How to Use AI for Marketing to Build Stronger Customer Relationships?
To say that artificial intelligence, or AI, has grown in popularity as a marketing tool over the last few years. In Salesforce’s sixth State of Marketing report, a whopping 84% of marketers reported using AI for marketing — up from 29% in 2018. These same marketers are also finding more ways to apply AI in their work.
Many companies hesitate to use AI for marketing because they worry about it may replace human jobs or become a barrier to connecting personal connections with their customers. But it can provide more creative career experiences and a deeper understanding of the customers you’re serving.
In this blog, I’m going to talk about how AI works in customer relationships and what benefits it could bring to brands and businesses.
How does AI work?
AI simulates how humans think to deliver personalized customer experiences with the scale and efficiency of a machine. It learns from experience to perform tasks as humans do, then uses machine learning to better mimic and automate those tasks. What and how it learns is based on the data it receives. The more data AI gathers, the faster it can adapt to fit the needs of an audience. It’s available 24/7 and is increasingly capable of more complex functions over time. It’s these kinds of capabilities that make artificial intelligence such a powerful marketing solution.
Example of AI for Marketing — Chatbots
Chatbots use NLP to mimic human conversations via text. They streamline conversation, provide 24/7 coverage, and save time for social media and community managers so they can focus on more nuanced communications.
For example, a boutique skincare seller uses chat technology via SMS and Facebook Messenger to help consumers determine their skin type and offer product recommendations, there is no human contact required.
This technology doesn’t just appeal to younger generations, Millennials and baby boomers alike see the value in chatbots.
How do AI Chatbots use conversational marketing to enhance customer relationships?
Round-the-clock, round-the-year support
Customers want service on their terms. Automated customer service can make it possible, Customers can have their inquiries resolved 24 hours a day without having to wait for long periods to get a response. Not only would this go a long way in increasing customer satisfaction and providing excellent customer service, but also improve brand reputation and drive higher customer loyalty.
Personalized user experiences
According to research, 71% of customers want the ability to solve customer service issues by themselves. AI can play a huge role in helping customers find the right information more efficiently. Artificial Intelligence helps analyze customers’ data and key metrics, and recommend products or services to customers based on their browsing preferences. AI is capable of analyzing huge data sets, this enables them to send relevant content to customers at the right time and through the right channels.
Gathering data and providing predictive insights
AI simplifies data gathering and unifies it to create a single customer view, based on the customers’ behavioral patterns. They can easily analyze behavioral patterns and instantly respond to the needs and sentiments of the customers, and recommend items related to the customers that make them feel that every product or service is specifically tailored for them.
My insights
The thing that stood out for me the most was one of my shopping experiences with Amazon. I didn’t receive my parcel, but the notification had shown as “delivered.” I tried to communicate with Amazon Customer Service to explain this problem but was transferred to the AI assistant. The AI listed the problem I might face which included the choice of “Didn’t get it,” I just needed to click the options and answer its questions. The entire problem-solving process took less than five minutes.
Compared with the convenience of Artificial Intelligence, when was the last time I called customer support and navigated through a web of confusing options only to be put on hold for several minutes before I heard these words — “Hello, how may I help you today?” I had to spend more time explaining what happened and the other side had to figure out what the problem was firstly, then spent more time dealing with this problem.
In my opinion, AI can improve the customer service experience and help brands provide strong customer service. Customer service representatives today are tasked to handle a large number of customers’ calls every day. Not only can AI provide prompt answers with fast responses in real-time, but also reduce the burden on human agents by resolving a high number of customer questions with the highest accuracy and human-like behavior. Besides, AI can help businesses cut customer service costs by speeding up response times to achieve resource optimization.
Originally published at https://medium.com/@KathyXue on April 7, 2022.
