Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an umbrella term that covers and influences a wide range of tools and technologies. From machine learning to natural language processing, AI is changing how businesses operate and interact with their customers.
Customer success teams are no exception. In fact, AI is already starting to play a role in customer success operations.
This is possible due to the all-encompassing features of AI and its ability to approach consumer journeys from multiple points of view. Let's take a look at some of the ways AI is changing customer success and what this could mean for your business.
What Is Customer Success? Definition and Key Stats
Some companies struggle with customer success because it's a vague term that deals with many touchpoints. That's why it is important to define the concept before learning how AI is changing it.
By definition, customer success means anticipating customer challenges or questions and proactively providing solutions and answers. It's a process that ensures your customers get maximum value from your product or service. Customer success involves different variables:
- Actively managing customer interactions
- Setting and tracking goals for each customer
- Measuring their success over time
Customer success teams work with customers to make sure they're using the product correctly, troubleshooting any issues they have, and helping them achieve their desired results.
This is critical because reports show that nearly
5 Ways AI Influences Customer Success
Customer success is vital for your business, but what does AI have to do with it? It turns out that AI has started influencing customer success on many different levels, but we will show you the top five impact factors.
- AI Enables Social Listening
AI-enabled social listening platforms allow businesses to glean insights from large volumes of social media data more quickly and effectively than humans alone could.
By automatically identifying, parsing, and aggregating relevant data points from across all major social media platforms, these platforms provide businesses with an instantaneous overview of how their brand is being discussed online. AI-powered social listening helps businesses track and analyze online conversations about their brand, products, and services.
This can provide valuable insights into customer sentiment, product popularity, and competitive intelligence. Businesses can use social listening data to better understand what customers want and need.
It allows companies to identify potential areas for product innovation and gain a competitive edge by understanding what their competitors are doing wrong (or right).
- It Strengthens Customer Service Through Chatbots
The use of AI in customer service has revolutionized the way businesses interact with their customers.
One of the most significant advantages of using AI for customer service is that it allows businesses to automate repetitive tasks, which frees up customer service reps to provide more personalized support.
Additionally, chatbots can collect data about customer interactions which can be used to improve product design and marketing efforts. Finally, the use of AI-enabled chatbots makes it possible for businesses to offer 24/7 support at a fraction of the cost of employing a human customer service team.
- AI Takes Data Analytics to a Higher Level
Businesses use AI in customer-related data analytics to help identify patterns in consumer behavior. The goal is to use this information to improve customer engagement, loyalty, and retention.
Besides that, AI provides opportunities to analyze customer data in ways that were not possible before. For example, natural language processing can be used to identify the sentiment of customer feedback, which can then be exploited to improve customer service.
AI also makes it possible to process large amounts of data very quickly. This means that more data can be analyzed in less time, which leads to better insights and decisions.
- It's Possible to Create Personalized Offers
Personalization is vital to the success of modern businesses. That's why AI comes in handy as it can lead to better decision-making and help create personalized offers for each consumer individually.
AI can gather data about customers' preferences and past purchases. This data can then be used to create targeted offers that are likely to be of interest to individual customers. At the same time, AI is able to monitor customer interactions with websites and other digital channels.
It represents a valuable source of information because it allows businesses to identify which products or services are most popular among their customers and what sorts of offers are most likely to result in sales.
- AI Enables Trend Prediction
AI represents an extremely powerful tool for predicting trends in business. By analyzing large data sets, AI can identify patterns and trends that humans would never be able to see on their own. This can help businesses make strategic decisions about where to allocate resources, what products to develop, or even which markets to enter into.
In other words, agile companies can prepare well in advance for coming trends and capitalize on them before their competitors do. And it's not just an option anymore - it's a necessity in order to stay ahead of the curve.
Metrics That Can Prove AI Is Working
People in business often say that you can't improve what you don't measure. This is exactly why we want to reveal the metrics that can tell you whether AI in customer success is really working or not. Here are the most important metrics you should keep an eye on:
-
Revenue generation: If your revenue is increasing steadily quarter over quarter, it's a good indication that AI is helping you boost sales and grow your business.
-
Customer acquisition costs: This metric will tell you how much you're spending to acquire new customers. If the number is decreasing, it means that AI is enabling you to attract more customers at a lower cost.
-
Customer churn rate: A low churn rate is always a good sign, and it's one of the most important metrics for customer success.
-
Customer lifetime value: This metric tells you how much each customer is worth to your business on average. If the CLTV is increasing, it means that AI is helping you bring in more valuable customers.
-
Customer satisfaction: Measuring customer satisfaction is a must, and you can do it with surveys,
feedback tools , or even social media sentiment analysis. -
Net Promoter Score: The NPS is a popular metric for measuring customer loyalty and satisfaction.
If you track at least a few of these indicators, you will realize that AI is a precious customer success tool for your organization.
Conclusion
AI is changing customer success in a lot of ways. Some of the most important advantages include automating repetitive tasks, providing personalized support, taking data analytics to a higher level, and enabling trend prediction.
Businesses that want to stay competitive need to make sure they are using AI to its full potential in order to better understand their customers and create personalized offers. Are you ready to give it a try?