How Does Hyper-Personalization Improve CX?

Pedro Andrade at Talkdesk discusses how hyper-personalization, powered by AI, transforms customer interactions by addressing high call volumes, abandonment rates, and satisfaction challenges effectively.

From successfully handling high call volumes and abandonment rates to minimizing customer frustration, businesses need to turn each interaction into a memorable experience; however, the stakes are high and the margin for error is very slim.

Hyper-personalization, powered by generative AI, offers a transformative solution to these problems, resolving performance issues and taking customer experience to unprecedented levels of satisfaction and engagement.

Three Deadly Sins of CX – Abandonment, Call Surges, and Low Satisfaction

Several pain points can dramatically impact both operational efficiency and customer experience:

High Call Abandonment Rates

No one likes to be put on hold, in fact, call abandonment rates are one of the most pressing customer service challenges.

Long wait times often lead to customer frustration, prompting them to hang up before solving their issues.

The longer the wait, the more likely they are to abandon the call, seeking alternatives or simply giving up. Call abandonment not only disrupts service, it’s also a poor reflection of the business’s commitment to customer satisfaction.

High Call Volumes

High call abandonment rates often lead to a vicious cycle of high call volumes. When customers drop their calls due to long wait times, they are likely to call back, hoping for a better outcome.

This repeated calling consumes valuable resources and adds to the call queue bottleneck, inevitably increasing operational costs.

The contact centre becomes overwhelmed, and agents struggle to manage the calls within acceptable timeframes. Plus, the repeated need to explain their issue adds another layer of frustration for the customer.

Low Customer Satisfaction

Often, customers call in with what they perceive to be simple problems that should be resolved quickly and easily.

Navigating complex IVR call flows and dealing with inefficient processes can turn a straightforward issue into a frustrating ordeal. The result is an annoyed and upset customer who is now a churn risk, further impacting the business’s bottom line.

Hyper-Personalization – The Path to Success

Addressing these challenges requires technology that can dynamically adjust to the needs of each customer.

A hyper-personalized customer experience strategy enables companies to send customers to the right channel, streamline workflows, and tailor every step of the customer journey to meet individual needs, improving the overall customer experience.

Injecting AI Into Routing and Orchestration

To solve the problem of high call abandonment rates and customer frustration, businesses need to improve their routing and orchestration strategies.

Navigator supercharges routing with generative AI, creating seamless, context-aware customer journeys. It understands customer intent to make content-based decisions from voice calls and digital messages to automatically create the ideal customer experience for every customer, every time.

This eliminates the need for customers to navigate through a complex, rigid, one size fits all menu of options, reduces hold times, and improves call handling accuracy.

Understanding the Root Causes of Customer Frustration

To truly understand why customers are leaving angry or frustrated, businesses can now go beyond traditional sentiment analysis and identify emotional cues to uncover how customers are feeling and why they feel that way.

Traditional sentiment analysis typically classifies text as positive, negative, or neutral, offering a broad overview of customer emotions.

Mood Insights allows businesses to leverage AI and natural language processing to detect subtleties in tone, context, and language patterns providing deeper insights into specific emotions and complex human feelings such as frustration, gratitude, or excitement.

Unlike basic sentiment analysis, it identifies the intensity and underlying reasons for a customer’s feelings, enabling organizations to respond to their needs effectively and empathetically.

This evolution from simple polarity to a rich emotional understanding greatly enhances the customer experience.

Additionally, by analyzing topics and the complexity of human emotions, businesses can identify the root causes of customer frustration and take proactive measures to address them.

Empowering Agents

Agent training is crucial for delivering a consistent and high-quality customer experience. A combination of training and dynamic Copilot scripting can mitigate complex processes and improve agent performance.

AI-driven smart scripts guide agents during live conversations, ensuring that they provide accurate and helpful information, leading them through challenging situations, and enabling them to deliver consistent and personalized service.

For example, an insurance company uses AI scripts to support claims processing. When a policyholder calls to file a complex claim, the AI script prompts the agent with detailed information about the policy coverage and relevant documentation requirements.

The AI script dynamically adjusts its guidance based on the claim details provided by the customer, ensuring that the agent handles the claim efficiently and accurately.

This approach not only enhances the speed and efficiency of the service but also builds trust with the customer.

Hyper-Personalization in Action

Consider a scenario where a customer misses a connecting flight on their initial leg of travel and reaches out to the airline’s contact centre for help.

Already frustrated, the customer must navigate a series of menu options and endure long wait times to speak with an agent. The hold music, tinny and repetitive, only adds to their growing impatience.

After what feels like an eternity, the call gets through to an agent and the customer explains the missed connection issue and the urgent need to rebook.

Midway through the call, the phone battery dies, forcing the customer to start the process, resigned to navigating the complex menu options all over again.

Following thirty minutes of holding time the customer is able to finish the call but can’t board a flight home until the next morning.

The agent also informs that they can’t assist with hotel accommodations because that’s a different department that needs to be called directly.

The customer’s cycle of frustration won’t end for another round of calling, pressing, and holding.

An AI-powered customer service system could have streamlined the process of rebooking flights and finding hotels, avoiding repetitive calls and long waits. Tools can transform this stressful situation into a positive experience.

The AI-powered system understands the customer’s issue immediately and sends a link so they can change their reservation themselves, as well as provide them the option to speak directly to a reservation specialist.

The customer, hoping for a quick solution, chooses the self-service option and starts navigating through the menu, trying to find a same-day flight. However, after several minutes of searching, no flights are available.

Frustrated, the customer chooses to speak with a human agent. The agent quickly scans the information gathered from the call up until that moment and confirms that there are no more flights for the day.

In addition to capturing the customer’s sentiment, Mood Insights understands how the customer feels and why their frustration is growing.

With these insights, it automatically adjusts the call’s workflow, pushing information about nearby hotels to the agent.

The agent proactively offers to make a reservation and arrange transportation to the hotel. The customer has to stay overnight, but the airline’s customer service department ensures a smooth and seamless experience that the customer appreciates.

Eliminating unnecessary steps and providing immediate assistance turns a stressful and frustrating situation into a positive experience. That’s how businesses ensure loyalty and build lasting relationships with their customers!

Transform Your CX with Hyper-Personalization

Hyper-personalization solves numerous challenges faced by customer experience providers. Intelligent navigation and nuanced mood insights improve both customer experience and operational KPIs.

AI-powered technologies empower businesses to tailor every step of the customer journey to reduce hold times, lower call abandonment rates, and enhance customer satisfaction.

This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of Talkdesk – View the Original Article

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Talkdesk is a global customer experience leader for customer-obsessed companies. Our contact center solution provides a better way for businesses and customers to engage with one another.

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Author: Talkdesk