How Artificial Intelligence (AI) Helps Companies Build Stronger Customer Relationships

It’s often said companies should not aim at merely satisfying the customer but leave no stone unturned to delight him. Businesses across the world make all possible efforts to provide the best services to their customers, and thereby, build strong relationships with them.

Over the last few years, many companies have been using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to deliver first-rate customer experiences. A report by Salesforce shows 60% of companies have a fully defined AI strategy, and many of these organizations are using AI to personalize customer journeys and automate interactions with their clients.

Today, we’ll see how AI is empowering businesses to provide delightful customer experiences and build a strong base of loyal clientele.

Empowering Customers to Find What They Need Through Smart Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

It is no exaggeration to say the customer journey of the 21st century B2B buyer begins with an online search. A report by Google reveals search is the primary source of information for online B2B customers; the report states 71% of B2B customers start their research with a generic search. It also shows 90% of B2B buyers who are online search specifically to research business purchases.

Popular search engines such as Google, Bing and Baidu have been using AI for years to make search results more relevant to their users. In 2019, Google released a new AI-powered update to its search algorithm called Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) that helps deliver super-accurate results to search queries. For example, when I typed the query What percentage of B2B customers begin their journey with an online search, the search engine guided me to the report The Changing Face of B2B Marketing, which contained the information I was looking for.

The high levels of accuracy of search engines help users to find the information they need with minimal effort. They also help companies reach out to new clients very effectively by optimizing their content. Indeed, a win-win situation for both businesses and their customers.

Enabling Hassle-free Formulation of Highly Effective Content Development Strategies

AI plays a key role in helping businesses develop the right content that resonates with their clients. It allows companies to identify topics that their customers are interested in, and thereby, enhance their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) profile.

Many companies are also using AI-based technologies such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) to produce engaging content. NLP can be used to analyze data and transform it into a compelling story. Recent advances in NLP make it hard to distinguish a ‘software-created-write-up’ from a piece of content produced by a human writer.

There are several NLP-powered content creation tools that help organizations develop various types of content, ranging from blog posts and marketing whitepapers to social media updates. Companies are also using these innovative products to create high volumes of efficacious content with minimal expenditure and optimize landing pages.

Personalizing E-mails with High Efficacy to Elicit the Desired Response

E-mails are one of the oldest (and arguably, the most effective) ways a company can reach its customers. A study shows e-mail marketing, on an average, delivers an ROI 3600%, and this is much higher than the return generated by most other marketing channels. That is the reason why most companies still send e-mails to their customers despite using a wide variety of other digital channels such as webinars, videos and social networks.

AI-powered technologies go a long way in helping companies make the best use of this highly effective marketing communication channel; organizations can use the technologies to come up with appropriate metrics for their e-mail marketing campaigns and utilize the data pertaining to the behavior of past subscribers to develop precisely-targeted messages. Companies can use AI to come up with appealing subject lines and relevant e-mail body copy. They can also optimize e-mail automation workflows and drip marketing campaigns.

Helping Companies Deliver Excellent Customer Service Using ‘Intelligent’ Chatbots

AI enables companies to use chatbots to automate customer support activities and enhance brand loyalty. The chatbots play a key role in providing personalized recommendations about products and the right information to resolve the challenges faced by customers.

Chatbots help businesses reduce their customer support expenditures considerably. These AI-powered tools allow organizations to reduce the number of customer support personnel. They also provide high-quality responses to a bulk of queries with high efficacy.

Another advantage of using intelligent bots is they help customer service teams use their time optimally; the AI-based agents can be used to resolve minor, commonly-faced issues, enabling reps to focus effectively on more complex problems faced by customers.

Many businesses are also using smart bots to boost customer engagement levels. Groundbreaking developments in the realm of Machine Learning (ML), an AI-enabled cognitive paradigm allow chatbots to identify patterns in customer behaviors and collect information about their preferences and interests. This data will go a long way in improving the quality of customer interactions and providing more precise answers to customer inquiries.

Today, many companies have global operations, and customers from different countries call their contact centers in various languages. AI-driven chatbots are ideal to provide good service to international customers; the smart applications can be programmed to answer inquires accurately in diverse languages.

Formulating Effective Pricing Strategies to Provide the Best Deals to Customers

Over the last few years, a large number of companies are using AI-enabled pricing models. The businesses are using smart pricing algorithms that analyze data pertaining to demand for their products and competitor prices, in real time; this allows the organizations to sell their products at the right prices, at the right time. For instance, a supplier of natural gas to electric power generating firms can use AI to fix prices based on the dynamic demand for its products. When the consumption of electricity is high during winters, the natural gas supplier can come up with appropriate AI-based pricing models for the spot market, based on variations in demand and offers made by its competitors.

Companies are also using AI to find out how much a client is willing to pay for their products and services. Based on this information, AI-powered tools can help the organizations determine how they stand out vis-à-vis the prices charged by their competitors. This allows the companies to come up with the ideal price structures, which give them an edge over the competitors and provide the best rates to customers.

Developing Precisely-targeted Programmatic Ads to Reach Out to Customers Effectively

Personalization is the norm of the day; companies are sparing no effort to ensure their advertisements address the specific needs and challenges of individual customers. Recent developments in AI are enabling businesses to come up with ads that are fully tailored for specific customers. Organizations can use intelligent tools to identify the right time of the day to serve the ad to get the best responses. Firms can also use AI-powered applications to formulate bidding strategies for Pay-per-click (PPC) and other paid advertising models.

Many companies are also using smart ad software to create moment marketing ads that people find very interesting. The British firm CMC Markets came up with a hugely successful moment marketing ad after the 2017 parliamentary election. Likewise, Adidas came up with a moment marketing campaign based on the 2018 FIFA championship, which was very well received by viewers.

Leveraging Speech and Text Recognition Technologies to Understand Customers’ Mood

For years, companies have sought ways to understand how customers feel about their products. With the advent of AI-enabled technologies, businesses can gauge the mood of their customers during interactions, allowing them to come up with appropriate strategies in real time. For instance, organizations can use ML-powered tools to find out whether a customer is happy, irate or curious based on his verbal expressions during a conversation.

AI also helps firms understand customers’ sentiments based on text. For example, intelligent text recognition tools can analyze the words in a customer’s comment about a product to identify what he thinks about the product. Many organizations are using smart text recognition bots to analyze hundreds of thousands of comments about their products in very short timeframes and respond accordingly.

Harnessing Augmented Reality (AR) to Deliver Superior Customer Experiences

The combination of AI and AR is empowering companies to deliver excellent, non-intrusive experiences to their customers. For instance, the e-commerce company Warby Parker uses an AR application to enable customers to try a pair of spectacles through a computer-generated overlay. Likewise, the digital marketplace Speed Shopper uses a mobile app to guide visitors to various grocery products.

AR also helps firms to enhance awareness of their brands in a big way. They help provide a ‘positive’ perception about their brands. Another key advantage of using AR is it helps companies to reach out to customers of all ages in a novel way — baby boomers are often fascinated at this ‘technology of the future’, while millennials who grew up with cutting-edge technologies thoroughly enjoy the experiences it delivers. No wonder, a survey revealed more than 65% of US shoppers are comfortable using AR while shopping.

As you can see, AI is helping companies provide the best services to their customers and create the best value for them, thereby enabling them to build strong relationships with the latter. Businesses need to use a robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform such as Salesforce to make the best use of AI for delighting their clients. It is advisable to use the services of an IT firm that fully understands the business needs of its customers to implement the CRM system.

Hope you liked the post. How do you use AI to provide top-notch services to your clients?