Frustrated customers and overworked agents can lead to customer churn. AI offers a powerful solution to these challenges.
Here’s how AI can improve customer experience — helping you say bye-bye to repetitive tasks, freeing up agents to focus on complex problems, and proactively identifying customers who need more attention.
But that’s not all, and in this article, we’ll share 15 ways that AI can help you become the boss… of the customer experience.
We’ll cover:
- 15 ways to get it done
- How the best tool in the biz, Lindy, can help you do it
Let’s dive right in!
#1: Personalization that goes beyond the basics
We've all had those robotic interactions — the chatbot that doesn't recognize you're a loyal customer, the generic email response that misses the mark entirely. AI is changing that. Here's how:
- Learning actual customer preferences: It's not just about demographics. AI analyzes past interactions, preferred communication channels, and even tone of voice to understand what each customer needs for a great experience. This allows your business to offer truly personalized support, which is key to improving customer experience.
- Adapting the experience: AI can use these insights to tailor content, suggest relevant products, and even adjust the interface for a more personalized journey. By tailoring the experience in this way, AI can significantly improve customer experience.
- Smart onboarding: No two customers are alike, which means first impressions matter. AI can guide customers through onboarding by asking relevant questions and offering resources tailored to their needs. This helps customers feel understood from the start, fostering a positive experience right from the beginning.
#2: AI-powered speed and always-on support
Let's face it, waiting on hold or being stuck in an email back-and-forth is nobody's idea of a good time. AI can change the game when it comes to speedy resolution and round-the-clock availability. Here's how:
- The obvious perk — 24/7 availability: AI-powered bots and virtual assistants can handle basic queries and provide support whenever customers need it, even outside of business hours. This means customers get help immediately.
- AI as a super-duper assistant: AI routes customer inquiries to the right human agent, with all the relevant context already prepped. You can say bye-bye to passing your issue to multiple reps! Boom, faster resolution times.
- Fast facts: Customers want answers now. AI can access knowledge bases and data sources instantly, so your team isn't scrambling, and your customers aren't left hanging.
#3: Predicting problems before they happen
Wouldn't it be great to prevent customer issues before they even become a headache? AI's got your back. Here's how:
- Identifying churn risks: AI can analyze customer behavior patterns, spotting subtle signals that someone's about to jump ship. This lets you proactively reach out, address issues, and potentially save the relationship.
- Predictive alerts for customer success: Highlight accounts that might need extra attention. Maybe a customer is hitting roadblocks with your product, or their usage patterns have changed. AI-powered alerts let you address those concerns early and build positive relationships.
- Analyzing feedback: It's impossible to manually sift through every review, support ticket, or social media mention. AI can spot patterns in this unstructured data, identifying the core product features people really love, and the recurring pain points that need fixing.
#4: AI makes knowledge sharing effortless
Whether it's helping customers find their own answers or giving your support team the tools they need, AI can completely change how knowledge is shared. Here's how:
- Creating smart knowledge bases: AI structures information in a way that's easy to understand, suggests related topics, and even tailors answers based on the customer's history. This helps customers find solutions quickly and easily.
- Helping customers help themselves: AI builds intuitive self-service portals that answer common questions and guide customers toward solutions without hassle. This helps customers address their problems independently — a major satisfaction bonus.
- Helping the helpers: Think of how much easier it would be if you always had the right answers within reach. AI puts relevant articles and past case solutions directly into your support interface, so agents don't waste time searching.
#5: It's personal: AI-driven communication
We all have different communication preferences. AI isn't just about bots; it can elevate the entire support experience by adapting to individual needs. Here's how:
- AI learns your brand voice: Forget those robotic, impersonal chatbots. AI can be taught to mimic your brand's language and tone, whether it's friendly and casual or more formal and professional.
- Adaptive tone: AI can pick up on cues in the customer's language and adjust its responses, offering more reassurance or simplifying its language to provide clarity.
- Sentiment analysis: Understanding the overall emotional state of a support interaction lets you act accordingly. AI can alert a human agent to take over if a customer is growing increasingly upset. This prevents problems from getting out of hand.
#6: AI spots patterns humans miss
Data is powerful, but it can be overwhelming. AI unlocks the hidden insights in your customer data, turning it into actionable improvements. Here's how:
- Peering beyond the veil: AI can analyze massive amounts of customer data, spotting patterns and correlations that might go unnoticed with manual analysis. These insights might reveal the true root causes of recurring issues or highlight unexpected areas for improvement.
- Using your data to do stuff: It's not just about the insights, it's about what you do with them. AI can provide recommendations based on the patterns it detects, making it easier to turn data analysis into impactful changes to your processes or product.
- AI-assisted A/B testing: Let AI help you determine what changes make the biggest difference. It can analyze test results to pinpoint even subtle improvements to your website, interface, or support flows.
#7: Proactive problem-solving
What if you could solve customer issues before they even become complaints? AI can help you do exactly that. Here's how:
- Getting to the root causes: AI dives into your data to uncover the underlying reasons behind frequent issues. This might reveal systemic problems that quick fixes can't truly address.
- Faster resolution: AI automates repetitive tasks, freeing up your support team to focus on complex issues.
- It escalates like a pro: When a complex case needs a human touch, AI makes sure it gets routed to the right person from the get-go. Providing the agent with context and relevant information can help smooth out the process, leading to a better overall customer experience.
#8: AI-powered onboarding that sticks
First impressions matter! AI can help personalize the onboarding process, making it smooth and valuable for new customers. Here's how:
- Personalized journeys: AI guides each customer through onboarding based on their specific needs and goals. This might mean asking the right questions to understand their use cases, or suggesting relevant resources to help them hit the ground running.
- Proactive tips: AI offers context-sensitive help and tutorials throughout the onboarding process, anticipating potential pain points. Basically, a way to nip frustration in the bud.
- Gets in there early: AI can spot signs of early frustration, like inactivity or specific usage patterns. This helps you prevent the dreaded customer churn.
#9: AI simplifies the resolution process
Getting a quick and satisfying answer to their problem is something all customers want. Here's how:
- Automated tasks: AI can tick off things like scheduling appointments or updating information.
- Self-service options done right: Many customers prefer to try fixing their own problems if they have the right tools. AI creates smart self-service portals that walk users through troubleshooting steps and suggest solutions, enabling them to find answers on their own.
- Omnichannel support: AI creates a smooth customer experience, regardless of whether they're contacting you through email, social media, or chat. It keeps track of past interactions, so customers don't have to explain their problem ten times in a row.
#10: AI as the ultimate focus group
Product development shouldn't be a guessing game. AI can turn customer feedback into actionable insights, driving improvements that make a real impact. Here's how:
- Analyzing unstructured data: AI can sift through customer reviews, social media mentions, and support tickets with incredible speed. This helps it find patterns and common themes beyond what you might notice with a manual review.
- Moving past surveys: Traditional surveys have their uses, but AI allows you to capture feedback from a wider range of customers and find unfiltered opinions expressed in their own words.
- Spotting feature requests: AI can help identify what features customers truly want, and which ones they find frustrating or unnecessary. A great way to refine your roadmap.
#11: AI helps you build a better product
AI isn't just about fixing problems in the moment; it can help you prevent them from happening in the first place. Here's how:
- Automated QA: AI can make testing easier, catching those pesky bugs that slip through the cracks. It can run tests faster and potentially simulate different user scenarios to spot issues before they reach customers.
- Testing for customer impact: Imagine testing new features with AI before launching them widely. It can analyze how changes in the UI or functionality might affect the overall user experience.
- Prioritizing fixes based on customer data: With limited resources, it's vital to address the bugs that cause the most frustration for customers. AI can help pinpoint which problems are occurring most frequently and having the greatest negative impact.
#12: AI-powered empathy
Sometimes, customers just need to feel understood. While AI can't outright replace human empathy, it can enhance the support experience, making it more responsive and personalized. Here's how:
- “It sounds like you’re feeling frustrated”: AI analyzes language patterns and tone of voice to identify signs of frustration or confusion. You can respond with empathy and adapt your approach as things change.
- Adapting the response: AI can tailor its language and tone to match the customer's mood. This might mean offering extra reassurance if they're upset, or simplifying explanations if they seem overwhelmed.
- Just-for-you recommendations: AI can suggest solutions that are truly relevant to the customer's needs and emotional state. Consider how much better it feels to receive a helpful, personalized solution instead of a generic one.
#13: Make language barriers disappear
Providing great customer support should be inclusive. AI can help break down language barriers, so everyone can get the help they need. Here's how:
- Real-time translation: Imagine a chatbot that can instantly translate conversations, allowing customers to interact in their native language, regardless of whether the support agent speaks it.
- Localize to win: AI can adapt websites, interfaces, and knowledge bases to different languages and cultures.
- Support in many languages: AI can help support agents assist customers in multiple languages, even if they themselves aren't fluent. This expands the reach of your support team – without the need to hire multilingual staff for every language you serve.
#14: AI-driven accessibility
Providing equitable access to your products or services is essential. AI can help you build experiences that are inclusive of customers with disabilities or varying needs. Here's how:
- Accessible formats: AI can generate text descriptions for images and videos, ensuring those with visual impairments can still access information.
- Adaptive interfaces: AI can adjust layouts, font sizes, and color contrasts based on individual user preferences or accessibility needs.
- Personalization for accessibility needs: AI can remember and adapt to accessibility preferences. For example, consistently offering keyboard shortcuts for users who can't navigate easily with a mouse.
#15: Always learning, always improving
The best AI solutions don't just solve problems today; they get smarter over time. Here's how:
- Feedback loops: AI learns from every customer interaction. It can analyze which responses work best and automatically adjust its approach to provide even better support in the future.
- Processes that optimize themselves: AI finds ways to improve support operations behind the scenes. It might suggest knowledge base updates, revise chatbot flows, or identify areas where agents need additional training.
- Evolve, evolve, evolve: As your business grows and customer expectations change, AI can adapt alongside it. It learns from new data and refines its understanding of your customers' needs.
The best AI tool to improve customer experience: Lindy
Lindy flips customer support on its head by acting as a first line of defense.
How Lindy helps:
- Plays nice with existing tools: Lindy works with help desks like Zendesk, Freshdesk, and over 3,000 other integrations.
- Gets what customers mean: It uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand what customers actually want, not just the keywords they use.
- An agent's silent partner: Lindy makes knowledge bases smarter, suggesting content to customers and offering the right answers to agents for fast issue resolution.
- Makes notes: It can transcribe and summarize conversations, creating easy-to-follow records of interactions.
- Lindies team up: Lindy instances ('Lindies') can communicate, sharing knowledge and collaborating to find even better solutions, even when problems span multiple departments.
- Constantly learning: Lindy uses machine learning to refine its responses, and constantly updates its knowledge base to provide the most relevant support.
- A customer support prophet: Lindy can spot potential issues before they escalate, suggesting solutions based on data analysis and helping teams stay ahead of customer problems."
Summing up
AI is fundamentally changing how businesses can improve customer experience, offering solutions for faster resolutions and personalized interactions.
Whether it's making processes buttery-smooth, empowering customers to find their own answers, or uncovering hidden insights in customer data, AI provides a powerful way to build a customer experience that's both efficient and genuinely helpful.
