Adopting artificial Intelligence (AI) to maximise the customer experience (CX) is gaining momentum all around the world, but nowhere is this trend more prevalent than in the Asia Pacific region. AI chatbots are usually adopted by big businesses to increase customer experience efficiency, but more and more companies that have integrated blended chatbots have discovered that they also engender a wealth of other benefits. Most surprisingly: a marked increase in measurable customer intimacy.

In a groundbreaking joint Genesys and MIT Tech Review survey entitled “Humans + Bots: Tension and Opportunity,” a strong correlation was discovered between earlier AI Customer Experience commitments with increased sustained industry leading levels of brand awareness, retention and loyalty. In other words: adopting blended AI customer service technology has consistently helped companies level up on a global scale and meet their customers increased demands and expectations.

How does AI improve Customer Experience efficiency?

On a practical level, AI for CX is much more accessible than most companies realise. Most blended AI chatbots are coded with speech pattern technology that recognizes the most common questions your customers may be asking, such as “Is your software compatible with a Mac?” or “Where is my order?” The AI chatbot will access to the customer’s file and can then provide them with a quick answer: “Your order #4368 is en-route and should arrive on Tuesday.”

These kinds of simple, easily resolved queries traditionally made up the bulk of customer service inquiries and tie up most of your valuable, human agents’ time.  More importantly, they can cause a backlog in response times, decreasing customer satisfaction for every minute they wait. When you implement AI management, these simple answers are resolved in seconds. The more complicated queries are routed through to a real life human service provider, who can then respond faster and is more available to help find a resolution.

So to answer the most common question asked: No, the chatbot is not here to replace human customer service agents. It’s primarily designed to shorten service response times, increase your CX department’s efficiency and free up your valued human employees to better attend to resolving more complicated customer concerns. Zhu Wenli, the head of smart customer service at Taobao (a subsidiary of Alibaba), notes that more than 93% of their customer queries are now resolved through AI-enabled chatbot tools. She clarifies that this is “would have required 83,000 human agents working around the clock.”

In the 2017 MIT survey, 90% of respondents echoed her sentiments that using AI technology recorded rapid and measurable improvements in the speed of complaint resolution. A further 80% noted a sharp increase in call volume processing and over 50% claimed that AI technology successfully resolved over a quarter of their customer queries.

AI integration fosters global upscaling in the Asia Pacific region

Another myth that the MIT Report busted was that chatbots are only an effective solution for large, iconic firms.  The high correlation of chatbot integration with large firms was actually discovered to be causational: The earlier a company integrated AI into their CX strategy, the more likely they were to upscale to a global market and increase their ROI. Of the 599 MIT survey respondents, over 80% reported a rapid increase in revenue of over 5% and one third saw an increase of over 10%. Executives from the Japanese e-commerce firm, Rakuten, confirmed that after implementing AI chatbots, over 15,000 hours of previously unanswered inbound calls per calendar month were recorded after hours. Being capable of resolving customer issues on the spot translated to vastly increased sales and retention rates.

Customer Intimacy: Can chatbots replace the ‘human touch’?

Most companies that are still wary of AI integration state they are worried the chatbots will not be able to relay the style of the company’s brand or connect with their customers on a human level. Ironically, the most surprising benefits recorded by AI integration, particularly in Australia, New Zealand and China, were marked increases in customer satisfaction, brand intimacy and loyalty.  A PwC survey in 2017 found that integrated AI management actually increased customer intimacy and 67% of CX leaders attest it allowed them to rebalance workloads for more meaningful customer engagement.

Many CX executives, such as Cielo’s Director of Customer Experience in Brazil, Nicolas Wsevolojskoy, found that the additional benefit of AI data collection helped redefine their customer journey algorithms. The pinpoint data analytics gathered through AI integration enabled their human sales agents to guide customers more intuitively through the onboarding process and to determine optimal next steps in the customer engagement journey. These aspects of implementing AI CX strategies, in his opinion, were critical for establishing customer intimacy and even more valuable to his company than efficiency and ROI.

Zhu Wenli of Taobao also noted that contrary to popular opinion, AI technology helped foster emotional bonds with the customer and was “constructed in a way to allow our customers to connect with our culture.” Alongside the specific questions and answers particular to the company, the Taobao chatbots were also programmed with the light-hearted, Alibaba style of speech patterns.

In response to these surprising survey results, Genesys’ latest AI innovation, Kate, has advanced these particular aspects to combine adaptive learning, cognitive computing and automation technologies. This means that Kate is capable of delivering a more proactive, reliable, intuitive and predictive AI customer experience and foster more customer intimacy than any bot developed before.

Chatbots don’t fool anyone

The increase in customer satisfaction, it was noted, does not mean that the customers were fooled by the advanced AI speech patterns; quite the opposite. They’ve become very familiar with instant-satisfaction AI technology through the widespread use of smartphone and smarthouse technology, particularly in the APAC region. Customers in 2018 don’t mind chatting with AI as long as they get fast, accurate service and resolution. The report found that companies that can’t live up to the fast-paced customer expectations run a higher risk of losing customer trust and loyalty.

Customer expectations of instant satisfaction

In recent years the global market, and particularly Asia, has seen a chiasmic shift in customer sentiment. The convenience and reliability provided by AI chatbots has become expected, rather than preferred or even feared. Companies that are reticent to adopt AI technology are not meeting their customer’s 24/7, instant-satisfaction expectations and as AI technology advances and becomes popularly accepted, they are putting themselves at an increasing disadvantage.

Read the MIT Technology Review study “Humans + Bots: Tension and Opportunity”