Amazing Business Radio Recap: The Power of Gen AI in CX

Recently, Zingly.ai CEO Gaurav Passi sat down with Shep Hyken, the host of Amazing Business Radio, to discuss the rise of generative AI and its implications for customer experience, the importance of a seamless blend of humans and gen ai through the use of data, and effective strategies for leveraging AI to grow revenue, reduce cost, and scale to support increasing customer demand.

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Check out the podcast on Shep’s site, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform! 

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Shep and Gaurav, two Customer Experience experts, covered many topics during the discussion including why there is a need to revolutionize CX. With recent research findings from CCW and Forrester showing that although there has been heavy innovation in the space over the last two decades, brands’ CX quality is continuing to drop year after year. Omnichannel offerings have under-delivered on promises of optionality for customers, and efficiencies for agents. With silod channels and data, and rigid chatbot workflows, consumers have been conditioned to lead with phone and 1800-dialing when reaching businesses. As Shep puts it, ‘the inconsistent experience they have from one brand to the next. One brand does it right, one brand doesn’t, and I’m not going to take the chance on the third getting it wrong so I’ll just go to the phone’. This experience is all too common, and leads to what we’ve termed FORO, or Fear of Reaching Out.  

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Top Takeaways

1. Frictionless Experience: Why reducing friction in customer journeys, i.e. making it easier for customers to interact with businesses, not only leads to improved CX quality, but also leads to revenue growth and agent experience improvements.
2. How combining human touch, data, and AI together creates a powerful combination that can significantly enhance customer satisfaction and competitive advantage.  
3. The importance of prioritizing relationships in business. AI can efficiently answer quick queries, but human interaction is crucial for building long-term, meaningful customer relationships.  
4. FORO is real, and is silently (and often not-so-silently) causing customer churn and revenue leakage. When customers are experiencing a problem, the first step is usually going to the company’s website to get the contact information. Once they click on “Contact Us,” they get some 800 numbers, call the company, the IVR kicks in, and they are put on hold, plus a few other steps. This long process and the time they have to carve out of their day to resolve their problems deter many customers from getting in touch with companies. 
5. ‘The most dangerous customers’, which are the dissatisfied customers who never call, but end up leaving because they never got the answer they were looking for.  
6. Changing customer behaviors and expectations for digital options, especially among younger consumers, and the importance of customer inversion with omnichannel strategies. 
7. By leveraging AI and personalization, you can address scale issues in call centers, allowing a single representative to handle multiple interactions simultaneously. This enhances efficiency in handling customer inquiries and improves overall customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score (NPS). 

Also be sure to check out the related post on Forbes titled ‘Customers are Suffering from FORO’