PHOTO: ELENA KOYCHEVA
“The technology itself is used primarily to enhance efficiency, though leading CX firms use AI “to bring a deeper level of customer understanding, driving customization and a personalized journey.” Nine-in-10 survey respondents said since incorporating AI, they had seen measurable improvement in the speed of complaint resolution. Eight-in-10 said AI had enhanced the number of calls they were able to process.
While it’s still early days yet with AI, success stories have started to emerge.
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Rakuten, a Japanese ecommerce firm, has been able to move three quarters of inbound calls to chatbots, greatly increasing the volume of calls the company can handle.
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Canadian mobile telecom carrier Telus was able to offload 40 percent of calls to chatbots, improving service levels and cutting customer wait times from an hour to 2.5 minutes, improving operational efficiency as well as CX. Customer service representative satisfaction also improved.
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Alibaba, the Chinese version of Amazon, used AI-powered chatbots on the company’s Tabao site to handle more than 93 percent of customer queries in 2017, which company officials say would have required 83,000 human agents working around the clock. Alibaba now offers these chatbots as a standalone service.”