en found an amazing red shoe while scrolling through Facebook. He instantly clicked the ad and landed on the brand website. To his dismay, the red shoe was out of stock.
So, he decided to get in touch with the support team. But he couldn’t find direct contact with the brand.
This could be your story.
Most of us have faced this issue while trying to make a purchase. And the result of such stories is one – Lost Sales.
Considering this example, what you want would be the ad for a product in stock and easy contact with the brand. But you get none. This highlights the gap between what the customer wants and what the brand gives.
Knowing what the customer wants is important. But giving them what they want is more important. You must grasp the elements involved in a successful customer experience strategy. Then, make sure everything is just right in place.
So, how is it that you will bridge this customer experience gap? How can you ensure no more lost sales, eliminating the CX gap that can sink your revenue goals?
This blog post attempts to tell you how conversational AI can be your boon to bridging the CX gap. Let’s see what’s in store!
What is the Customer Experience Gap?
Before we tell you about bridging the CX gap with conversational AI, let us briefly explain what the customer experience gap is.
Customer Experience Gap is the disparity between the priorities of customers and the brands. It is essentially a gap between what customers demand and what they get from the brands. In other terms, the customer experience gap is the brand’s failure to meet customer expectations.
Not all CX gaps result in loss of sales. It results in negative feedbacks and not-so-satisfied customers.
So, overall, a positive customer experience is a must to ensure sales acceleration. The more you invest in customer experience, the better will be your revenue!
What are the Reasons Behind the Customer Experience Gap?
In a study, while 87% of marketers said that they are delivering fully engaging customer experiences, 49% of consumers reported that the brands did not meet their expectations.
Both the study results contradict each other. This highlights that though marketers believe that they are delivering the best customer experience, half of the customers aren’t satisfied. So, knowing what the customers want is the first step towards delivering the perfect customer experience.
The reason the CX gap can be considered as the complexity of experience. Many brands still fail to understand what customer centricity means.
These brands aren’t aware of what the customers want. They are simply defining their marketing strategy from their perspective without understanding the emotional reality of customers. But that’s not all.
Another reason behind the CX gap might be the missing pieces and the existing loopholes in the business practices.
Hence, a combination of both factors leads to the widening of the CX gap.
Customer Experience Gap & Sales Acceleration
‘Focusing on the customer makes a company more resilient'. - Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon
Brands, nowadays, are striving hard to make their products and services customer-centric. But before that, you must know what the buyers want.
In the B2B selling environment, buyers look for accuracy, speed, transparency, and the best possible pricing. Yes! They get all of these expectations fulfilled at eBay, Amazon, and other popular sites. But they want more. So, mapping customer demands is a must before you invest in customer experience.
Customer experience statistics 2021 suggest that companies earning $1 billion annually can expect to earn an extra $700 million within 3 years of investing in customer experience. Plus, SaaS businesses can expect a revenue boost of $1 billion.
Like it or not, customer experience has a huge impact on your revenue. 86% of customers are ready to pay more for a positive customer experience. That pretty much explains why should focus on delivering a good customer experience.
The Part Played by Conversational AI to Bridge the CX Gap
Running a customer-centric business is tough because customer-centricity is complex. There are several ways to deliver a royal customer experience.
Professionals suggest that if you are truly keen on improving customer experience, then your ideologies should penetrate the whole company culture. Just making a few changes here & there won’t work. Not only do the sales & marketing or customer support departments need improvement, but also the other departments running the business.
Why we pointed out the ‘wholesome’ improvement process is because conversational AI will not save your days single-handedly. It is not a miracle cure. But yes, applying conversational AI strategies will streamline your customer conversations. It will improve your analysis, data collection, humanize interactions and help you bring your CX on track.
If you know how to use conversational AI to your benefit, it will empower your journey to delivering a better customer experience. But if not, using technology will make your life harder, than easier, considering the delivery of a positive customer experience.
Here are 3 factors, you should remember when considering conversational AI for closing your CX gap.
- AI Chatbots are a support to your live agents. They are not substitutes for your employee. AI Chatbots helps in empowering your customer service team.
- Customer-centricity must be embedded in your company culture. Conversational AI won’t fix your customer experience magically overnight.
- AI Chatbots offering a good conversational experience on the front-end is not enough. Your support team, sales & marketing must be able to use the stored customer data for future personalization.
Connecting the Dots with Conversational AI
Bridging the CX Gap isn’t easy. But conversational AI can make it easier by handling a few aspects of your customer service.
Here are ways in which you can use conversational AI effectively to close your CX gap.
1. Create a Positive Customer Interaction
AI Chatbots are exceptional conversationalists. They respond quickly and are available 24/7 to resolve customer queries.
With AI Chatbots on the roll, your live customer support agents do not have to bang their heads with routine customer questions. While AI chatbots can effectively manage these queries, your live agents can manage the complex issues.
At Konverse, the bots can solve up to 90% of the regular standard queries. Plus, you can start customer conversations proactively. But how?
Konverse offers a Conversation Starter feature. This feature allows the bots to detect what your visitors are interested in and if they have a high intent of buying with the help of AI.
For instance, you have a visitor on your website viewing coffee tables. Your bot will instantly detect if the visitor is a high intent buyer and the preferred taste. You can then let your bot pop up and offer product recommendations that suit the prospect’s needs proactively.
2. Save your Human Resources for More Important Affairs
Troubled thinking what AI chatbots have to do with employee satisfaction?
Burdening employees, especially the customer support team, with regular tasks might take away too much of their time and energy. This results in distracting them from the complex issues.
Well-designed chatbots are like frontline fighters. They are always ready to manage the attacks of routine queries. AI chatbots can effectively handle queries regarding Shipment tracking, product recommendation, order status, refund status, order confirmation, and much more. It is only when the going gets difficult, the AI chatbots route customer conversations to live agents.
Konverse has a special feature – Users & Teams that allows easy routing of customer conversations. Once you have logged into Konverse go to Settings > Users & Teams on the dashboard.
This feature allows the creation of multiple teams for specific tasks. For example, you may create three teams - For refund, delivery, and order status.
Now, when your AI chatbot has a fallout, it can route the customer conversation to the most ideal team – the team that can resolve the customer query within minutes.
3. Improve Hyper-Personalization Strategies
Personalization always does the trick. When you market your brand tailored to individual customers, it works well.
Brands often struggle with providing efficient personalized experiences. While automation is essential, too much of it can ruin the customer experience.
AI chatbots help in automating most of your routine tasks. However, even while doing so, they can subtly add a personal touch.
For example, creating the right bot persona can personalize and humanize your brand storytelling. Or employing lead generation bots, you can qualify leads by asking the appropriate questions.
If you are worried about getting the customer data, then let us tell you that Konverse offers Integration. Using the integration feature, you can easily integrate your preferred apps like Magento, Shopify, etc. to the Konverse platform. This feature gives you direct access to data in the system.
Your AI chatbot can put these collected data to use through the Customer Journey feature.
Your bot can maintain personalized interaction with customers throughout their buying journey. They can send reminders, alerts, notifications about the products in their cart, etc. An added benefit is that you can reduce cart abandonment using this feature.
4. Make your Feedback System More Conversational
‘Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning’. - Bill Gates
Reducing the CX gap requires feedback. Customer feedback is the most important element of closing the CX gap.
Without knowing what went wrong, how can you improve it? So, collecting customer feedback time and again is important.
The issue with customer feedback is that customers dread long, boring survey forms. But with AI Chatbots, you can easily make the feedback process conversational.
For example, use a comfortable messaging channel like WhatsApp to collect customer feedback. You can employ a WhatsApp bot and easily collect feedbacks while interacting.
Using a conversational interface helps you get feedback in real-time. Plus, you can also personalize the survey based on the information that the customer provides.
Other than feedback, you can also use conversational ways like quizzes to qualify leads. Plus, WhatsApp contest bots can also help you with improving conversion rates.
Need a Hand in Reducing your CX Gap?
Several brands sell the same product as yours. What sets you apart from them is the experience you deliver.
With the growth of online sales, customer experience has become all the more important. While brands tend to focus on product quality, their service quality often degrades. So, now, more than ever is the time to close your CX gap.
So, start with incorporating customer-centricity across departments. And coming to using conversational AI, is an excellent tool to bridge the CX gap.
To know more about conversational AI – its hows and whys, visit the Konverse Help Center.
Additional Readings
Learn About Omnichannel Customer Service
Drive Sales with Conversational AI
All About Customer Feedback Loop
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