9 Innovative AI and Robotics Ideas to Improve Customer Experience

Customer Experience (CX) is at the center of every organization’s growth strategy and technology is significant in transforming it. Here are a few innovative ideas to improve customer experience with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics.

Customer experience Opens a new window is the most important and challenging element of an organization’s business strategy. Market dynamics and varying customer expectations make it challenging for marketers to identify customer wants and needs. Hence, arises the need to innovate and improve customer experiences.Opens a new window

Companies must consistently think out of the box to maintain and improve the customer experience. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics are two technologies that can help you innovate and improve your CX strategy.

Let’s find out how!

AI and Robotics are fast emerging as game-changers across industries. Marketers have started deploying these technologies to craft compelling experiences for their customers and target audiences.

Innovative Ideas to Improve Customer Experience With Artificial Intelligence

AI will continue to be hugely impactful in enabling better customer experience in the coming years. On the customer-facing side, maturing AI will allow organizations to deploy increasingly smarter chatbots that are able to perform secure, transactional tasks like transferring funds or updating information and better respond to customer questions, delivering the information customers need more efficiently.

~ Jeff Epstein, VP of product at Comm100Opens a new window , exclusively to MarTech Advisor

Artificial Intelligence is now pioneering the end-to-end transformation of online and offline customer experiences. The customer journey is no longer siloed in disconnected activities such as research, sales, service, and so on. AI can help reshape the customer journey to make it more meaningful by eliminating pain points and delivering value at the right place and right time.

Learn More: What is Customer Experience (CX)? Definition, Design, Management, Best Practices and ExamplesOpens a new window

Here are some innovative ideas for various stages of the customer journey.

1. Informed Decision-Making Process
 

AI is a powerful tool when it comes to fueling decision making. Dan Gingiss, VP Marketing, Persado,Opens a new window explains, “Machines can also track decades of historical campaigns and analyze that data to provide insights and trends. After testing, a machine can identify why a certain message worked, not just that it outperformed a control message.”

Example: In 2018, Tommy HilfigerOpens a new window (TH) leveraged AI while working with IBMOpens a new window and the Fashion Institute of TechnologyOpens a new window to analyze 15,000 TH product images, alongside 600,000 runway images, and around 100,000 images of different generic patterns and images. AI turned designer to create new styles incorporating trending patterns and colors, the Tommy Hilfiger way.

2. Customer Behavior Online and Offline
 

Many companies such as eBayOpens a new window and AmazonOpens a new window use AI with machine learning (ML) to understand user and shopper intent and help sellers create product listings using natural language processing (NLP) with pattern matching.

Sentiment analysisOpens a new window , a branch of Natural Language Processing (NLP) is helping marketers increase brand awareness, brand advocacy, customer satisfaction, and customer expectations by analyzing their opinion and sentiments when they engage on social media or e-commerce platforms.

Example: The multinational Spanish banking group, BBVA, analyzed millions of unstructured client commentsOpens a new window to identify frequent topics of discontent, such as branch waiting times, response time, etc. They identified action areas with high potential impact; subsequently, their Mexico office improved their customer satisfaction index by 10 points.

Learn More: 

Customer Service Vs Customer Experience (CX): Key Differences And SimilaritiesOpens a new window

3. Hyper-Personalization
 

AI-based recommender systems have taken personalization to the next level. Using customers’ search and browsing history, shopping patterns, location data, behavior, and preferences, AI can recommend relevant product and services and even personalized contentOpens a new window .

Personalization improves the relevance of the marketing message and makes customers’ search and shopping experiences seamless.

Example: Russian e-commerce giant, Lamoda, restructured its retail workforceOpens a new window to include only one person and AI. The company separated visitors in 160 geographic segments and used metrics such as local weather, past purchase behavior, customers’ preferred brands and colors to recommend products and saw a significant increase in ROI.

4. In-Store Experiences
 

Brick and mortar stores still haven’t lost their charm and brands are leveraging AI to create heightened in-store shopping experiences.

Example: The Amazon GoOpens a new window stores are using AI-powered tracking and monitoring systems to enable cashier-less grocery stores, where the customers are charged on their Amazon account based on the digital footprint of their purchases in the store. Customers enter the store using the Amazon Go app, take the products they want, and go! No lines, no checkout.

Learn More: 6 Customer Experience Examples from Amazon to Inspire YouOpens a new window

5. Logistics and Delivery
 

The scale and complexity of the retail supply chain makes it a cumbersome process. Due to this many companies are now using AI to improve package visibility, predictability in delivery, and package status to better inform customers and sellers. From experimenting with drones to deliver packages, to using ML to optimize delivery routes, AI is gradually becoming involved at every stage of the customer journey.

Example: ClearMetalOpens a new window is developing a predictive intelligence platform that will help predict shipping events, time, and requirements by collating data points from shipment carriers, real-time weather and currency fluctuations. This will transform the delivery tracking process and improve CX drastically.

Innovative Ideas to Improve Customer Experience With Robotics

Another innovative technology that can improve customer experience is Robotics. Robotics can be used with diverse applications to reduce human effort and speed up processes. Let’s see how robotics is being used to drive CX.

1. Automation
 

Robotics is an application to processes that can be automated to improve efficiency and precision. Key areas include production line, manufacturing, warehouse management, shelf management tasks such as sorting, storing, scanning to ease inventory management, and basic customer interactions.

Rob Maille, Head of Strategy and CX, Commerce CX, wrote in a MarTech Advisor articleOpens a new window , “The key word is cognitive load and how do companies reduce it by providing better guidance and overall automation that helps make it easier to use. RPA (Robotic process automation) is a great example of this and is an area that will continue to heat up. As we move into 2019, RPA will become even more disruptive in how industries like retail, manufacturing, supply chain and even finance operate from the ground up.”

Example: Lowe’s partnered with Fellow Robots to build retail robots OSHBot and LoweBot to help customers find specific products in the storeOpens a new window . Customers could use the interactive screen to enter a request or ask the robot simple questions, such as how to find a product on a specific aisle, and in multiple languages.

2. Virtual Shopping Assistants
 

Shopping bots on online platforms such as Facebook Messenger have been around for quite some time. Retail stores are also coming up with innovative ideas to improve customer experience with social bots. These bots can meet and greet customers, provide information, collect customer feedback and double up as shopping assistants to recommend products to customers based on their unique requirements.

Example: ElisaOpens a new window , a Finnish telecom company, partnered with Qmatic to deploy PepperOpens a new window , a humanoid robot. Pepper can interact and engage customers in a personalized and dynamic way by greeting them, redirecting them to the right point of contact, and supporting customers who have purchased online and visit the store for pick-up.

3. Customer Service with Chatbots
 

CX is incomplete without exemplary customer service and chatbots are now an integral part of most companies’ online customer service strategies. Chatbots can retrieve data much faster than humans and reduce the service time for trivial customer issues. If programmed rightOpens a new window , chatbots can connect customers with customer service agentOpens a new window s when necessary. Most brands have a ‘chat now’ button on their online portals that offer 24X7 self-service and support, making their brand interactions simple and quick.

Example: Spotify’s customer service chatbot helps you discover new genres, songs, and artists. It takes customer preferences and listening history into consideration when creating personalized lists.

4. Entertainment
 

Robots are a perfect fit for entertaining customers on the go and to drive engagement. A typical use-case is deploying a robot as a game companion. This drives better engagement and helps brands collect valuable customer information about customer preferences and perception to improve their experience and in turn, sales.

Example: OpenAI’s AI teamOpens a new window recently defeated the reigning world champions, who are human, in DOTA 2 (with a team of five players on each side). Apart from changing the gaming industry, this battle has opened the gates to the next-generation AI of collaborative intelligence, intuition, and training the machine for teamwork.

Learn More: 3 Ways AI Can Enhance Customer Experience and Boost ProfitabilityOpens a new window

Over to You

There is no shortage of innovative ideas to improve the customer experience. If you have access to technology and customer data, a well-researched and data-backed strategy can help you win the CX game. AI and Robotics will not only change the way customers interact with and perceive brands but also disrupt various business processes and become part of an omnichannel approach. Brands must be careful, however, to not ‘dehumanize’ the CX strategyOpens a new window , but strike a balance between man and machine.

We leave you with this exclusive insight by Jeff Epstein, VP of product at Comm100Opens a new window ,

While smarter bots certainly help improve CX, we’ll see the biggest change thanks to bots and humans working together with the help of agent-facing AI. It’s this combination of bots and agents that ensures customers get the right service for the right situation, from either a bot or a human, or from both working in tandem. AI and humans working together will drive the next phase of CX improvements and provide organizations a way to use AI that is low risk, allowing them to realize the promise of AI and meet growing customer demands.

Can you think of other innovative ideas to improve customer experience? Tell us on TwitterOpens a new window or LinkedInOpens a new window or FacebookOpens a new window .