen AI can summarise the conversation to that point and send it to the second support agent or supervisor. As a result, they can continue the conversation from where it broke down, saving time and saving the customer from repeating themselves.
3. Generating Knowledge Base Articles – Gen AI can be used to understand customer intent, assess how successfully agents have handled such queries, and then use that information to develop a new knowledge base article.
4. Automating Post-Call Processing – After any interaction in a contact centre, the agent must complete post-call processing which typically involves uploading a summary of the interaction and disposition code to the CRM system. Gen AI solutions can now automate this process saving the service operation significant resources.

Recovering Interactions

Gen AI can be used to detect customer sentiment in real time during an interaction and when it detects a significant drop, can alert a supervisor enabling them to swoop in and save the day. Gen AI can also be used to identify training opportunities (such as when an agent demonstrates a specific behaviour) and to take note of customer complaints.

As you can see, Generative AI has a significant potential to improve customer satisfaction and positively impact an organisation’s efficiency and productivity. But, as with any technology, it’s critical that your strategy dictates the technology applications you use, not vice versa. When considering implementing Generative AI, start by looking at your business objectives and then determine how AI can help you achieve them. The tail (technology) should never be wagging the dog (business strategy).