The hangup is not the adoption of AI solutions but the steps thereafter, specifically, how to actually use AI to improve the customer experience.
We get your desire to outsource some of the heavy lifting; improving the customer experience is constant work. AI processes that are implemented intentionally can alleviate the burden placed on your team to continually learn and evolve—two things now required of organizations that hope to serve customers well and to their expectations.
Companies across all industries are putting personalization at the center of their experiential strategies. It's what modern-day guests expect from their brands. Therefore, organizations that offer hyper-personalized customer experiences at every touch point win.
Your competitive advantage will be your ability to capture and analyze customer data at scale and then use it to understand, shape, and customize the customer journey. Enter AI.
Using AI, your teams could go from offering good experiences to delightfully memorable ones they tell their friends about. For example:
Your organization's transformation to thoughtfully designed experiences requires shifting how you view and interact with guests. It requires you to deeply understand their needs and wants, and to tailor your offerings accordingly.
The devil is in the details—or, more accurately, in the data.
Data is everywhere. When your visitors make a reservation, buy a ticket, or order a coffee, you uncover vital information. At its core, AI and machine learning algorithms intelligently process and interpret vast quantities of data to uncover patterns. When applied to the customer, you can utilize these learnings to anticipate and cater to customer needs, offering a higher degree of personalization.
For example, many organizations leverage AI chatbots to help alleviate the demand placed on their customer service teams. AI-powered chatbots can answer basic questions and suggest help center articles or resources customers can use to solve problems independently—even outside business hours.
Beyond bots, the possibilities for incorporating AI into your service principles are endless:
When brainstorming how to incorporate AI into your processes, it's important that you not alienate the humans behind the tech. Machines only go so far, and intentional experiences will always require a human touch.
Allow machines to do what they do best: quickly sifting through gigabytes of information to recommend action. Then, allow humans to do what they do best: using intuition and judgment to act appropriately.
Brainstorm and visualize on a grand scale, but start slowly. A great first step is to involve teams across the business, from marketing to operations to technology to engineering. Ask them to identify a few specific experiences (or processes) that could be better shaped by AI and a deep customer viewpoint.
Bandwidth and resources aside, you can, at minimum, build a tech roadmap that uses data to inform specific, customer-driven use cases.
Artificial Intelligence isn't a fad that will die down any time soon. If anything, it's just getting started. I think this is a very good thing, as leaders who align their teams on a strategy for leveraging technology will be better positioned to adapt over time and ultimately build deeper, more enduring loyalty.
Mike Donnelly is a recognized expert, keynote speaker, facilitator and consultant in customer service and leadership development. Leveraging 20+ years of experience from The Walt Disney Company, he and his team help destination location clients and clients in various customer-facing industries create customer loyalty to achieve positive business results. Learn more at www.DonnellyEffect.com.