Tag Archives: tech

3 Ways to Blend Human Intelligence with AI

Competitive Intelligence

As technologies to improve the customer experience evolve, the need to humanize those experiences as much as possible is at the forefront of the customer experience.

Augmenting the human aspects of customer service with artificial intelligence can result in a better customer experience, according to “3 Ways Emotional Connections Can Power CX,” a report from customer service software provider Sitecore.

“While technology has an important role in connecting us, we seem to have lost touch with the key element of success,” says the report. “It’s a different kind of connection that’s missing. Our customers are human, and we need to connect with them on a human level.

“Yes, we can reach them easily and gather data, but that’s not enough. Genuinely understanding our customers and their cares and needs can form emotional bonds between brands and consumers.”

AI-Concierge-In-Line

How can AI enhance customer service?

A few examples of the most well-known artificial intelligence (AI) options to create an improved customer experience include the following:

  • Chatbots and other 24/7 self-service options allow customers to get answers to their questions without calling customer support.
  • Conversational AI offers chatbot interactions based on more conversational statements and answers to customer questions that an automated chatbot can’t answer.
  • Assist agents enhance the customer’s and the customer service rep’s experience by preventing agents from sorting through past ticket history when automated chatbot responses can’t answer customers’ questions.

Brands must understand their customers to compete effectively, says the Sitecore report:

“Using technology and collecting huge amounts of data will only get [brands] so far. Personalization is much more than this. The clue is in the name — it’s about the person. Customers need to be at the center of our strategies.”

Read on for three ways to humanize the AI experience for your customers.

1. Connect with the human behind the customer

If customers link your brand with positive emotions, that builds trust, making them more likely to buy your products and forgive mistakes and/or issues that may come up.

“The best way to create that brand association is by telling stories, not selling products,” says Sitecore. “Storytelling connects people when it triggers something we recognize in ourselves. It could be a particular emotion, challenge, ambition, or passion.

“Once you know the human behind the customer, you can build a narrative that starts with what they care about and ends with how you can support [them]. Before you communicate, consider what you stand for and the benefits to your customer.”

2. Create empathy with your content

Your content strategy needs to leverage storytelling to convey empathy for your customers, says the Sitecore report:

“Successful content strategies will not rest on an organization’s sales messages. They will be built upon their responses to the audience’s wants and needs. It can feel unnatural for marketers to set these sales messages aside, but doing so can be the key to content success.

“By focusing on value over volume, with emotionally driven content that connects with customers, you can build loyalty with target audiences by prioritizing their real wants and needs.”

3. Augment AI with human intelligence

The rise of “customer-centric, data-driven marketing” optimizes emotional and social intelligence with the help of technology to deliver exceptional customer experiences, says the Sitecore report.

“Despite our connected devices knowing us so well, customers don’t want their experience with brands to be completely machine-driven – they’re looking for genuine empathy,” says Sitecore.

“Don’t see AI as a silver bullet that can automate your marketing program. Instead, use it to optimize areas that let you move faster and be more agile — and blend that power with emotional intelligence to build genuinely valuable human connections.”

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Data-Driven Decision Making in Hospitality

Competitive Intelligence, ,

Data tells a story bigger than just numbers alone. Hospitality leaders can use data analytics to understand guest preferences, optimize revenue, and ultimately stay competitive. Hotels have more guest data at their fingertips than ever, and the smartest ones are using it to fine-tune everything from marketing campaigns to pricing strategies. With booking trends, loyalty program activity, and real-time spending insights, hospitality businesses can create more personalized guest experiences and ma...

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Reel in the 70% of Travelers Relying on Their Phones

Insights

Most Americans rely on their phones these days for everyday tasks. Use that reliance to your advantage. Opera Mediaworks, a software group, surveyed a thousand American consumers about their phones and travel habits. They found that 70 percent use their phones to research potential trip accommodations and 45 percent book those accommodations directly from their phones. Travel site Expedia reports that of the 156 million U.S. consumers who engage with digital travel content, 90 percent of website...

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5 Messages to Create Loyalty Program Engagement

Communication and Messaging

When guests sign up for your brand’s loyalty program, your marketing job is just beginning. Your brand can’t always rely on your current rewards program to work in every situation or for every type of guest. But you can tailor your email and text messages related to your rewards and loyalty program to engage customers and stand out from competitors. “When you send a guest the right message, over the right channel, at the right time, it’s more likely to cut through the clutter and truly resonate,...

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What Customers Expect from AI in Customer Service

Guest Experience News

Customers have high expectations for artificial intelligence, but many businesses are falling short due to implementation challenges, a new Zendesk CX Trends report states.

“As with each new technology that rewrites the customer service rulebook—the internet, live chat, mobile phones, and AI—businesses must commit to rethinking their mindset and their approach,” the Zendesk report states. “Anything less and they risk frustrating customers, or worse, undermining their ability to deliver the quality experiences that keep them coming back.”

The good news: the survey found customers are more open to AI, with 13 percent growth from the previous year in customers who say they are willing to interact with chatbots for simple issues.

AI-Concierge-In-Line

So, what do customers want from artificial intelligence customer service? Here’s what customers expect to get from AI when it’s used by businesses:

  1. Time savings. In an ideal world, AI will help businesses quickly and easily handle common issues and answer simple questions, freeing up humans to provide more complex, nuanced and personalized customer service. That’s what consumers want: in fact almost half (48 percent) of customers say AI should save them time when they contact a company, according to the report.
  2. More efficient (and less annoying) interactions. One of the most annoying  and time consuming aspects of dealing with multiple points of contact is having to repeat your situation or problem over and over again. That applies when you start with a chatbot and switch to a human, or when you start out talking to a representative and need to be transferred to a manager or someone in a different department. The same percentage of customers (48 percent) say AI should save customers from having to repeat themselves, the survey found.
  3. Quick understanding of their issue. The key word in artificial intelligence is, well, intelligence. Customers want AI to live up to its name by asking the right questions, quickly grasping their issue and moving on to a solution. In practice, that’s often not what happens: in fact, over half (55 percent) of consumers say chatbots ask too many questions to try to understand an issue and decide how to offer a solution.
  4. Accurate answers to their questions. In a perfect world, AI would draw from multiple resources to offer efficient, accurate answers to customers’ questions. Over time, it would get smarter, incorporating answers to past customer questions into its knowledge base. In practice, many customers (47 percent, according to the survey)  report having trouble getting accurate answers to their questions from chatbots.
  5. The option to talk to a human. Customers may know upfront that their question or concern isn’t suited to a chatbot. In these cases, they want the option to skip the chatbot entirely and jump straight into consulting with a human. In fact, the survey found that almost half (46 percent) of customers say they’re frustrated with not being given the option to talk to a person right away.

Companies are investing more in AI technology, which is constantly improving. Right now, there’s a fairly wide gap between what customers want from AI and what they actually get. But they’re optimistic that this growing technology ultimately will help companies provide them with better customer service.

The bottom line, according to the Zendesk report: “Customers primarily see AI as a force for good—one that can improve their interactions and experiences with businesses.”

OPERA Cloud Takes Hotel Property Management to New Heights

People

Hotel management is easier than ever thanks to OPERA Cloud. This property management system can handle everything from booking information to room assignments, and can carry out accounting and billing functions while collecting essential guest information into organized data points. Simply put, OPERA incorporates a large amount of data into hotel operations so guests and staff have a better overall experience. GEM Journal previously spoke to Oracle HospitalitySenior Director Luis Weir about the ...

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A female customer uses a touchscreen terminal or self-service kiosk to order at a fast food restaurant. Automated machine and electronic payment.

Kiosks are Transforming Quick-Service Restaurants – Here’s How

Competitive Intelligence, ,

The quick-service restaurant (QSR) industry faces a constant balancing act: delivering fast, seamless guest experiences while controlling labor costs. In an era of staffing shortages and rising wages, self-service kiosks have emerged as a powerful solution. By automating the ordering process, kiosks speed up transactions, improve order accuracy, enhance customer satisfaction, and increase sales through smart upselling. Forward-thinking QSRs leverage this technology to boost their bottom line wit...

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7 Ways Servicescape Drives Service Quality

Guest Experience News,

Guest satisfaction hinges on far more than just a high-quality product. The environment in which service occurs – known as "servicescape" – plays a crucial role in shaping not only guest perceptions but also staff performance. Servicescape refers to the tangible elements of a service environment, such as layout, lighting, music, and decor, that impacts the guest experience. (These environmental applications are even being explored in the digital landscape as online retail continues to overshadow...

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Are Traditional Customer Surveys on Their Way Out?

Communication and Messaging

Traditional customer feedback surveys have long been one of the top ways that brands measure their company’s customer experience (CX). Now data-driven technologies are bumping customer surveys to the back of the line for customer experience measuring tools. “After years of serving as the benchmark for defining and refining a company’s customer-experience performance, survey-based systems are heading toward their twilight,” according to an article from management consulting firm McKinsey & Co...

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This Restaurateur Boosted His Bottom Line by 7% With Technology from Appsuite

People,

Esmail Suleiman opened his quick-service Mediterranean restaurant in Denver, Colorado, in the same year the industry couldn’t replace 1 million jobs. However, he found a solution that improved his business’s efficiency and drastically cut labor costs.

Suleiman has been a longtime client of restaurant and hospitality technology solutions Appsuite.

He used AppSuite’s customer loyalty programs and gift card services. But like many restaurateurs, the pandemic created challenges he’d never faced. Even offers of more than $20 per hour weren’t enough to attract new talent to his fast-casual restaurant.

Suleiman has used Appsuite since 2013. After visiting a McDonald’s with a kiosk ordering system in the Middle East, he asked Appsuite programmers to create a similar technology.

“I approached them and said, ‘Why don’t you come up with a kiosk solution?’ And they were initially resistant because that’s not their field,” Suleiman tells GEM Journal Today. “Nevertheless, they took my words to heart and went the extra mile for me.”

Going the extra mile

Since 2010, James Daleen has built Appsuite to help hospitality and restaurant leadership “leverage technology to increase revenue, loyalty, and customer satisfaction.”

What started as a technology company creating apps for the hospitality industry has grown to include Customer Relationship Management, Multi-Channel Ordering, gift card solutions, customer loyalty programs, POS systems, and kiosks like FelFel.

His technology solutions have grown by partnering Appsuite with cloud-based technology solutions Oracle Hospitality.

James Daleen, CEO of Appsuite technology.
James Daleen, CEO of Appsuite technology.

“We were pioneers in the restaurant industry with mobile apps. And we knew that mobile technology would change the lives of all of us. That has been our vision and mission from the beginning,” Daleen reflects. “But, like many businesses do when you’re growing, your strategy evolves. Your founding principles don’t really change, and they haven’t in our case. As we’ve grown, our solution footprint has grown dramatically.”

Appsuite now services 2,700+ hospitality partners and processes $100 million in transactions annually.

Passing the test

Suleiman was initially a“test store” for kiosk POS technology. The timing worked perfectly, as restaurant consumer behavior was shifting.

Following the pandemic, fewer consumers wanted to communicate with restaurant staff. The kiosk lets them view menu items, descriptions, and costs before ordering. Suleiman always has one employee on standby in case customers have questions. Overall, it’s improved the guest experience.

“I can run the front of the house with only one person on the expo — just putting the order together, and giving it to the customer,” Suleiman says. “Before, I’d have to have three people just taking the orders and one person putting the orders together.”

Daleen touts the convenience and ease of the technology.

“Everything that we do seamlessly connects to Oracle’s POS system,” Daleen says. “When we do an online or kiosk order, it goes right to our cloud and the Oracle Cloud. That order makes it right into the kitchen without anybody intervening with it.”

Suleiman says using this technology is the “best decision I’ve made for the company.”

“Volume is still going up,” Suleiman says. “Year over year, our labor is still dropping down. We’re around 23.7% right now, so I am happy with the results kiosks have done for us. And if I have more room, I’ll put more kiosks myself.”