How Artificial Intelligence is meeting today’s most pressing business needs.
In a recent TechRepublic article, writer N.F. Mendoza highlights five AI trends and their very significant impacts on customer engagement. While all five trends she covers here are noteworthy, I was especially struck by the importance of Trend #1: Customers Want Real Conversations. That’s been true for most customers for a long time. It’s still true today. But thanks to recent advances in artificial intelligence, it’s now possible for leading call centers like Skybridge Americas to deliver customer experiences that are enhanced – not undermined – by AI.
To learn how Skybridge Americas and our breakthrough SkyAI solutions can help you deliver superior customer experience, please reach out. We would love to talk!
5 key AI trends in customer engagement
There are five new artificial intelligence (AI) trends in customer engagement, according to a just-released report from Twilio, a cloud communications and customer engagement platform.
Trend one: Consumers want real conversations
Digital overload creates a shift to authentic, two-way communication.
People have reached digital overload with social media alerts, push notifications, messages, robocalls, and chat bubbles coming from all sorts of apps, websites, and platforms, an estimated 63.5 notifications daily per person.
The rise of social media pushed communications into the public sphere 10 years ago, where broadcasting to the widest audience dominated, and now people prefer secure, 1-to-1 or group channels.
This evolution is an opportunity for businesses to develop authentic connections with their customers through personalized, dynamic conversations. Businesses must prepare to have two-way conversations with their customers on multiple channels over time in order to deliver a positive experience.
To combat the barrage, readers now need a connection to the writer, one that fosters a sense of loyalty.
Twilio research showed only 12% of global consumers want to be reached via a company’s mobile app. “A company’s mobile app will become less relevant as brands make themselves available on the communication channels where consumers already exist—email and messaging in particular,” said Sara Varni, CMO at Twilio.
Trend two: Conversational AI is everywhere
Interaction with AI is common and transactional.
The trend is towards conversational AI, which includes bots, virtual assistants, and communication platforms powered by machine learning. However, the limits of conversational AI can be confusing to consumers, thus expectations are unmet. Consumers still mostly trust bots and assistants for simple tasks which make life convenient, like checking the weather or asking quick questions. Use of virtual and voice assistants continues to rise, with Google’s Assistant deployed across one billion devices, and Amazon reporting sales of 100 million Alexa-enabled devices in 2019.
Chatbots and virtual assistants are just the tip of the iceberg.
There is a major opportunity for businesses to deploy conversational AI to create proactive, ongoing dialogue with customers, rather one-off, reactive, or transactional interactions.
When properly leveraged, the report stated, conversational AI and Natural Language Understanding should benefit every level of the business from day-to-day customer interactions to backend operations.
Trend three: Robocalls kill trust in the phone
The rise of robocalls in the U.S.—the year Americans stopped answering the phone.
In the US in 2019, the number of robocalls doubled from 2017: 58 billion robocalls were placed in 2019, equaling roughly 178 calls per person affected.
The result? People grew skeptical of callers and simply stopped answering calls from numbers they didn’t recognize. The report cites HBO’s Last Week Tonight with Jon Oliver and its episode dedicated to the plague of robocalls, which motivated consumers into becoming constituents who lobbied their legislators to act.
This increased media attention demonstrated a need for “industry-wide cooperation to mitigate robocalls” and to create “standards and regulations to guide the telecommunications ecosystem.”
Consumers need to trust a brand, and businesses can rebuild that trust by identifying that they are the caller, which can be done through verification and sender ID protocols like STIR/SHAKEN. The restoration of consumer faith in all digital communications–particularly the phone–needs to be the result of, noted the report, “partnerships across the entire communications ecosystem, from carriers and providers to public policy officials and government agencies.”
Robocalls will be addressed in 2020. “SHAKEN/STIR protocol, in conjunction with other industry efforts, will create a dramatic change in the robocall landscape in the next 12 to 18 months,” said Len Shneyder, vice president of industry relations at Twilio.
“AI and ML are a natural fit for stopping illegal robocalls, continuing to improve cyber security, and identifying and blocking online disinformation,” Shneyder said. “Much of what is happening with regard to illegal robocalls, cyber security, and online disinformation, is the result of automation. Machines can analyze information faster, react quicker, and engage at a scale larger than humans ever could.”
-Bobby Matthews
Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Skybridge Americas
bmatthews@skybridgeamericas.com
Find out how Skybridge Americas can help you delight your customers and grow your business.
We seamlessly integrate our superior customer care skills with your brand messaging. For more information, contact us at 763-299-4570 or submit our contact form.
