How AI Intersects with Customer Experience

Jul 10, 2024

How AI Intersects with Customer Experience

How-AI-Intersects-with-Customer-Experience

In this episode of Salesforce Simplified, the topic is AI and what its relationship to customer experience is today and needs to be in the future.

To help us in the discussion, we’re thrilled to welcome back to the podcast Nick Glimsdahl, who is a Senior Account Executive at VDS, a company that specializes in improving contact center operations through a strategic, personalized, and consultative approach. He’s also the host of his own podcast, “Press 1 For Nick” (which is focused on Customer Service, Customer Experience, and Employee Experience), and is a featured contributor for ICMI, a company that works with contact centers to accomplish desired outcomes and prepare them for the future.

Transcription:

Speaker: Thanks for stopping by. This is Salesforce Simplified, the podcast from Ad Victoriam Solutions.

Mike Boyle: Well, good day everyone. I’m Mike Boyle from Ad Victoriam Solutions. Inside this episode of the Salesforce Simplified podcast, the topic is AI and what its relationship to customer experience is today, and what it needs to be in the future. And to, help us with this discussion, we’re thrilled to welcome back to the podcast Nick Glimsdahl, who is a senior account executive at VDS, which is a company that specializes in improving contact center operations through a strategic, personalized, and consolidated approach. He’s also the host of his own podcast, which is called Press 1 for Nick. I highly recommend it. It’s focused on customer service, customer experience, and employee experience. Nick is also a featured contributor for ICMI, which is a company that works with contact centers to accomplish desired outcomes and prepare them for the future. Nick, welcome back to the podcast.

Nick Glimsdahl: Great to have you with us, thanks so much mike. It’s always a pleasure to be here.

Mike Boyle: We had you here as a guest back in August of ’22 and we talked about enhancing customer experience through digital transformation. And I highly recommend our listeners, seek out that episode. You know, Nick, as a salesforce consulting company, Ad Victoriam Solutions is helping our customers every day navigate this new AI space, the AI world. It occurred to me that a big part of that is making sure customer service customer experience continues to be in the forefront of their plans, thus reaching out to you for your expertise. So let’s get the conversation started here. In general, how is AI currently transforming the customer experience landscape across various industries?

Nick Glimsdahl: Yeah, I would say to start, I can’t believe its already been almost two years since I’ve last been here. So I would also encourage all the people that listen to this to continue listening because not only does this fella have an awesome voice, but he also has awesome content. I’ll put the plug in there because I know that as a host we don’t plug enough. But to answer your question around the first question, I think it’s interesting. I think there’s a lot of people who have a lot of thoughts around AI, the buzzwords around AI, and everybody. You go to an event and you can’t throw a stick without hitting ten people that talk about AI, which is good. I think it’s turning into a trillions of dollars business. But ultimately it should be finding ways to identify that customer experience, like where are the friction points of that customer experience? And then reverse engineering that back into the technology that you hopefully can solve for that outcome that you’re hoping to achieve, that could be things like automating tasks. It could be providing quick responses or even personalizing interactions. There’s things that, and maybe we can get into this a little bit later. But you can even do like agent summarization where, instead of inside the contact center, you follow an interaction, and at the end of a chat, that agent is sitting there trying to follow up, write the summary of that interaction, and then hit submit. It’s about, on average, probably one and a half to two minutes long for the length of time that takes. And so what you could do now is use something, an AI solution to auto-summarize that. So it’s listening in real time and it’s transcribing as soon as that interaction is done. And then you have the ability to review it real quick, probably in about 20 seconds, write the disposition, and send that off, which also should be shooting over into Salesforce. You know, the one thing I will say that I think your prospects or even clients will get is if you’re not marrying those two interactions together, the system of record and the system of engagement together, you’re not actually using those to the best of their abilities, right. You’re creating a system of, engagement. It’s a way to build these relationships back and forth. And then I think AI can work on both the Salesforce side and the system of engagement.

Mike Boyle: Well, let’s get into some nitty gritty here. Talk to me about some of the most innovative ways, the innovative uses of AI, and ways that AI is enhancing customer interactions.

Nick Glimsdahl: Yeah, I think some of them are, let’s say, like real-time language translation. I mean, if somebody is speaking in a different language, you have the ability to still speak English or type English to them and receive a response, back, even though they might speak Spanish or German or, or something else. I think that’s really cool. The sentiment analysis is a really good one to analyze feedback and understand what that customer journey is and more that interaction analytics with that sentiment analysis, where you can see throughout that interaction the positive and negative, and neutral sentiments of that interaction. So if I was somebody who’s measuring QA, or even QM for that matter, quality assurance and quality monitoring, you have the ability to search for, instead of listening to two interactions per agent per month, which, is about average, you now have the ability to dig deep, dive into what you’re hoping to achieve. I like that one. I’m trying. You know, when it comes to personalized experiences, like, if somebody has an IVR and it says, hey, are you calling about your delivery tomorrow at Monday at or Monday at 9 a.m. if yes, it is still available. Would you like to reschedule or how else can I help you? And it’s more of that conversational, IVR than it is just saying. Press one for service, press two for sales, and press three for support. And the more personalized that you’re going to get, the differentiated you will be on that experience.

Mike Boyle: This is always something that’s a really big concern for companies when they implement anything new and that’s disrupting operations. How can companies effectively integrate AI into their existing customer service frameworks without disrupting the day-to-day?

Nick Glimsdahl: Yeah, what I would say is there are some, I’m not going to pick on everybody, but there are some people who will say my objective is AI, and so I’m going to go gungho and I’m going to solve, I’m going to drive efficiency so much that I’m not actually focusing on the customer experience and putting in a bot and the bot isn’t trained effectively. But what I would say when it comes to that, the right way to do it is to understand what the needs are. First, start, small. Do a pilot manage projects through phases. Ensure that the AI that you’re bringing into the system or systems, that it’s going to work effectively across these different channels or across these different pieces of software. And then of course, and I think one of the bigger challenges, not just inside of AI, but you think of a CRM or even the contact center, is the training. sometimes you get this amazing tool and you don’t necessarily know how to use it effectively. And so putting the right resources in place, people and training and videos so that people can use the tools effectively to drive the outcomes they’re hoping to achieve.

Mike Boyle: Stay on this a little bit, morgue a little more. What key challenges do businesses face when implementing AI-driven customer service solutions and how do they overcome them?

Nick Glimsdahl: Yeah, I would say some of the challenges are leadership, maybe saying just the fear of the unknown. What happens if, and then you fill in the blank from there, what happens if the bot takes over and they try to sell an SUV for a dollar? What happens if that customer’s expectations are not met and my customers are now ticked off and they can’t get to a human, the fear of an unknown takes over. People. I think people’s, challenges when it comes to data privacy and concerns, somebody’s going to send a nasty gram, from one manufacturer to the other that the cost is too high or I’m going to provide free cost, but the p’s is too expensive. So organizations only know what they know. And so sometimes they have to make an educated decision based off of the information that they have. And I think that’s another challenge, is they’re sitting, they’re walking through the dark with a flashlight, and they’re trying to find the right information and skimming through the marketing and trying to identify what’s actually the right fit for them without just being sold to people. The old saying is people love to buy, but they hate being sold to. And I think the same is true with technology and specifically AI.

Mike Boyle: You briefly touched on this a moment ago, personalizing customer experiences. How can AI help with doing that? And what are some of the best practices for achieving that?

Nick Glimsdahl: Yeah, I think when it comes to, let’s say that it’s a specific group that you’re hoping to target. let’s say that it’s trying, to think of like, you can segment an audience, you can personalize content that goes out, you can have, predictive engagement is something that’s kind of new and fun, that, you can see where people are perusing on your guys’, on the website for, let’s say, an e-commerce or software sales for that matter. And even if somebody is not logged in or downloaded a white paper, you can still follow the interaction or the engagement of that prospect and then send personalized information. Say you’re setting a threshold. Somebody spent time for three minutes on this page, a minute and a half on this page, and they’re in checkout, but they’re kind of waiting. They haven’t really done anything yet. you have the ability to kind of alert that point of that salesperson who is aligned to that specific territory. Send them a 10% discount jump on. And now you’re interacting with that individual and just saying, hey, I see that you are in checkout. Is there anything I can help you with? And that could be the bot process or it could be a human interaction. I think those are really fun. You can prioritize VIP. So if somebody is, you know, it’s, let’s say it’s a, I don’t know, a university. And they’re trying to, it’s part of their foundation. They’re trying to find ways to raise more money. But the big person calls who is their number one contributor. That’s one thing that they don’t want to do. Maybe they’ll just call the cell phone or the president’s office, who knows? But, you have the ability to go right to the top of the queue or go right to that person who they are aligned with. And if that person is not available, they’re sick or they’re out to lunch or they’re off for the day. You go to that next best person, the more personalized that, you can get to. And as a consumer, you think, I just spoke with Mike yesterday and I got Mike again because he’s available. How awesome is this? I feel like they, they care for me. I feel known and valued. So I think those are some of them.

Mike Boyle: The big things you talked about, predictive, engagement there. let’s talk about another kind of predictive if you will, and that’s predictive analytics and the role that AI plays in that. And how can companies better understand customer behavior via predictive analytics? How can they leverage this to improve Their services when it comes to customer behavior?

Nick Glimsdahl: You can analyze patterns, you can look at the trends of the data. There’s a lot of organizations that have data. They have this wealth of dark data that they don’t know what they don’t know, and they’ve looked at this data, they don’t push it into a Tableau awareness thre- bucket or anything like that. They have, or they’re not communicating with Salesforce and the contact center for that matter. So there’s some disconnects. But if you actually have all this information collectively put together, you can analyze the patterns and trends and then you can set thresholds. So if something, let’s say that you’re back to a retail, shop. In the retail shop, somebody keeps calling in, or a group of people calling it at about 805 because marketing sent a coupon, but the coupon QR code is broken. You can now change your IVR, you can change the conversation and say, hey, I, if you’re calling about this, we already know, please, press this button. It can go to another section of the, of the IVR and you can address that accordingly. but the quicker that you get in front of the issue, the better experience that they’re going to have if the power goes out because there’s a thunderstorm, what I want to, and there’s a plethora of people calling in, you can kind of see where they’re, where that’s at and make adjustments on the fly. And if you’re only looking at historical information and historical trends and you can’t actually do anything about it, but with what you’re talking about, you have the ability to analyze it and predict it in real-time.

Mike Boyle: One of the big downsides – and I say that in quotes – to some people, many people actually, when they talk about AI, is the human element. We’ve taken the human element out of things. So how should companies balance the use of AI with human touch points to make sure that, you know, a seamless and, you know, empathetic customer experience continues?

Nick Glimsdahl: I think you touched it, you hit it right on the head. It’s. Somebody, once told me that human is a heart and machine is the mastery. And what I like about that is there’s a lot of mundane tasks that happen for an employee internally or the agent specifically, that could be beneficial. So what it could be is, let’s say it’s a next best action. You take a knowledge base and you’re building it up, and you have this plethora of information. Instead of hitting control f and searching for it, it populates in real-time. If somebody is speaking or it’s a chat or an SMS, it’s making a recommendation in real time for that next best action. So if somebody’s saying, I would like to cancel my service, I would need a password reset, I need to do X, Y, and Z. If you have a knowledge base article about that, it’s going to populate that. Awesome, right? AI cannot provide that empathy, it cannot provide emotion. So AI should be handling routine tasks. Humans should be handling the complex and the emotional interactions. If I’m trying to file a claim, or if somebody has life insurance policy and the wife calls in because the husband happens to pass away, the last thing I want to do is deal with an AI. I want to talk with a human, and I want them to not care about how long we’re on that interaction. I just want them to solve my problem. And then from the company or the agent’s perspective, you just want to be present, you want to provide as much empathy as you can. You want to sit with them, you want to care for them, you want to answer all those questions, maybe answer some questions that they might not know that they have, so help them see around the corner and guide them through that journey. So, ah, I think there’s a huge disconnect on some organizations, that tend to lean one way or the other.

Mike Boyle: Another topic that comes up and not a whole lot of attention, I feel, gets paid to it. But that’s the question about ethical considerations. What, ethical considerations should companies keep in mind when they deploy AI into a customer experience management situation?

Nick Glimsdahl: I think transparency is key. Right. First off, don’t pretend that you should be, that you’re pretending, to be human when you’re clearly a bot. Don’t be, you know, when it comes to data privacy, making sure you’re very clear on what’s happening and what’s not happening, where this information is going or where it’s not going. You know, I’ve even seen where there’s bias in the AI algorithm, so making sure that you are vetting that, so that’s not the case. And again, like I said, you know that transparency is key. So if you explain what you do and you’re saying, we’re here to help, and this AI solution, whatever it is, let’s say it’s in chat. And, hey, I’m Frank the chatbot for ABC company ABC Mortgage. And the ABC mortgage company is saying, you know, I’m here to help. If you ever need somebody, all you needed to do is type in human beings. You probably don’t want to type that, but human being, and it goes to that next available person, with all the information that you provided, so you don’t have to repeat yourself. Again, how can I help you? Right? And so you’re providing the transparency, and you know, that if, hopefully, it can solve my problem in the channel of choice, hopefully, that AI bot is trained well enough so it’s contained inside that bottom or the chat, but if it doesn’t provide it back with the human. So I think just that transparency is so key on all of the things I mentioned.

Mike Boyle: Small to mid-size businesses, Nick, they’re probably out there scratching their heads, going, I don’t have all of the resources that a big company has with AI. How can I get into this? How can I leverage AI in a customer experience without all those big resources of the bigger companies? How can the small to mids do that?

Nick Glimsdahl: It’s such an interesting topic because I just had breakfast with a buddy yesterday, and I was talking about just, the overall customer, experience, customer service, and what all of that entails. And he’s a small business. He’s probably got, I don’t know, 30 employees and he’s like, how in the world do I like what you’re saying? But how do I put all that together? And how do you educate this SMB [Small to Mid-Size Business] space? Because I can’t afford a six-figure investment into my space. And I said, do you know your customer journey? Do you understand the customer journey from the start, from prospecting, hitting the discovery, understanding who you are as an organization, and what value you can bring? And where are the friction points? Is it from sales to project management? Is it from project management or to customer success to project management to implementation? Where are those friction points from the consumer’s perspective? Like start there before you ever get into AI. And then I think you can put a chatbot on for fairly cheap. You can leverage AI, when it comes to, like I said, that agent summarization doesn’t cost a whole, whole lot, but it will drive efficiencies and it will keep that headcount down. Ultimately, the goal is not to remove headcount, but it’s to, when you continue to grow, you don’t need to add additional head coat as quickly as you had before, but you know that I would say, like, lean on people like, like VDS, like our team, but also leave lean on people like you guys as well. And maybe there’s a collective conversation to identify what the outcomes you’re hoping to achieve. Like don’t start with the technology and work backward. Start with the business outcomes. Start with the customer experience. Look at the data that you have and then work from there. And then have a trust, some type of trusted advisor, if that’s the manufacturer or the partner to help you guide you through that journey, and then set realistic expectations about, there’s a lot of people that say, oh, your ROI is x multiple. If you just implement this AI solution and be, very weary, but also, you know, test it if they allow you to do that.

Mike Boyle: Just one more question for you, Nick, but it is going to require you pulling out your crystal ball. Okay, let’s talk about the future… future trends that you foresee in the intersection of AI and customer experience. How should companies prepare for those developments?

Nick Glimsdahl: So, like I said, I think it’s, what, a $3 trillion industry where people are putting more into AI than they have ever, and that will continue to increase. I would also say that customers’ expectations will continue to increase. And so finding ways to be, and differentiate on who you are as an organization is important. so I think that the advanced personalization is going to escalate. I think that the increase of the voice AI is going to increase. I think the visual AI is also going to be very something, that people are going to lean on. The one thing I actually see that I haven’t seen anybody do yet, but maybe even do avatars that are integrated with your AI or with your knowledge base where it pop, pops up on your website and it just says, hey, my name’s, you know, Pam, on behalf of VDS, how can I help you? And it’s literally communicating with you and it looks like a real human being, but you have the ability to put it on your website, on your social media platforms, and it’s selling for you on your behalf 24 by seven. I think that the cross-channel and the data with dashboards are only going to improve. And I think there’s going to be something that I haven’t thought about coming out in three to five years that I’m still going to be blown away by with all of the advancements and how quick they’re coming. So, those are just a few that I’m excited about.

Mike Boyle: Well, we’re not going to have to wait three to five years. There’s our next podcast. You’re just going to have to come back.

Nick Glimsdahl: Perfect. It’ll just be Mike, and Nick’s avatar communicating with each other.

Mike Boyle: There you go. Nick Glimsdahl, thank you so much for coming back to the Salesforce Simplified podcast. Enjoyed this. You will be coming back, my friend.

Nick Glimsdahl: Thanks so much, Mike.

Mike Boyle: And if you’d like to learn a little bit more about Nick, I highly, highly, highly recommend that you visit his podcast page, which is press one. That’s the number one, the numeral one. Press1ForNick.com. And as I always do, I’ll put some helpful links about today’s topics inside this episode’s notes section. And lastly, if you like what you heard today, if you think Nick and I earned a five-star review, would you consider doing that for us on Apple and Spotify? And remember, you can get the podcast anywhere. Tell your friends – Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music – and right on our website too, at AdVic.com… I’m Mike Boyle from Ad Victoriam Solutions. Thank you for joining us for the latest Salesforce Simplified podcast. Our next episode is just around the corner.

Speaker: We’re glad you stopped by. You’ve been listening to Salesforce Simplified, the podcast from Ad Victoriam Solutions.

How AI Intersects with Customer Experience

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