Increasing Importance of AI in Customer-Facing Industries Like Banking, Retail, Media, Cosmetics and Healthcare

Emerging technology trends clearly point to a future encompassing screen-less interactions between businesses and consumers, with voice, augmented and virtual reality, wearable devices, and artificial intelligence, gradually but definitely removing the traditional graphic user interface (GUI) from the equation. The next decade is expected to be even more disruptive based on the methodologies used by customers to interact with brands.

A closer glimpse of the consumer landscape, reveals irrefutable enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI) as compared to other upcoming technologies. However, the technology is still in the experimental phase. Even though the majority of enterprise leaders consider AI to be a business advantage, many organizations are taciturn to trust AI to the extent of deferring implementation and hence are yet to benefit from the technology’s promising capabilities. For AI to be fully functional, it needs investment at enterprise level, and many professionals believe their organizations are not setting aside sufficient budget for this, much needed step-up.

Though adoption of AI has not been universal so far, the technology is already changing the way customers interact with brands, and it is emerging as a critical component to how forward-thinking companies are delivering exceptional customer experiences. Consider the growth in deployment of chatbots and AI-powered virtual assistants, both of which are helping companies learn more about their customers to enhance personalization and the overall experience. In fact, by 2025, roughly 95% of customer interactions are estimated to be aided by AI technology.

It’s clear that AI is going to be at the focal point of most organizations’ future customer experience strategies, but many companies are struggling today to keep up with ever-growing consumer expectations. The banking industry is unique, which considers AI as more differentiating as compared to the all-industries average. If any given banking organization has, say, 50,000 customers for each of its individual commercial branches, it’s next to impossible to get to know and/or interact with each one. And yet, with banks closing branches at the fastest pace in decades, can the industry really afford to cut down on customer experience efforts? Perhaps the clear answer is no.

Among a bank’s millions of customers, there are likely hundreds of loyal, revenue-generating customers, but humans’ limited ability to scan through customer data and interact at scale, prevents banks from responding at a pace that keeps up with customer expectations, in order to properly nurture those relationships.  

Application of Real Customer Data is Vital

For organizations in customer-facing industries in particular, such as Banking, Retail, Media, Cosmetics and Healthcare, AI is an essential technology that needs to be implemented across all customer experience initiatives. Through automation of customer experiences via AI, organizations can serve more customers at a higher scale and more effectively, also solve the manual, and even impossible, time-consuming work specified above. Customer interactions can be automated through AI-powered virtual assistants and self-service websites or simply used to augment support for human resources at call centres.

HDFC Bank Ltd., for example, is using AI-powered banking chatbot Eva to allow customers to ask questions about financial matters. The service, allows customers to generate questions for the AI assistant to answer in order to boost engagement with customers.

Later this year, L’Oreal will roll out a new service, a digital beauty assistant who helps you test products to give you a sense of what would work for your face. Using augmented reality and live streaming technologies, the company is aiming to extend and digitize its relationship with consumers by bringing the personalized makeup counter experience into your home. With a demonstration at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, L’Oreal showcased how it will soon allow consumers of its NYX Professional Makeup brand, the first of the company’s brands to try this new approach, to book live streaming consulting sessions with beauty assistants (likely the ones who work for the brand’s stores already) who would then work with those consumers just as they would at the makeup counter, only digitally.

No matter the application, AI-powered customer interactions that are based on true knowledge and a thorough understanding of a customer’s wants and needs can be a huge competitive advantage.

Maintaining relationships with valuable customers depends on making sure there’s a consistent progression of activities related to each individual customer, and it’s equally important that customers gain convenience and control over their experiences. By having immediate access to perpetually relevant customer data and using that data to guide interactions with virtual assistants, organizations can transform their customers’ experiences and promote a positive brand image by eliminating frustrating wait times, delivering helpful answers to queries and even offering apt new product or service suggestions, all on the fly in real time.

Use of Omnichannel Data is Valuable

One of the most expensive mistakes an organization can make when applying AI to customer experience initiatives is failing to personalize customer interactions in a timely and contextual manner. For example, if virtual assistants aren’t equipped with sufficient customer data, they are compelled to ask basic, stored queries. This leads to poor, limited answers in response, leaving customers dissatisfied and organizations with little or no new data to improve customer experiences in the future.

Equally important is the ability to go beyond using historical data and to make use of real-time data to make better, informed business decisions, which is something we still see companies struggling with today. Another critical aspect is taking the time to collect and construct a customer’s preferences from all available data sources. For instance, both real-time and behavioral data need to be harnessed to drive AI actions and make decisions that lead to more connected customer experiences. In fact, feeding omnichannel intelligence into AI applications is what can help organizations better anticipate future needs and deliver the experiences customers are seeking. Companies with extremely strong omnichannel customer engagement retain on average 89% of their customers, compared to 33% for companies with weak omnichannel customer engagement. 77% of strong omnichannel companies store customer data across channels, compared to 48% for weak omnichannel companies.

Furthermore, by applying integrated customer preferences to AI, the technology can gain the ability to become more intelligent over time, pulling data from web interactions to automatically power more relevant, personalized interactions.

Adopt AI Practices to Deliver Enriched Experiences

An ultra critical component of an effective customer experience is anticipating the future needs of each customer. By seeking out proactive measures based on behavior patterns, market trends and user interactions, organizations can deliver more personalized, unique and memorable experiences across multiple channels. In turn, customers will feel more valued and understood.

Research shows that, so far, successful companies are more than twice as likely as their peers to be incorporating AI for marketing purposes. That’s why we’re witnessing an increasing number of customer-facing organizations adopting AI practices. The technology’s ability to scalably deliver actionable customer experience measures in real time delivers enormous business value. By removing any instances of human subjectivity or data intervention, AI has the unique capability to power relevant, timely and contextually aware interactions with each and every customer.