We sat down with customer service experience expert and keynote speaker Shep Hyken to talk technology trends. In this interview, Shep discusses customer intent prediction and how the technology behind it is already transforming the entire customer relationship. This interview was originally conducted for our Navigating Customer Service in 2021 guide, but using AI to improve customer experience continues to be relevant in the 2022 Customer Service Trends guide.
In fact, one of the main trends for 2022 is that customers expect personalization, but not at the cost of privacy. Customers are savvier than ever and while AI can be a powerful tool to predict and preempt customer needs, it’s important to be transparent about how data is stored and maintain security certifications, like SOC2, to prove it will be handled safely.
See the full transcript of the video below.
What opportunities will AI open up for customer service tech?
“If I respect your privacy and I respect the information that you give me. The more I know about you, the better I can form a relationship. So let's use AI, to take this to — what I think — one of the most powerful uses of artificial intelligence.
And that is, if I have the type of company that has a large customer base, let's say I'm a phone company or a cable company. And I've got tens of thousands of customers. And I'm talking to my customer on the phone. Artificial Intelligence is listening in on the conversation.
Number one: It recognizes who the customer is. So it's going to tell me this is a customer that owns these items from us. This is a customer that calls us once every, you know, a couple of months with a question. This is a customer that is exactly like 5,000 other customers we have.
This means with uncanny accuracy, the artificial intelligence bot can tell the customer support agent what the next words out of this customer are going to be.
Which is pretty cool. If you use it the right way.”
According to Forrester’s 2021 Global Marketing Survey, “71% of respondents agreed that buyers expect an experience that is personalized to their needs and preferences.”
How to deliver personalized CX
Using AI-based tech to bridge online-offline customer service
“If I'm good at doing my job, I will ethically help them get to where they need to be to have the best experience they can with me. And that's because we have all this data about the customer. And we can match it up to all these other customers. And I mean, it really is uncanny accuracy on how well I can make this customer's experience better with us as a result of that.
Imagine that you walk into a department store, just like a regular shopping experience. And the salesperson comes up to you and the salesperson has an earpiece. And what happens is facial recognition alerts this salesperson:
Hey, this is Kaila. And the last time she was here, she bought a black and white stripe top. We have that same exact item now in different colors, you might want to show it to her.
I mean, that's an oversimplification. But imagine that that's how this helps me out. And if I want to do business with this company, and I love the clothes they sell, and I like the people that take care of me, why wouldn't I want that experience?”