Conversational AI Brings New Experiences to Customer Service

By Katie
December 29, 2019

The future of customer service is rapidly evolving. Customer Service has received more attention in the last five years as it’s recognized as a major brand differentiator for today’s companies. If you have good customer service, it means your customers are happy not just with your products but with post-purchase experiences too. This means higher satisfaction and greater revenue, but in order to realize these promises, we must think about how to use emerging technologies to shape the future of customer service.

The Best Customer Service Starts with Great Conversations

Before we can talk about the future of customer service, let’s define what makes great customer service. Think about the last customer service experience you had. Did you get the answers you needed quickly and efficiently? Was it engaging? Did the person on the other side understand your pain points?

At Replicant, we believe the best customer service starts with great conversations. Resolving customer service issues should feel natural and pleasant for your customers. It should feel just like a conversation; a conversation that is fast, accurate, and contextual. If you can resolve customer issues quickly, with the best possible solution in a personal way, you’re already moving towards a better customer experience.

But How do we Deliver Great Conversations?

We used to have great conversations in person with our customers. Face-to-face interactions were the de facto solution for customer service. This became harder as store fronts became digital. Companies grew and customers became global giving rise to the contact center. The contact center meant we could reach our customers globally in a personal and interactive way. We were no longer limited by physical distance and resolving customer issues over the phone with voice opened up new opportunities.

Voice was and still is the most natural and fastest way to communicate with customers. Voice is flexible – you can tailor the conversation to fit the needs of your customer’s issue. Voice is real-time – you can respond to customers immediately. And, voice is interactive – it’s the most personal and emotive way to connect with customers. So in hindsight, investing in robust contact centers made sense.

But, Today’s Customer Service Experience Over the Phone is Broken

If we fast forward to today, things look very different on the phone.

It can be expensive …

Adding call centers is costly and usually requires offshoring as the number of customers grow.

It can be inefficient …

Customer service agents can be your biggest asset, but they’re fatigued by repetitive calls, face high turnover rates, and are expensive to train and retrain.

It can be unsatisfactory …

Customers suffer from long wait times and are usually transferred from one agent to another before getting their issue resolved which leads to frustration and jeopardizes your brand loyalty.

And, Customer Service over the Phone isn’t Evolving Fast Enough with Modern Technologies

With today’s technology, we can talk to devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Home Assistant. We can get driving directions, dictate text messages or play our favorite song all without lifting a finger or tapping a keyboard. Voice is rapidly emerging as the primary user interface for our daily lives, but when it comes to customer service, the closest thing we have in comparison are IVRs (Interactive Voice Response) and IVAs (Interactive Virtual Assistant).

IVR systems have been around for decades and attempt to direct customers to the right agents, sometimes offering limited self-service capabilities. Interactive Voice Assistants (IVA) are an evolution of the IVR and make it “easier” to talk to the computer as you would a person, but in practice, IVAs are often slow and frustrating for the caller. For some companies, IVRs and IVAs have improved call deflection and cost savings, but in most cases, a delightful experience has remained elusive and customers prefer in most cases to speak to a human as quickly as possible.

So, How Can we Reinvent the Customer Service Experience Using Technologies like Conversational AI?

At Replicant, we put a lot of thought into answering this question. From the onset, we’ve aimed to improve customer service by making it easier to scale great conversations with the power of modern technologies. We believe that conversational AI is the next technological advancement that will allow us to redefine customer service, which is why we built Replicant Voice for Service.

Replicant Voice for Service is the world’s first truly self-service experience on the phone that solves tier-1 customer support issues using the power of conversational AI. Just like Agents, Replicant is able to speak with customers in a natural tone, answer questions without delay, and deflect calls to resolve customer issues quickly.

Replicant is fast …

It responds within a second in a pleasant, natural sounding voice just like a human would.

Replicant is accurate …

It provides the right answers and continuously learns to become smarter over time.

Replicant is contextual …

It’s an out-of-the-box solution that integrates with internal systems so that you can capture customer data to provide context before, during and after calls.

Want to see it in action? Listen here.

Replicant Benefits Customers, Agents and Companies

Customers now have a single point of contact that is always on 24/7, accurate, and contextual for every customer service interaction.

Agents have a front line of defense that handles repetitive tasks to help boost productivity and job satisfaction so agents can focus on higher order service cases.

Companies are able to offer elastic customer service while decreasing costs and increasing customer satisfaction.

Now, customers can get answers quickly and seamlessly using the most natural interface, their voice.

Curious to learn how Replicant Voice works? Let’s talk 🙂 drop us a line.