Elevating Customer Experience and Engagement with Cloud AI

Acknowledging customers’ demand for convenient and personalised experiences, a giant hypermarket chain has introduced several tools, including one that helps customers find the most relevant products meeting their requirements, another for ordering items with a spoken command, and a voice assistant that helps associates find information and serve customers better. All of these are powered by Artificial Intelligence and Cloud.

A German automobile major is using a cloud AI platform to drive its smart sales assistant, optimise marketing, and improve customer service in its call centres.

A leading smartphone manufacturer is incorporating cloud AI capabilities in its devices to enrich customer experience with features, such as news and audio recording summaries.

When AI Intersects Cloud

The synergies between AI and cloud have delivered value to every business by enhancing efficiencies through automation, supporting decision-making through analytics, improving cybersecurity, and driving innovation. All these benefits are converging to transform customer experience in every industry.  Broadly, organisations are using cloud and AI to enhance customer service and engagement in the following ways:

By hyper-personalising interactions: Although brands have been talking about hyper-personalisation for years, it is only after the recent advances in AI that they have been able to personalise experience for a segment-of-one, at scale. Importantly, this would not have been possible without cloud, which provides the scalability, agility, and massive computing resources required by AI models for analysing vast customer and transaction data for insights that can be used to customise marketing campaigns and personalise engagement even in real-time if required.

Tailoring messaging and experience to customers’ preferences helps brands to connect better with their audience, deepen engagement, and improve marketing efficiency. A leading European software company is natively embedding Generative AI capabilities in its cloud platforms, enabling the creation of personalised marketing content and context-aware email responses to improve the effectiveness of customer interactions. By leveraging a modern AI-amplified marketing solution suite, brands can understand customer preferences and behavior, and offer contextual recommendations through natural language conversation, to enhance experiences on every channel. 

By empathising with customers: AI’s ability to recognise human emotions by analysing voice and facial expression enables organisations to interact empathetically with customers across different channels. For example, when AI alerts the service desk about a dissatisfied caller, the concerned agent can quickly attend to the customer’s problem before it escalates. When customers experience empathy and understanding, they reciprocate with appreciation and loyalty. A number of personal relationship-driven businesses are today deploying AI-enabled solutions, such as robo-advisors, smart fitness trainers, and virtual cognitive behavioral therapists, to provide significant value to customers.

By rendering proactive service: AI solutions on cloud can use the insights of data analysis to predict market trends and future customer needs; they can also identify patterns, link cause and effect, and derive inferences by analysing structured and unstructured information.  For example, based on past performance, market feedback, and sales data, the solutions can predict if a particular product requires servicing, and proactively send reminders to users.

AI-powered chatbots and smart assistants can converse with customers in natural language,  answering queries, providing information, and resolving problems 24/7 to improve service and satisfaction levels. What’s more, the latest chatbots are doing more than just serving customers by anticipating their requirements and reacting to them during the call itself: for example, after answering queries on a particular product, they can present relevant cross-selling / up-selling offers to convert an engaged prospect to a paying customer.  Such AI-enabled proactive interactions bring customers closer to the organisation.

How Cloud Powers Sophisticated AI Applications

Both AI and cloud are powerful in their own ways. Together, they make a formidable team: only cloud can provide the scalability, agility, flexibility, and data capabilities required to run sophisticated AI applications; AI enhances cloud performance by automating a number of operational and administrative processes in addition to anticipating failure and averting cyberattack. The benefits of cloud AI to enterprises range from efficiency and speed to insight and innovation, translating into personalised, frictionless, and engaging experiences for their customers.

- By Saju Sankarankutty, SVP & Unit Tech Officer, Cloud & Infra Services, Infosys

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect CyberMedia’s stance.)