AI Brings High Hopes for Better Retail Customer Experiences

The retail industry is undergoing a significant transformation driven by the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence. A recent Metrigy study found that 34% of retailers believe this year will be a turning point in the acceptance of AI for the customer experience (CX).

The study also confirmed a growing acknowledgment among retailers that not using or expanding their use of AI for CX will put them at a competitive disadvantage. One of the key drivers of this expected rapid adoption of AI as a CRM element is the ability to have a human-like conversation with a computer.

A more limited version of AI has been in use for 40 years. Now, recent advances in ChatGPT and generative AI for the first time have given corporate executives hands-on experiences with the technology themselves, observed Alan Ranger, VP of marketing at conversational AI developer Cognigy. That exposure has solidified their recognition of its highest value for customer service and experience.

The problem with the newfound rush for integrating AI into CRM platforms, he believes, falls on the mid-level workers. They are in the untenable position of using the new technology at the behest of all the hype and expectations from their bosses and customers.

“They have no real idea of what to do with it and how to actually deliver it because they have all seen the horror stories,” Ranger told CRM Buyer.

Focus on Education, Not AI Performance

To that end, Cognigy is helping retailers and CRM users wrap their arms around AI to change the customer experience radically. Education is the solution to removing mixed messages about what AI in business is all about, according to Ranger.

Last year, his company focused entirely on education. This year, people are beginning to understand the difference between what was always called conversational AI, which is structure-built chatbots and voice bots doing a specific task, and tasks powered by generative AI.

“We have seen a huge demand now for the traditional sort of conversational AI products to solve a specific problem within a business. We are seeing that in retail, but universally across the board and in retail, it is mostly around customer service, post-sales,” he noted.

The majority of applications target customer questions about order status and returns. For those use cases, resolving those situations does not require much intent. According to Ranger, you can do that with a well-built conversational AI chatbot or voice.

Assistive Agent Systems Improve Human-AI Collaboration

Despite all the hype about generative AI’s need for more guardrails and not divulging personal data, most everybody now has some sort of agent copilot and agent system to use with it, offered Ranger. It is used to understand the conversation happening between two humans. In addition, it is applied as a coach in between sayings to understand the customer’s intent.

In essence, the AI tells the humans how to resolve the issue and suggests subsequent actions to help the live agent in the background.

“That is what we are seeing the real growth of Generative AI, but because of the whole sort of hype about AI, it has boosted the conversational side of things,” he said.

Managing the Integration of AI Elements

Ranger is certain the technology now exists to provide that perfect personal assistant for the retail environment. But he does not think anybody is brave enough to deploy it, whether it is customer-facing or not, just yet.

Why? By linking conversational AI with generative AI, the chatbot can understand everything sent to it. You can put guardrails around it so that it only gives answers based on what you want to ground it on.

“But I don’t think anybody’s quite there,” he cautioned. “That will be a little while.”

He predicts agent assistants will be deployed to work with live customer service agents in the background. The next step, particularly for retailers, is to find ways to turn those agent-facing AI chatbots into consumer-facing performers because call centers are not available 24/7.

“I think the only thing missing is understanding that there is too much confusion in the market. A lot of education about that is needed,” he urged.

All of the traditional contact center vendors are focusing on agent assistance, which is for everybody. That is giving clarity to what has been quite a confused group of adopters, he added.

Does CRM Need More AI Integration?

According to Ranger, CRM needs to orchestrate its thinking. It is one thing to have a clever voice-understanding chatbot that can have a conversation; it is another to have one that actually does things for you.

“So you want the action into the CRM,” he said.

For example, one of Cognigy’s customers, Allianz — a large German insurer, has an AI agent to answer every call. It understands why the person is calling and does the identification and verification.

Then, it goes to the back-end CRM and gets all the data needed before the human agent speaks to the customer. That conversation starts with a warm handover from the AI agent.

“I can see it being an integrated thing where it is fully orchestrated, where you have the AI interrogating the CRM to come back with the right answers to help the agent rather than the agent having to put the person on hold,” said Ranger.

But the human is still in front of it, making sure it gives a final accuracy check to the customer encounter, he added.

CRM Education 101 Opens New Doors to AI Uses in Industry

Cognigy last year added a new piece to the education puzzle to counter the excessive market hype about AI integration into CRM systems by distributing a free ebook.

The company gave presentations to client leadership and prospects at least once a week to explain how everything fits together. The original version focused on generative and conversational AI across all industries.

More recently, Cognigy expanded its educational concept on AI in CRM with ebooks examining specific industries’ issues. According to Ranger, the goal is to address the confusion and hype, providing practical guidance on leveraging the new technology.

“It certainly helped us in the education stages because we were just getting people saying, ‘Look, we know nothing; just come talk to us,'” he said about the success of the ebooks. “Now, when they engage with us, they are much better informed.”

Ranger noted that the ebooks are making customers think about the use cases we solve rather than the technology and ponder what they can do with it.

Debunking the AI in CRM Hype

A typical concern about AI is its potential to take over completely, eliminating human oversight or working as partners. Ranger does not see that scenario ever happening.

“We don’t have a single customer that reduced the number of human agents because of the use of their AI. The reason is that [since the pandemic] you can’t get good human agents for love or money anywhere,” he reasoned.

Nobody wants to go back to the contact center. He sees that job response worldwide everywhere he goes. Everybody complains that they cannot get good human agents, even outsourcing jobs offshore.

“What they are trying to do is use AI as a catch-up and fill in the gaps where they do not have a human agent to be there. AI takes away some of the tasks humans do not need to do, like identifying, verifying, and understanding the intent,” he explained.

The result is to make the most of the humans you recruited and retained and just make their jobs much better by giving them the tools they need, Ranger concluded.