Using AI to drive success along the customer lifecycle yields big returns

Poor customer experiences are the primary cause for low conversion rates, lost leads and customer churn. In fact, a customer who suffered a third-rate experience will tell five times as many people about what happened than if they had a great experience. These bad impressions tend to stick with people and influence their future decisions for months or even years later. As a result, frustrated Sales Managers and Marketers often blame these sour interactions on substandard or poorly deployed software.

Similarly, many marketers prefer today to keep things as hands-on as possible. Wary of technologies that fire out routine emails or social messages, marketers are now much keener to limit lead nurture from a marketing automation platform.

And despite those poor experiences perhaps taking place several years ago, skepticism about “smart” technologies is rife. However, as any technologist will tell you, more happens in a couple of “IT years” (like dog years) than you might believe.

Artificial intelligence technologies are now so advanced that even facets of technology like sentiment analysis, cutting edge in 2010, have been iterated and improved upon many times over. Smart, machine learning-driven technologies make significant differences in the ways that Operations, Sales, Customer Care, and Marketing operate.

In a previous article for TechHQ titled “Building a Higher Performing Workforce Starts with Intelligent Virtual Assistants”, we examined how Conversica’s Intelligent Virtual Assistants powered by an intelligent automation platform, augmented workforces to alleviate capacity constraints, reach more leads, and drive top-line growth. Conversica Intelligent Virtual Assistants drive leads through the funnel to customer and beyond, even fostering customer love long after a deal has closed.

The beauty of an intelligent automation platform is that it can be left to undertake the more mundane — yet still very delicate and important — tasks that consume resources and time. But instead of rote responses and bland marketing messages sent out to try and perpetuate interest or not-so-subtly push prospects down a sales funnel, this is a technology that can be trusted to deliver prompt, personalized and persistent messages to leads and customers.

Technology has many advantages

The core of the Conversica intelligent automation platform excels at powering their Intelligent Virtual Assistants to ‘read the room’, tirelessly and at scale, and respond politely, persuasively, and always in context and intelligently.

A key aspect of any instance of artificial intelligence is that it’s constantly learning. A case in point, Conversica’s platform has literally millions of data points it leverages from more than a decade of experience.

For battle-hardened Sales and Marketing professionals, that means the technology can be trusted to keep every prospect moving towards an eventual goal. No leads are lost or forgotten. According to pre-set business rules, prospects are engaged intelligently in human-like, two-way conversations, and the smart systems respond according to context.

The helper as a business driver

The platform works with marketing communications systems already in place, helping marketers respond at scale to, for instance, the feedback from webinar attendees. Rather than relying on lead scoring alone to determine how warm any given lead is, Intelligent Virtual Assistants determine interest and qualify conversations for sales quickly and autonomously – without human intervention.

Integration with existing tools is a cornerstone of any technology deployment these days. The Conversica platform serves as a tool for multiple business functions and is a means by which the discrete data pools in an organization can be brought together.

Using Conversica, leading vacation provider Sunset World (see here for full case study) easily managed to convert 10% of leads into customers without putting any extra burden on Sales. Plus, they massively boosted extra bookings from past customers and reinvigorated the Customer Success team’s quality of service.

Business processes can and should work together, from marketing outreach to lead generation to sales interactions through the eventual sale — and return sale. With the one Conversica platform, teams find hot leads within their existing pipeline, shake loose slow-moving prospects, and speed conversion times and rates. Intelligent Virtual Assistants are also highly useful in Customer Success functions, helping guide customers with smart responses that are sensitive to context and following the conversation as if a human were behind the exchange; thus, helping organizations retain their base and grow customer engagements.

Intelligent Virtual Assistants communicate on your website via chat as well as email and SMS text messaging, so wherever your prospects and customers are and whenever they’re ready to communicate with you, Conversica provides a way to engage. This means more conversations sooner, and more often, without relying on a human to answer an email or field a chat.

For many businesses, the key to success lies in an increase in engagement. Missing opportunities to engage anywhere along the sales funnel can mean lost leads, and in Customer Care or post-sales settings, missing those chances to engage means unhappy customers and loss of repeat business.

Maximizing revenues needs maximized numbers and quality of conversational touchpoints, and Intelligent Virtual Assistants enable organizations of all sizes to never miss an opportunity. To see what differences Intelligent Virtual Assistants can make, your personalized demonstration will show you how no lead gets left behind.