Jeff Bezos rightly mentioned that “We see our customers as invited guests to a party and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little better”
It’s no news that enterprises across geographies & industries have started taking customer experience seriously. User experience has moved from design to marketing and is now more than important in the after-sales journeys of customer service.
Organizations have started investing in technologies to make sure that they’re ahead of the competition to deliver to customers in an efficient manner. One of the key steps here is to identify how technologies including but not limited to Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP) and more can be leveraged for multiple use cases related to customer engagement that results in a better experience.
Let’s take a sneak peek into knowledge management and conversational AI to see the impact it creates on your mission to deliver a superior customer experience.
1. Knowledge Management:
Gartner defines Knowledge Management as a discipline that enables effective action through relevant intellectual assets (including what is known but not necessarily documented).
We’ve seen the evolution of knowledge from binders to document management applications and now AI-powered knowledge bases that help in customer support.
Let’s explore some of the key components of an AI-based knowledge management platform:
- Decision Trees – Cognitive decision trees help contact center agents identify the next best step for accurate and faster results
- How to Guides – Visual guides help in easy navigation using pictures, helps primarily for installation or troubleshooting related issues
- Knowledgebase – A single source of truth to manage all content, knowledge articles, documents, media files, and webpages
In the ocean of knowledge, findability is the key
Information searchability and findability is the core of a successful knowledge management strategy. Knowledge in an actionable formatted when disseminated across all your assisted & digital touchpoints can deliver exceptional results.
What’s important here is to have clear milestones to measure the success of your knowledge management project and have an ROI driven approach. Below are some of the key pointers that you need to keep in mind:
1. Have a dedicated knowledge team: KM projects will not deliver results unless you have a dedicated knowledge team to manage it. Typically the owners can be process excellence teams or tenured subject matter experts (SMEs)
2. Chart your objectives: Think of the core KPIs that you’d like to get positively impacted with this and pen down quantifiable targets, these can include but not limited to a reduction in AHT, quality scores, CSAT.
3. Select the right platform: With thousands of vendors and solutions available; it is important that you select not just the right platform but also the right vendor on the basis of multiple criteria. Take a look here on what to look for in a knowledge management platform
4. Re-use & re-purpose: The goal of knowledge management is to ensure content and information re-use. It’s better to repurpose existing content instead of re-inventing the wheel every time.
2. Conversational AI
Conversational AI leverages machine learning & natural language processing technologies to understand user intent better and respond with the most relevant answers. This can be achieved by analyzing communication in the form of text or speech (voice). This can help in various functions apart from customer service which includes HR, Marketing, and more.
The idea is to automate as many manual processes as possible by providing apt answers and resolutions without human intervention.
What are some of the features of conversation AI & benefits for enterprises:
- Omnichannel Support Systems: With queries coming in from multiple channels, responses have to be accurate from channel to channel thus reducing customer friction.
- Quick response to consumers: Millennials today expect a brand to respond within 30 minutes of their query. With smart ticket routing with the right response helps in brand recall value.
- Multi-lingual approach: Ability to answer customer queries in regional and local languages always creates a lasting impact and easy for customers as well as agents.
3. The 2 in 1 power of conversational AI and knowledge management in customer experience
- Accuracy of information delivery
The information that a customer needs to engage successfully with a product is often located across several different databases. Simply put, useful information is scattered, making it difficult for customers to piece together relevant information to resolve a particular challenge they may have come across. This is precisely where knowledge management comes into play.
Knowledge management stores all useful content in a single, accessible repository and users simply have to type in their search query and the knowledge base will capture the accurate information and pass it on to the user
2. Personalization & human touch
While knowledge management enables users to access accurate information easily, adding conversational AI to the mix humanizes the interaction. Conversational AI-powered chatbots act as the interactive bridge between the user and the information he/ she is seeking.
By interacting with the user through impactful conversations, the chatbot zeroes in on the exact user intent and in turn work on retrieving the right information from the knowledge base it is integrated with.
In this way, both conversational AI and knowledge management work together to build a seamless and elevated customer experience.
