Customer experience: tools for improving it

There are now many technological tools available to improve customer experience and this has become a real priority for companies wishing to embrace the digital transformation. It provides the double bonus of rewarding loyal customers and attracting potential new ones.

The only significant problem is not the tools themselves, but the limited budgets of many companies. In order to satisfy management requests, while remaining within a certain expenditure range, companies must consider their decision carefully. It is crucial to devise a plan aimed at identifying the technologies that will meet specific company needs as effectively as possible.

Ten tools to improve customer experience

Investment in AI appears to be the most popular trend among companies aiming to improve customer experience. In fact, over 70% of companies have already taken steps in that direction, but there are also many other trends, which we will look at below:

1. Digital channels: the most widespread communication methods up until a few years ago were voice calls and email. However, in the last few years, companies have realised that by using more channels they can achieve greater client coverage. Today, the average is 6.6 digital channels, including text messaging, webchat, video, social media and in-app messaging for mobile devices.
2. Omnichannel function: short-term investment plans to improve customer experience include omnichannel. It is an important tool which helps company support services to manage buyer data more easily. The fact that information is shared with all available digital channels means that users do not need to provide their data every time they use the system.
3. Analytics agents: they represent the principle IA tools used in the last year and are still the most popular when it comes to investment planning. They are extremely useful for working on areas like natural language and sentiment analytics, which provide precious data for staff training or self-training tools.
4. Personalised interaction: statistics show that clients want personalised interaction. By using data gathered through AI, a unique customer experience can be provided, in which the system itself decides on the most suitable communication channel for a specific user according to his previous choices, for example, whether that client prefers to receive text messages or emails etc.
5. Intelligent routing: AI is also helpful in this area, as it allocates a suitable agent to a specific client according to their needs. Via knowledge accumulated thanks to the preferences expressed by the client during previous interactions, the system is able to choose the most appropriate staff member to offer suitable assistance.
6. Simultaneous translation: an extremely useful service for a quality customer experience is the option to translate any type of interaction into various different languages. This can be carried out using specific tools, which can compensate for the employees’ lack of linguistic knowledge.
7. Chatbots: virtual assistants which enable the implementation of ‘do it yourself’ functions within communication channels, especially in support chats. It is forecast that in the next few years they will deal with over 40% of transactions.
8. Real time vocal transcription: this is an excellent tool which speeds up employees’ work, as they can take notes more quickly without needing to type each single word manually.
9. Sentiment analytics: some sophisticated software is able to recognise clients’ mood during a voice or digital conversation. There are some useful tools which enable a huge quantity of precious data to be obtained, in order to improve customer experience.
10. NLP or Natural Language Processing: similar to the previous example, these tools are able to analyse language used by clients and workers. This helps to establish, for instance, whether a client falls into a specific target group for the launch of a new product.

Translated by Joanne Beckwith