Unlocking the Power of AI in Enhancing Customer Experience

Imagine a world where customer service goes beyond expectations, leaving an indelible mark on every individual. This extraordinary future is now a reality, thanks to the remarkable capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Say goodbye to mundane interactions and welcome an era of experiences where AI algorithms delve deep into customer insights, predict their needs, and deliver tailor-made solutions.

With tireless AI-driven chatbots working round-the-clock, envision instant resolutions, seamless engagements, and a league of supercharged agents equipped with real-time sentiment analysis, ready to swoop in and save the day! It's time to elevate your customer experience to new heights by embracing AI as your ultimate secret weapon for customer service success.

AI-powered CRM

Today, AI-powered CRM systems offer organizations advanced analytics and predictive modeling capabilities. Leveraging AI algorithms, businesses gain deeper insights into customer behavior, preferences, and buying patterns. These insights enable businesses to identify trends, forecast customer needs, and make data-driven decisions to enhance the overall customer experience. AI-powered CRM also facilitates automated and personalized communication, ensuring customers receive relevant information at the right time, further enriching their experience.

AI role in social customer service

AI plays a significant role in social customer service. AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants handle routine inquiries, providing instant responses and assisting customers 24/7. These intelligent bots utilize natural language processing (NLP) to understand and interpret customer queries, offering real-time resolutions or seamlessly escalating complex issues to human agents. By automating repetitive tasks, AI frees up human agents to focus on more complex and value-added interactions, ultimately amplifying customer satisfaction.

Furthermore, AI empowers businesses to proactively engage with customers on social media platforms. Through sentiment analysis, a pivotal AI capability, organizations can monitor real-time social media conversations, identifying customer sentiments, concerns, and trends. Understanding customer sentiments allows businesses to respond promptly and empathetically, resolving potential issues before they escalate. AI-driven social listening tools also provide valuable insights into customer feedback, enabling organizations to identify areas for improvement and deliver more personalized experiences.

AI-powered personalization emerges as a game-changer in customer experience. By analyzing vast amounts of customer data, AI algorithms generate personalized recommendations, offers, and content tailored to each individual customer's preferences. This level of personalization not only delights customers but also drives higher engagement, conversion rates, and customer loyalty.

In conclusion, by harnessing the power of AI, organizations unlock valuable customer insights, automate routine tasks, and provide seamless, personalized experiences that enhance customer satisfaction and foster loyalty. Embrace AI in your customer service strategies today to stay ahead in the ever-evolving, customer-centric landscape. Let AI be the catalyst for revolutionizing your approach to customer service and witness the extraordinary transformation it brings.

 

Social Customer Service - a Company-Wide Value

In the world of social, where everyone is engaged in at least a few social platforms, the value of social customer service changes, becoming everyone's job, regardless of employee position. Social channels present an amazing opportunity for companies to engage with existing and potential customers. And when many employees are involved in delivering customer service across social channels, it becomes a strategic opportunity for the company.

It's clear, that not everyone can handle the customer message to the end, they can at least pass the issue to a trained ear to figure out what actions need to be taken to help and satisfy the customer. Besides having skilled, knowledgeable people behind company's social media handles, whole staff should be trained for delivering minimum care when occasion occurs.

What is the Secret Sauce to Great CX?

Well, the secret sauce to great CX is providing fast support and when many people are in the game, success is inevitable. Social customer care gives you the ability to think carefully about the reply and do all that in a casual, friendly conversational voice.

People trust other people more than company official representatives. Side help can lead to better results, agree?

What is the impact of your team in your organization? Do you coach and mentor all employees to be ready for minimum support? Can they all become key contributors by solving problems independently?

Keep in mind that omnichannel customer service starts with every single employee and only ends with technology, coach employees for primary knowledge readiness and you will win the competitive game.

Twitter Usage Best Practices

Excited to speak about my favorite social platform – actually Twitter became the source of my social success. It’s so great when your followers’ number grows and they are really your targeted audience waiting for some valuable content from your side every day. Love Twitter! Are you in the same boat with me? If yes, let’s go to some interesting facts on Twitter usage.

Hashtag Usage 

We all know that tweets without hashtags are almost useless. But bear in mind to keep the hashtags to a minimum - 1 or 2 will get you 21 percent more engagement than if you add 3 or more. Hashtags can occur anywhere in the tweet without limitations – at the beginning, middle, or end, the only important thing is to use hashtags relevant to the topic.  

Image Usage 

Along with hashtag usage, keep in mind to compose tweets with images. This gets twice more engagement than those without. Images catch attention as if making the reader anxious to see the content.    

URL Usage

Tweets can be composed with or without a URL. But the ones that include links are 86 percent more likely to be retweeted.

Topic Usage In general Twitter has no limitation of topic usage – you can speak of whatever you desire. In my opinion, it’s more useful to choose a few topics and make them your favorite ones. In this way you become a fan of the topic and you have a proper audience.

Character Usage
140 character usage is the only limitation on Twitter. But this doesn’t meant that we should use it all. The optimal tweet size is 120 characters, which makes it easy for everyone to RT, share, comment. Shorter tweets get more engagement that long ones. Tweets with less than 100 characters get 17 percent more engagement.

Mobile Usage
It’s not a secret that mobile engagement changed the online presence. Twitter says that 60 percent of its active user base accesses the service via mobile devices. Compete found that 18 to 34 year olds are 21 percent more likely to be logging into Twitter primarily via a mobile device.

Date Usage
Many of us use social platforms (mostly for brand engagement) throughout the week. Only 19 percent of brands tweet on the weekends, Twitter engagement is 17 percent higher on those days for brands. So it’s wise to use some services, which allow you to schedule tweets. It makes your life easier, you can schedule for weekends, whole week, why not for a month?

80 percent of world leaders use Twitter. What about you?

# Hashtag How-to’s

Today's topic covers some interesting information about the popular symbol used to mark keywords or topics – the hashtag and some ways to use it effectively.

Hashtag Origin

We all do remember that # symbol has been a phone button as well as a pound sign. The hashtag was first brought to Twitter on August 23, 2007 by Chris Messina, who stated: The very ephemerality of hashtags is what makes them easy and compelling to use in a fast-moving communication medium like Twitter.

Hashtag Platforms

Hashtags are being used more and more each day and in the nearest future may appear in all social platforms. Present supported platforms for hashtags are: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Tumblr and Pinterest. But the leading platform is still Twitter.

Hashtag Filtering

There are three ways to filter hashtags in Twitter:

• The "Top" option shows the most popular posts. It also includes posts from users you don't follow
• The "All" shows you every tweet that uses the specific hashtag in real time
• The "People you follow" only displays results from the users you are following

Hashtag Creation
Some hashtags became an inseparable part of our routine and their number is increasing with an enormous speed. Everybody can create unique hashtags, concerning company/brand, content of the message.

Hashtag Usage

While using hashtags in the message anyone who searches for that hashtag may find your post. In other words, hashtag becomes a clickable link, so it’s advised using hashtags in every message.

How to be more effective while using hashtags? Ok, tweets with hashtags get twice more engagement. But don’t spam with hashtags overtagging the tweet. It’s recommended to use 1-2 hashtags for every tweet, no more, as the tweet should contain less than 100 characters. In this case people, who want to RT, will have some space for doing so. It’s also proved that short tweets get 17 percent more engagement. And finally DON’T use long hashtags to be reached by many people.

Use hashtags properly and you’ll increase your online success!

 

Twitter – Best Social Platform in Response Time

It’s not the first time I’m impressed by Twitter usage.  As I’m responsible for social media in the company I work, I decided to tweet to @CrunchBase with the company issue and got a response back in 30 minutes. I was so happy, I imagined sending an email and waiting for the response for hours or even days. Let’s not forget that there are also companies who never reply.

So, every time I have a problem with any company, product or service, the first thing that comes to my mind is Twitter as the quickest, reliable and friendly solution.

"81% of Twitter users expect a same-day response to questions and complaints aimed at brands" (Forbes)

As of March 2013, 99% of brands are on Twitter, and 30% have a dedicated customer service handle, mentions a study by Simply Measured. At the same time Socialbakers publishes a list of the top fastest responding brands on Twitter, where Halo BCA, is the fastest responding brand worldwide. It took 3 minutes to respond the request – fast than anyone ever!

By responding to user questions quickly, every company can resolve different issues and avoid negative opinion from spreading. This is the best customer service we used to mention as a priority in today’s innovative world.

Many companies dedicate full-time employees to respond on Twitter. So if your company is still missing Twitter, it’s high time to create a profile and very soon your company will surely benefit from it. Make it easy for your customers to connect quickly and receive a helpful response.  

It’s all about customers’ delight as well as your company’s prosperity!

Social Customer Service – Keeping Your Fans in the Loop!

If you’re looking for your customers, you should jump on social platforms – a place where most of them live. Unfortunately, not all businesses take advantage of social media customer care yet. Although there is a tendency to its usage year by year and I’m sure very soon it will become a must.

Once I mentioned that for business success we should consider social channels not only a must, but also something like “useful and pleasant”. 

The new research showcases statistics for the popular social networks ideal for marketers in the US, where Facebook comes first, then Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.  

Key elements of social customer care

The first important thing about social customer service is tracking your presence in all the platforms you use. As you have no right to miss anything, set alerts if you are short of time to check the messages all the time.

Now when you received an inquiry or a complaint, be quick to respond. Remember - in the social media two days are equal to two weeks. Politeness and patience are the next useful attitudes while dealing with any type of customers.

Another specific feature is being informative. Update your fans with every single renewal or failure. Anyway many of them will be informed about problems, so it’s reasonable to learn about everything from you. This can also prevent their being angry or dissatisfied with your service. Just a short note can change their attitude towards you.

Why not reward your best fans? A great idea used by many businesses already! Imagine receiving a message “Best customer/fan of the week/month!” – so pleasant and motivating! Just remembered while posting in  DZone I used to receive “Best post of the day”, which was also retweeted in DZone’s Twitter and made me twice happy.

The future of customer service is quite obvious – so if you still stay out from social networks, it’s high time to show your presence – keeping your online reputation up!

Present Face of Advertising

It was so funny to read about Radio-Television-Internet evolution. You start to realize how much has changed during one decade. It took 38 years to reach 50 million users via Radio, 13 years via Television and… only 4 years via Internet. Today there are lots of families who don’t watch TV at all or listen to the radio. They can find everything in the internet – latest news, films, music and even relatives and friends (although I don’t like the last part “relatives and friends” as it leads to a lonesome life, but I’ll speak about it in one of my future posts).

It’s become easier to target and reach an audience directly, and the traditional television, radio and magazine commercials advertising changed to different channels, like mobile, social networks which target a much more broad audience, raising brand awareness in a short period of time. Old methods are no longer essential in the ever-growing digital world.

Now we deal with tech-savvy consumers who are more in control. As a result, it became more difficult for advertisers to keep consumers interested in the brands. They should come up with innovative strategies creating messages that grab the attention of the audience. Add this is not at all easy – find right consumers, create a right message, choose the right time, and finally provide a great customer service.

“74% of today’s customers use at least three channels when interacting with a company for customer service”, according to Ovum. After all most companies are still using stand-alone, single channel experiences, which irritates many customers, they want to be heard instantly.

Note that 90% of all purchases are subject to social media influence. So let’s be active, creative, interesting and outstanding but at the same time realistic - here what our customers want from us!

Be Where Your Customers Are!

Gone are the times of waiting on the phone to talk to a rep or waiting for an email response. Multi-channel marketing replaced many different activities and positioned in the first place.

“72% of online American adults now use social networking sites” (PewResearch Center)

Is it really so important to be where customers are and why?

The reason is that you should be in all the places where your customers are searching for information and help them find it, answer all their questions and do this as fast as possible. Customers raise their issues through social media and they don’t like to wait. If you’re late, you lose your customer – that’s the reality.

25% of consumers who complain about products on Facebook or Twitter expect a response withing 1 hour (AmericanExpress OPEN Forum)

Being on social platforms not only gives you direct access to your customers, but also gives your customers direct access to you.

“97% of customer issues can be resolved by proactive social intervention. On top of that, 40-50% of those customers end up saying positive things about the company online” (Dell Investigation).

Whether these are social media channels, different forums, blogs, comments section of articles written about your company, you should be everywhere and be ready to take action.

And which social channels to use? Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are must-channels for nearly every field.

“Facebook has 1.11 billion monthly active users ” (Facebook)

“61% of social media users primarily use LinkedIn for professional networking” (Lab42)

“Twitter has over 550 million users” (StatisticBrain )

From my own practice, I can say that I made great relationships with many authorities in my field via Twitter  and I become happy with every new thousand followers I have.

I cannot ignore Google+ too, as once I noticed to have the most link clicks from this channel.

“70% of brands have presences on Google+ ”(Simply Measured)

Pinterest? Yes, it also became a very popular one and the number of users is rapidly growing.

“Pinterest has around 50 million users” (Reuters)

To conclude I’d like to say that social channels are not only a must, but should also be something like “useful and pleasant” – that’s the secret to your success!

Make Your Customers’ Day or They Will Make Yours!

“Make your customer’s day”- a well-known statement used for all customer types. And many people will agree if we don’t make our customers happy, they can make our lives complicated. What can be worse than a negative word-of-mouth? Lost customers not only affect your business, but also prevent from attracting new customers.

But keep in mind that unhappy customers are like competitors, they give you an opportunity for change and improvement, they can even give birth to new ideas. Win back every single customer or it will cost your business lots.

In evidence to this I’d like to share an Infographic with some stats on poor customer experience and its cost:

Twitter - Build Your Brand Awareness!

Twitter became one of the most popular social platforms used by the great part of the companies worldwide. It’s used for broadcasting, engagement, content sharing, driving traffic.

Many companies have more than one twitter account (Dell has 44 Twitter accounts.) Anyway statistics shows that personal accounts have more followers than companies. Here you can see the statistics of the top Twitter accounts for the year 2013.

It was so interesting to read some facts about Twitter that I decided to put the most important ones here. (Most stats provided by Twitter via Hubspot.)

So…

• Twitter has 105,779,710 registered users
• 300,000 new users sign up per day
• There are over 100,000 Twitter applications
• Twitter receives 180 million unique visitors per month
• 37% of active Twitter users use their phone to tweet
• 63% of Brands have multiple accounts
• 97% of major brands use Twitter(Apple does not use Twitter or any other social media)
• There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%)
• New York has the most Twitters users, followed by Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco and Boston
• 21% of users have never posted a Tweet

Did you know?

• The best time to tweet if you want to be retweeted is on Friday at 4 p.m. EST (says Social media scientist Dan Zarrella)
• It’s recommended to use a maximum of two hashtags per tweet
• Weekends are the best time to reach customers on Twitter
• Tweets with media (a photo/video) get 3 to 4 times more engagement than those without
• Twitter is good for busy hours (7AM-8PM). This, of course, will depend on your target audience and company type, but mostly it works.
• Even though the tweet can contain 140 characters, try to use 100 characters (120 at maximum) to make it retweetable. First of all it attracts attention and, secondly, people can add their comments when retweeting.

In one of my next posts I’ll try to put some great free Twitter analytics tools that I ever used to measure Twitter effectiveness.

Sources:

http://www.firsttracksmarketing.com/social-media-marketing/new-twitter-usage-information.html

http://brandconsultantasia.com/2013/08/19/further-proof-that-you-need-twitter-to-build-your-brand/

http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/

Enhance Customer Service Reputation

Most businesses understand and value customer loyalty, but it can be a challenge to implement strategies which inspire loyalty in their customers. Knowing and understanding the customers’ needs – this is the basic driver behind successful business. The more you know about your customers, the more effective your efforts will be.

Customers want good service – so much so that they are willing to pay more for a product if they are assured of receiving good service along with it. By providing that level of service, businesses can transform many first-time visitors into loyal long-term customers, increasing sales and inspiring referrals from satisfied customers – critical components of ongoing prosperity and success.

However, although much is spoken about the importance of a good customer service, some research suggests that little progress is being made towards improvements in this area:

“The surveys and research available for major markets worldwide make it clear that customer satisfaction indexes haven’t really improved for most industries over the last ten years. In fact, they have only kept steady or even declined”. Seven Customer Contact Trends 2015

Social Media Role

Today, social media plays a strong role in many people’s lives, resulting in customers’ attitude and experiences reflected across different social platforms. While no company likes to be publicly disgraced, when a bad customer experience is made public via social media, a new opportunity is presented. Now a rep has a chance to turn the disgruntled customer into a loyal one by solving the complaint in a good manner.

Research indicates that 62% of customers used social media for customer service, and 47% of social media users said they “actively seek” customer service through social media. 30% of customers prefer social media to the traditional customer service phone call. And 55% expect a response that same day.

Beyond reacting and responding, nowadays many companies use social media to proactively inform their customers about existing problems, and the corresponding resolutions, and in this way avoid complaints.

A reputation for good customer service has become a key factor for businesses. A good social media customer service strategy will ensure success in this area.

Lead Generation – a challenge or a must?

Every now and then we hear about getting new customers, gaining customer loyalty, winning more customers, converting leads into customers, filling sales funnel, etc. and all this is about lead generation.

Lead generation is one of the most critical and challenging components for any business. It’s proved to be responsible for 42% of total sales. Lead generation combines many activities in it, starting with setting objectives → getting visitors → converting them to leads and a good follow up. 

“60% of the marketers name lead generation as one of their top three priorities and 26% say it’s their highest priority”

 

“17% of marketers spend 15+ hours a week on lead generation”

 

Lead generation methods can be conducted online and offline. The leads may come from various activities: via the Internet, through calls, through advertisement, list purchase, referrals, telemarketers, and advertisements. Here are some crucial lead generation activities:

Email

• 42% of businesses name email as one of their most effective lead generation channels
• 80.8% of users report reading email on mobile devices

Telephone

•  real-life conversation is the best way to build a connection

Content Marketing

• 81% of businesses have reported their blog as useful or critical to generating leads
• 43% of marketers generated a customer via their blog with less than 10% of total time allocation
•  9% of lead generation companies employ a full-time blogger

Social Media

• 62% of companies say that social media has become a more important source of leads and 53% of businesses have one person dedicated to social media activities at the company
• Marketers rate social media as the second-most important factor (64%) in search, behind only strong content (82%)
• 65% of B2B companies have generated a lead from LinkedIn
• 77% of B2C companies have generated a lead from Facebook
• 40% of marketers report that Google+ is critical to their business
• Businesses with 301 to 1,000 Twitter followers have over 5 times more traffic than those with 1 to 25 followers
• Companies that use Twitter average double the amount of leads per month than those that do not
• 83% of Pinterest users are women. In the U.S., the most popular categories are Fashion, Desserts, Clothes and Birthdays

Trade Shows /Conferences

• 35% of B2B marketers say that ‘live events’ are most effective for lead generation’ pile

Webinars

• 80% of users said they would register for a whitepaper/ebook, while only 31% would register for a webinar

Search Engine Optimization

• 61% of global Internet users research products online
• 57% of B2B marketers say SEO has the biggest impact on their lead generation goals
• 70% of the links search users click on are organic — not paid
• 46% of daily searches are for info on products or services
• 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results

Surely a good budget is needed for all these activities. According to HubSpot survey where 167 marketing professionals answered how they spent their marketing budgets and how effective each technique was in generating sales leads, the budget breakdown was as follows:

Sources: BtoB Magazine, Marketing Charts, HubSpot, MediaPost, Mindjumpers