Artificial Intelligence and Customer Engagement:

the value of the augmented intelligence relationship

5 minutes reading - Pubblished 30 Gen, 2019 @ 10:46 by Andrea Ruscica

9.00 am. I enter Altea on a Monday morning in February. I have a coffee, the energy I need to face a new week, as I observe the lake from the balcony of Villa Erica and my mind is flooded with ideas I wish to try out, inspirations deriving from my weekend reading sessions. The phone rings and I am pleased to notice the name of a client on the display, a person I have known for some time and with whom I often discuss innovation and business. He is calling me for this purpose, he has a problem to put to me and wishes to meet so that we can discuss exponential technologies and how to improve his business model in order to be closer to his customers.

Augmented Intelligence: In relations nothing is artificial

When this happens, when a businessman chooses to take the time to listen to my opinion on world-changing technologies, I feel the duty to make recourse to the most important thought leaders on this topic and offer my own interpretation, as closely aligned as possible with the company’s business, trying to put myself in the shoes of that same entrepreneur who, in the age of “digital at all costs” still endorses the irreplaceable value of human relations.

This is the main topic of the meeting: to clarify the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the processes of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). My instinctive response is a line-up of definitions and buzzwords which we are increasingly accustomed to hearing in various contexts, inevitably associated with each other, COGNITIVE INSIGHTS | CUSTOMER INTELLIGENCE | CUSTOMER JOURNEY | CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE | INTELLIGENT EXPERIENCE | CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT | COGNITIVE ANALYTICS | MARKETING AUTOMATION | SOCIAL LISTENING | SENTIMENT ANALYSIS … and I could go on for several more lines, but for the time being I shall stop here and start from Gartner.

In the recently released Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2018, Artificial Intelligence is the protagonist of this phase of the fourth industrial devolution. In fact, it constitutes the foundation of the Intelligent Digital Mesh, the cluster of strategic technologies for building the future of business, intertwined with people and with application on processes, in an ongoing dialogue between the physical and digital worlds. Artificial intelligence is transforming almost all technological and business platforms. It is therefore no surprise to learn that AI has become one of the main investment interests of companies.

The capacity to use artificial intelligence algorithms to improve decision making, to reinvent ecosystems and business models in a digital key and to rethink the customer experience will drive the companies’ digital initiatives from now until 2025, according to analysts.

How do Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies increase the value of human relations? Which business scenarios can we foresee?

Artificial Intelligence And Cognitive Insight

Insight is often interpreted as a fact of life; in actual fact it is much more than that: it is tantamount to an authentic intuition, a sort of knowledge that often appears in the form of a brilliant idea, which reveals a higher level of awareness, something whose introduction revolutionizes the present status quo.

The Artificial Intelligence applied to customer relations leads to an evolution in customer understanding. Hence the term Customer Intelligence which refers to the set of proactive and customer-centric predictive KPIs which may be elaborated by AI algorithms. The insights thus obtained find answers to questions no one has even thought to ask themselves.

The number of data collection sources is constantly increasing and in the course of time, they feed the BIG DATA bases artificial intelligences make recourse to: web & social listening, IOT and wearable sensors, chatbots and other conversational platforms, purchasing behaviour patterns in the physical and virtual worlds, feedback from sales people – agents – partners, activities recorded by call centres, analyses relating to competitors, trends and socio-economic contexts. A human lifetime would not suffice to analyze such a mass of data on one single phenomenon.

Therefore, cognitive insights are more and more often the departure point for marketing strategies and campaigns, as well as constituting precious intuitions for targeted customer engagement actions, focused on what the customer expects to receive (even unconsciously or without having expressly manifested his expectations). Moreover, they are available to all company departments and may contribute to improving services and products, and even the creation of new lines of business.

Artificial Intelligence And Customer Service

In this ambit, there have already been numerous successful experiments. A well known case is that of the KLM airline company which, for over one year now, has flanked its traditional call centres with a virtual agent, a Blue Bot. This is a chatbot thanks to which passengers can manage their flight bookings starting from the initial phases, with automated assistance that is interactive and personalized. The bot anticipates the user’s needs based on contextual information (e.g. even the weather conditions), purchasing preferences, previous experiences, and provides advice, solutions and, of course, special offers. Only in the case of more complex problems, the Blue Bot passes their management over to the customer service operators.

What are the advantages?

For non-stop-customers, the certainty of having a permanent and accessible service at any time.

For the company, an optimal management of the service, even at peak inquiry times.

More in general, a quality and avant-garde service which improves in the course of time (thanks to the perfect man-machine partnership and the self-teaching capacity of machine learning algorithms.

Artificial Intelligence And Customer Experience

Retailing is one of the sectors which has pioneered the application of Artificial Intelligence technologies. It is here that Customer Intelligence has reached extremely high levels of user experience personalization. Many companies have in fact implemented innovative solutions for tracking their customers throughout the customer journey and from the perspective of omni channelling, from interactions effected with the brand on the digital channels to customer recognition when he/she crosses the threshold of the sales point.

Thanks to the algorithms of facial recognition and the elaboration of Big Data (which become sales insights), it is possible to provide indications in real time to the sales person in the store, directly integrated with the CRM in such a way that the constant stream of information is available to all company departments at any time. The customer receives a personalized service which enables a customer experience consistent with interests and specific purchasing intents. The investment in AI is counterbalanced by the attainment of specific business objectives, such as an increase in the average value of sales receipts or purchasing frequency.

Artificial Intelligence And Marketing Automation

The application of Artificial Intelligence to marketing processes is opening up new frontiers to efficacious content management. It is possible to elaborate strategies of marketing automation, in other words, to generate contextual contents, to make special offers with ultra personalized pricing policies or even to customize goods or services for single customers. This is what is known as Advertising Content Automation, a marketing strategy implying an optimal use of data which takes us beyond the mere concept of targeting towards a segmentation by interest, and as far as buyer persona profiling.

In this way, AI algorithms help companies to automate lead generation throughout the entire customer journey. For example, it is possible to offer customers pre-sale support by supplying automatic explanations and eliminating doubts and uncertainties (thus enhancing brand confidence), to send out promotional coupons in connection with a certain product discovery touch point, to submit customer satisfaction surveys in real time while exploiting the potential of algorithms which even measure the emotions experienced by users during the interaction (for instance, reference is made to “positive sentiments” when applying the semantic and linguistic analysis to communication between customer and operator – whether bot or human – to act in a timely manner.

Artificial Intelligence And Customer Engagement

Whatever the business strategy of your company, and whatever market you operate in, you cannot afford to disregard customer engagement.

Artificial Intelligence is based on the processing of data, the tracks left by customers in the course of their journey, and then goes on to transform the relationship into a process of Intelligent Customer Engagement. An engaging experience, one that exceeds expectations and is able to engage the customer through communications that are constant, fluid, on-going, appealing and unique, placing him/her at the centre of all action and offering the greatest relational value in each phase of the process.

The human-machine relationship is optimized by intelligent algorithms. For this reason, I like to think of AI as a human technology: the set of technologies designed for man but which think in a different way and potentiate man’s capacities.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: BRINGING NEW LIFE TO CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM)

How many advantages would we have if all the information regarding our customers, or earlier still, our potential customers, could be automatically entered into the Customer Relationship Management system (CRM), with access from a single platform updated in a contextual manner and able to provide business development scenarios?

Principal international vendors are moving in this direction and are offering increasingly innovative technological platforms. Latest generation CRM systems incorporate artificial intelligence: AI algorithms automate interaction, reading and writing on the database. The risk of losing customer /potential customer data is minimized, comprising the information – whether structured or unstructured – collected throughout the customer journey.

However, artificial intelligence is not restricted to transmitting all data to the CRM: the added value lies in the elaboration of these Big Data into Insights. They are authentic predictive KPIs which human beings can grasp and exploit to improve personal and company performance levels. They may be strategic suggestions for increasing sales through digital channels, promotions to activate in certain sales points, but also indications for developing new markets or designing new services/ products by identifying unexplored niches previously thought to be unlikely.

6 pm. A day packed with appointments and thoughts on the impact of technologies on relations. On my desk there is one of the books I was reading at the weekend. Words I borrow from two authors who have made innovation their job.

<< “The compass beats maps” – a map implies a detailed knowledge of the territory and the existence of an optimal route; the compass is a far more flexible tool requiring the user to make recourse to his own creativity and self-sufficiency to discover the path to follow. The decision to do without a map and use a compass instead takes into account the fact that in an increasingly unpredictable and fast-moving world, a detailed map could get you stuck right in the middle of a forest at an ineffectively high cost. On the other hand, a good quality compass will always take you where you want to go… Preferring compasses to maps enables you to explore alternative routes, to use detours to your advantage and discover unexpected treasure. >> How to Survive our Faster Future” Jo Ito, Jeff Howe

Once you have established your business objective, the aim you wish to fulfil, you just have to apply the right intelligence, the human-tech compass that is able to guide your steps through the landscape of innovation.

To learn more, I recommend the free e-book on Artificial Intelligence and Customer Engagement

Retail 4.0 e Customer Experience

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BIO

For 26 years, Altea Federation has been working alongside the global leaders of technological innovation through a holonic-virtual business model which embraces the professional approach and high degree of specialization of a federation of companies under one brand: different yet complementary worlds which reinforce each other while preserving a strong Group identity and an unmistakable approach to the challenges posed by new paradigms in the ambits of Consulting, Technology, Digital and Operations.