AI - It's impact on virtual agents and customer experience

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In the high-stakes world of complex trading, operational risks abound. From resource-draining repetitive tasks to the ever-present specter of human error, navigating these challenges demands innovation. Enter Sympricot : HSBC Bank's groundbreaking solution designed to revolutionize client interactions by harnessing artificial intelligence.?

This AI-driven chatbot not only simplifies the gathering of critical market data but also enhances the delivery of pricing and analytics for foreign exchange options, setting a new standard in efficiency and client satisfaction. It uses a natural language processing framework to gather market information, even those tricky to obtain metrics, and dispense them back to you as a client looking for pricing and analytics for foreign exchange options.

This was met with success — 82% of HSBC’s clients state that their experience is excellent. The bank gives credit where it is due: to their AI assisted chatbot.

AI chatbots can be trained on your existing customer interactions and taught to provide you with answers, service, and solutions quickly. These virtual assistants are already integrated into many online platforms, and to great results — according to Intercom, 67% of support leaders like you are already seeing the value in chatbots, automatic routing, and other services obtained through AI consulting services.

How AI is Transforming the Customer Experience

24/7 Availability and Efficiency

Salesforce revealed in a study that a whopping 77% of customers anticipate an immediate response when contacting a brand online. In today's fast-paced world, waiting until morning to answer a 10 pm message can mean a missed opportunity. Exploring solutions like extended live chat or chatbot technology to ensure potential buyers receive prompt attention. The end result is a user-friendly, seamless experience, keeping customers engaged with your brand.

Employees could answer questions at all hours of the day, but that may not be possible due to scheduling restrictions. Busy shopping seasons or traffic-driving events will inevitably lead to an influx of customers being kept waiting for their answers. That wait time may mean dropped interest — or worse, abandoned carts.?

AI assistants don’t need to log off, go home, or take breaks. When a night owl wants to know where to mail a return, book an appointment, or open a savings account, a virtual assistant is ready with solutions. Timeliness is one of the most critical aspects of customer service success, and AI assistants and virtual agents deliver just that.?

In a report from HubSpot , 36% of existing customer service reps surveyed believed that 24/7 availability is the most substantial benefit of using AI chatbots and virtual assistants.

Source - Hubspot

Beyond the FAQ

It’s not just questions being answered, either. AI chatbots and customer service portals can create a high-value, self-service experience that schedules appointments, tracks orders, and shares knowledge articles that might resolve an issue. It can even offer personalized product recommendations or add-ons for retail environments.?

Your customers will benefit from having everything they need, whenever and wherever they need it. An AI consulting service can help a business ascertain what functionalities their virtual assistants should be equipped with before they’re set up.?

Personalized Interactions

Large Language Models, or LLMs, are used to train these chatbots on everything from simple greetings to intricate conversations. AI consulting services that provide these chatbots will usually prepackage their virtual assistants with defined objectives and scope that can be adjusted for the individual user. From this language learning, AI chatbots are experts in personalized customer experiences.?

While your customers may be asking the same questions that hundreds before them have, they are still human beings, and benefit from personalized, individualized interactions. Chatbots can recognize a customer, either by using logged-in account info or even tracking cookies. From there, they’ll be able to address them by name, understand their shopping habits, and even look into their previous chat histories to make sure they’re aligning with prior interactions.?

They’ll also have a 360-degree view of shopper preferences as a whole. An AI assistant can make that recommendation when it sees a customer buying a specific item, and many others have selected an accompanying item with it that this person doesn’t have in their cart.?

In sectors like healthcare, this might look like getting an additional exam while they’re setting up a checkup based on the individual’s age and health records. For banking, services or add-ons like overdraft protection or card customization might lead to a more satisfied account holder.?

Improved Self-Service Options

A 2024 study by Capital One Shopping provided a new statistic: 73% of consumers prefer the self-checkout at the grocery store. While that’s just a grocery metric, it does highlight a trend — people want to get what they need on their own, without outside interaction. They crave self-service options. A 2017 survey backs that up, with 73% of customers stating that they want to be able to solve their problems themselves.?

Simplifying the online shopping, healthcare management, or banking processes with a one-stop shop is a recipe for an even more satisfying customer experience. Tackling those routine, frequently answered questions and service requests by way of AI chatbots and virtual assistants means everyone can get what they want, when they require it, completely independently.?

From the outside, a virtual agent might look like a simple AI conversation tool. In reality, it’s a fully optimized self-service center that empowers the user to find answers, book appointments, make necessary changes and updates, and meet their needs independently.?

Faster Resolution and Reduced Costs?

Since 80% of businesses are estimated to have set themselves up with an AI assistant or chatbot, there’s clearly something to be said about its efficacy, and how it can help out a brand’s bottom line.?

For one, the 24/7 availability of a virtual assistant means there’s no need to hire extra hands for night shifts or to begin employing overseas staff to cover international time zones. As well, that full availability and ability to answer instantaneously means that a user leaves more satisfied, and more likely to return. Brands like GEICO are using their virtual assistants to stay on the pulse of resolving frequent customer pain points faster than ever before.

Source - GEICO

Also, a virtual assistant’s educated and targeted product recommendations can lead to skyrocketing sales, and the positive customer experience may turn a first-time shopper into a repeat customer.?

An example of those recommendations comes from Shopify. The shopping platform integrated an AI shopping assistant . Using generative AI, it assessed a shopper’s needs and built out customer recommendations. It needed to hit the ground running, as it was deployed on Black Friday. The results were favorable, boasting an 84% engaged session rate and average order values of ~$300.?

Shopify isn’t alone in its introduction of an AI-based virtual assistant. While BigCommerce and Adobe Commerce don't offer native AI shopping assistants like Shopify, they provide options for similar functionality through app integrations and, in the case of Adobe Commerce, custom development.

Data Collection and Customer Insights?

Collecting customer data from their one-on-one interactions with the public is one aspect where virtual assistants shine. With seamless data collection, brands are made aware of typical (and atypical) customer behavior, their shopping and buying preferences, commonly paired products that can be used in sales recommendations, and even common pain points they didn’t realize existed before.?

Banks are the biggest use cases for these insights, with the financial vertical leaning more and more toward self-service solutions and data collection.?

If chatbot conversations reveal that customers aren’t able to find critical details, like order or insurance carrier information, UI/UX improvements may, in turn, be made to the site that brings this information to the forefront.?

Customer trends can show what products or services are working, and which aren’t. This can have a ripple effect of improvements and changes that will create a better experience for everyone — both internally and externally.?

The Human Touch and Seamless Handover

From self-service to customer data collection, there are a myriad of ways that virtual agents, and other tools that AI consulting services might recommend, can make customer’s lives easier.?

However, they cannot, and should not, entirely replace the human element. AI is great for those questions like ‘Will your clinic accept my insurance?’ or ‘Was my order confirmed, and when is it going to ship?’ But customer service pros will confirm that not every question is so cut-and-dry.?

Some issues require the empathy, critical thinking, and out-of-the-box problem-solving that comes with speaking to another human being. It is still necessary to keep human reps on the payroll, but that doesn’t mean they should work in competition with their virtual counterparts.?

On the contrary, an AI chatbot might be able to make the existing workforce’s jobs easier. These virtual agents can seamlessly hand off a curious customer to a live agent. When it does so, it will also start the conversation with context, offering the context and chat history needed for them to jump right into helping the person on the other end without making them repeat themselves.?

Top 5 Customer Service Chatbot platforms

There’s no solution for your business that will work just as well for another. That’s why, if you decide to go the route of an AI-powered virtual assistant, you should look into the current leaders in this vertical and weigh out their pros and cons. This way, you can find the AI customer service module that will best suit your brand.?

1. Microsoft Bot Framework

Utilizing an open source SDK alongside a host of tools to build and test AI bots that will interact with users naturally, Microsoft’s Bot Framework delivers enterprise-grade solutions. Their AI experiences are built to integrate seamlessly into your brand’s existing IT framework.?

Using Microsoft’s Azure Cognitive Services, you can construct a virtual AI assistant that speaks, listens, understands, and even learns as it is used. The open-source visual authoring canvas can make a simple Q&A platform or a sophisticated, detailed virtual assistant.?

2. Amazon Lex

Amazon’s fully managed AI service, Amazon Lex, allows users to create seamless voice and text interfaces for rapid market entry. Customer service is among its use cases, as well as enterprise productivity, sales and marketing, and intelligent routing.?

Brands looking for budget-friendly conversation options will appreciate Amazon Lex’s flexible interface. You’ll be able to fine tune and define your chat experience, ending with a bot that perfectly aligns with your brand’s voice, goals, and customer base.?

3. Dialogflow

For those who want to build their conversational agents from the ground up with Google-backed artificial intelligence, there’s Dialogflow . Dialogflow’s two available platforms (ES for standard capabilities, CX for advanced), are able to create intuitive customer service and sales interactions.?

It’s an option for businesses that have an on-hand developer team that can dig in and create an entirely customized virtual agent.?

4. IBM Watsonx Assistant

“Consistent and intelligent customer care” is how IBM Watsonx lauds its conversational AI solution. Another ‘DIY’ solution to building an AI chatbot from scratch, the user-friendly interface is ready with LLMs and Natural Language Processing and Understanding.??

Watsonx builds its answers from your company’s own knowledge base, and can be used for customer service, human resources, and even marketing efforts.?

5. Rasa

Like Amazon Lex, Rasa offers the enterprise-level tools you need to create chat and voice based AI assistants. Its low-code interface makes it accessible for various skill levels, though Rasa Pro goes more in depth for the coding-inclined.?

The platform features additional bells and whistles that will allow for ample security, analytics, and even overarching observation.??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Virtual Assistants Pave The Way to Customer Satisfaction

A customer once needed to wait hours to learn the fate of his order and its tracking. Now, an AI chatbot can step in at any hour of the day to provide an answer, a solution, and even a possible additional sale. A patient’s confusion about her insurance plan can be cleared up instantly — and while she’s there, the self-service portal can help her take care of the rest of her medical needs in one sitting.?

Self-service is king with customers right now, and brands are looking to collect the data they need to help improve user experience and, importantly, reduce costs where possible. While human empathy cannot be entirely replicated, AI chatbots, virtual assistants, and other AI consulting services tools can have a massive positive impact on how a brand conducts business. Visit Ziffity’s AI services page to see how your brand might benefit from virtual agents or other artificial intelligence add-ons.?

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