Every organization can benefit from a strong brand identity. It's the lens through which customers perceive your business, and having memorable, positive brand experiences can help build customer loyalty that drives retention and repeat purchases.
Contact centers play a vital role in customer experience, yet many struggle to deliver personalized interactions that build that much-desired brand loyalty. Outdated technology, siloed data, and high agent turnover impede efforts to transform the contact center into a strategic asset.
Advanced analytics identify opportunities to proactively engage customers and escalate high-value interactions. With the right technology and focus on the human element, contact centers can become a competitive differentiator that drives loyalty and brand advocacy.
When you think about recognizable brands, companies like McDonald's, Coca-Cola. or Nike probably come to mind. With an icon, logo, or sometimes even just a color, the brand is immediately apparent and typified with engaging, enjoyable experiences. If you scratch beyond the shiny surface, though, and reach out to customer service, that positive brand connotation might begin to erode.
When it comes to the outward-facing brand that draws people in and the customer support channels to which people go when they have a problem, there is often a disconnect that can lead to disgruntled customers, or worse, damaged brand reputation. To avoid these pitfalls, it's critical for organizations to facilitate a seamless, brand-aligned experience in their post-purchase epicenter of brand engagement: the contact center.
Adopting and adapting to new technologies is always a challenge for any organization, but contact centers have historically lagged behind in new tech implementation, especially for the voice channel. In the 1970s, interactive voice response (IVR) systems rose to popularity, but not much headway has been made since then, until recently. The contact center needs innovation to succeed, and progressive advancements in conversational AI could be the silver bullet to bring service standards up to snuff.
With traditional IVR systems, callers get easily frustrated with convoluted menu trees, unclear voice prompts, and less-than-perfect voice recognition capabilities. However, conversational AI is helping contact centers trend toward a smarter automated system that can solve callers' problems while upholding the brand's integrity. You can't think of the contact center as just a place for reactive problem-solving. Instead, it should be a place for proactive opportunities to strengthen brand loyalty, gather customer trend data, and build revenue.
One tried-and-true method to strengthen loyalty is through personalization. Personalization is critical in today's ultra-competitive business landscape, not just a nice to have. In fact, nearly three out of four (71 percent) of customers expect every interaction with companies to be personalized. If that expectation isn't met, 76 percent of customers will get frustrated. Since 32 percent of customers would abandon a brand after just one bad experience—even a brand they previously loved—keeping customers happy is crucial to retention, and personalizing every conversation is a major factor in that happiness.
The smartest organizations will leverage AI to personalize interactions. AI can provide a deeper dive into customer sentiment on calls and offer insights based on preferences, problems, and potential opportunities for improvement. This more in-depth look can give businesses the information they need to tailor customer conversations to forge stronger, more meaningful connections. The information gleaned from listening to customer conversations can also help organizations adjust their strategies to drive valuable changes and provide outstanding customer experiences for every caller, every time.
Conversational AI to the Rescue
Branding isn't just the marketing team's responsibility. It's on the shoulders of everyone in the organization, including those in the contact center. If someone visits your website to find the number to call for customer support, the brand experience on the website should seamlessly be carried through during the phone conversation. Conversational AI can help to build that throughline.>
Conversational AI can be applied to uphold brand standards as it powers meaningful dialogue with callers. Intelligent, AI-powered voice assistants interact with callers in language so natural that it might not be immediately obvious that the caller is talking to AI, and by satisfactorily addressing the issue (answering FAQs, giving order status), the voice assistant builds trust with the caller. Fostering that trust is critical for the sustained success of the contact center, a work environment notoriously plagued with high turnover. In 2022, agent turnover reached a historic high of 38 percent. Voice assistants can help pick up some of the slack left by agent attrition, and that's a tactic that will work because 40 percent of people contacting customer service don't care who (or what) is providing support as long as their issue gets resolved.
The contact center is evolving, and as it does, there arise ample opportunities for organizations to prioritize customer-first strategies that offer the solutions callers want while strengthening the brand's identity. The most successful contact centers will morph into proactive, solution-oriented brand channels that cultivate outstanding customer experiences and drive long-term business success. And there's a good chance those results come from groundbreaking AI solutions on the front lines.
Nikola Mrkšic is co-founder and CEO of PolyAI.