Use AI to identify your best customers in the future

Using AI to boost sales is not a new idea. In fact, the Harvard Business Review in 2017 told a comprehensive story about one sales office of engine manufacturer Harley Davidson that was able to increase sales from two engines per week to 15 per weekend using AI-engined marketing support. If predictive analyzes increased sales leads by 3,000 percent in 2017, what does it do for companies now?

AI and predictive analysis still have an impact on companies when it comes to identifying customer trends, building customer profiles and building a tighter potential target audience. But it also does much more, both in terms of how it can collect data and how it can use it to provide customers with the personalization they want and need. Below are some of the newest ways in which AI contributes to the identification and support of your best customers in the future.

AI and your customers: Smarter Chatbots

One of the first rules of the AI defense regarding reaching your customers is the increasingly popular chatbot. Unfortunately, in their initial stages, chatbots have proven to be a bit frustrating for many customers, equipped with too few sentences and not enough useful information. Although they may have saved companies time, in some cases the chatbots have simply made customers more helpless than before.

A recent report from Forrester showed that personalized customer service primarily delivers measurable results in terms of lower costs, more productive human agents and improved customer experience results (ie more satisfied, committed and loyal customers.) The survey also found that a good customer experience has a proven impact on the turnover in all sectors.

It is therefore logical that companies start investing in smarter conversation AI, for example AI that draws the history and experience in “conversation “, while also using emotional recognition tools to better understand the context of a customer question. Even better, because they are able to conduct deeper, more complex conversations, they are able to collect much more data about the customer and answer their problems much faster.

AI and your customers: Know when people are needed

Another way that AI can help you identify and retain the best customers is by telling you when it's time to hand over chatbot interactions to a real person. In 2019, our company, Futurum Research, conducted a study under the name Experience 2030 in collaboration with SAS Software and one of the areas it focused on was customer loyalty and its impact in the coming decade. The study found that when done right, the customer experience delivered by people working with machines (AI) can stimulate loyalty, help the company better understand customer needs and the opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling can improve. When using AI data, including contextual and emotional recognition data, chatbots are better able to notice when a human intervention may be needed. In short, great products and service from people AND machines will still be enormously important. Being able to connect technology and people to deliver a best in class personalized experience is what ensures that customers keep coming back.

AI and your customers: On the edge

Another change for AI that is advancing is that it requires greater edge performance to ensure that interactions with customers proceed as quickly as possible and that data is processed in real time (or as close to the edge as possible). AI can only function as its weakest technological link. However, making this type of investment can help you meet customers where they are – whether it's on the website, in a chat room, or in their car driving past your brick and mortar location.

AI and your customers: A personalized shopping experience

Because AI and machine learning and changing the amount of data that companies can collect – and how they use it – companies are better able to create a customer-focused, personalized shopping experience. This means removing all “friction points ” that a customer may have caused to leave or drop the car before making their purchase. For example, a long line, a frustrating employee, a product that is not in stock – all these things can be eliminated with AI guiding a customer through the store, AI guiding the inventory and replenishment of articles, and AI controlling the number of open jobs manages to ensure that there are fewer lines during peak shopping periods. (Or, if you use technology such as Qless, AI can enable customers to completely avoid lines).

Yes, there are many great things that AI can do, and we will continue to see improvements as technology companies continue to improve AI's ability to understand human communication and predict their wishes and needs. Algorithms will continue to improve. The transparency (and human understanding) of algorithms will continue to grow. Chatbots for emotions