Big Data, Analytics, Chatbots & Customer Engagement: Personal Experience: United Airlines
Companies are spending big bucks on Big Data and Analytics. The end goal is better Customer Engagement. This technology spend is god for nothing is it doesn't lead to meaningful 'Human' touch.
This is critical for commoditized industries like Retail, Airline etc. With fierce fight for market share, customer loyalty is critical to business. Loyalty comes from engagement and touch.
Airlines spend billions in building Data Lakes and Data Models/Analytics to create meaning out of customer service unstructured texts, email complaints, feedback on websites etc,. They also spend big bucks on chat/email bots to automate responses to customers.
I recently experienced first hand how inadequate these analytical models and bots (AI) are. Here is what happened:
I am a loyal United (Continental) customer. Recently United got bad press (rightly so) when a passenger was dragged out of the plane and was injured in the process.
United was rightly criticized for this. I thought that this is an isolated incident and most other airlines would have done the same thing. After the incident, I got an email from United Customer Service. It talked about the incident and the steps United is taking etc. I sent a personal email to United CEO, expressing my loyalty and confidence in United taking the right steps. To my surprise, I got a reply (from one of the 'Bots') with "I am sorry to read about your concerns".
If all the investments in Data, Analytics, AI doesn't lead to meaningful, 'Human' touch; companies can forget about Customer Engagement and Customer Loyalty.
PM me if you want to see the email exchange.
Founder & CEO at AG Wealth Circle.
7 年Right. I have interacted with these BOTs, or whatever they are called, mostly from banks. These BOTs need to be far more intelligent than they currently are in order to impress their customers and leads. Right now they are so lacking in their intelligence that it often gets annoying interacting with them. They have just been rolled out all over the place with some basic logic programmed and a simple FAQ as their database in the background - that's all that's behind the scene very likely as of now. You as customer are not only supposed to spend money on their creation & upkeep (in any business it's only the customer who pays, rest all earn) but are also expected to deal with them. When you are facing an issue or have a query and need help beyond a simple FAQ your conversation goes out of control very very quickly. To solve an issue you actually need an intelligent and patient mind on the other side (human or robot, it needs to be sufficiently intelligent first) to listen to you. When you are already quite irritated because of the issue you are facing you don't want to talk to a dumb BOT actually. Problem is not the "BOT" on the other side, problem is it's "dumbness". They need to be made intelligent in real sense.
Delivery Partner, Banking and Financial Services at Cognizant
7 年True and rightly said. I guess, there is a rush to grab eyeballs and hence these bots are out there in the marketplace, needless to state, without being tested adequately.. causing much embarrassment.
CISA, CRISC, CDPSE,CRMA, CPISI, LA 27001, ISSRW, AIMS Practitioner
7 年Correct. I am an investor and a customer of a mutual fund. On my birthday I got a nicely written birthday wishes mail . By reflex I replied a thanks. Within a minute or two I got an mail "registering" my complaint and giving me a number to quote in future correspondence. It also says they take normally 3 business days excluding date of receipt of mail. See the 'smartness".
Solution Architect at Rabobank
7 年Good read and nice message. The bot in question was not intelligent enough to analyse your mesaage wgich leads to another area ..deep learning ??