Table Of Contents

The Need for Artificial Intelligence in CX 2

Three Building Blocks for the Application of AI in CX 4

How AI is Being Applied to Improve CX 8

How to Use AI for CX Measurement

Use AI to Better Understand CX Data 13

Use AI to Make Your CX Metrics Actionable 20

Tips to Implement AI for CX Measurement 26

1
®
The Need For Artificial Intelligence
In Customer Experience
“By 2020, 85% of customer interactions
will be managed without a human” -
Gartner
Today’s customers live in an omnichannel world. But
most companies still force these evolved customers
onto engagement paths that are steeped in legacy and
instantly feel outdated.

Artificial intelligence can be successfully employed to

provide an intelligent, convenient and informed customer
experience at any point along the customer journey. This
will result in re-imagined customer experiences and end-
to-end customer journeys that are integrated and more
personal, so that they feel more natural to customers.

2
®
Customer experience is a
competitive driver of growth when
successful and the greatest source
of risk when failing. Data insights
are one of the primary tools for
customer experience enhancement.
CX datasets are messy, and the
customer behaviors are chaotic.
The rules are undefined and the
success criteria are ambiguous.
This complexity in CX datasets is
precisely the reason why AI can
unleash so much value across the
customer experience:
• Salespeople, call center agents
and employees in other
®
customer-facing roles cannot
be expected to understand a
customer’s entire history and
derive their own insights from it
in real time.
• Automated systems cannot be
hand-programmed with rules
to handle every conceivable
customer history.
Delivering a coherent experience
across all enterprise touchpoints
requires finding patterns across
an overwhelming number of data
points. This is prime stomping
ground for AI.
3
Three Building Blocks for the
Successful Application of AI in CX
The successful application of AI in customer experience requires 3 fundamental capabilities:

• Data Unification
• Real-time Insights
• Business Context

4
®
Data Unification
Data unification is a must for any type of behavioral analytics.
AI thrives on information—the more the better.

A new generation of data unification tools make this daunting

task fast and relatively pain-free. Customer journey analytics
platforms provide this service for a fraction of the cost of the
dedicated data services providers of yore—even delivering a
level of data integration free of charge.

The tedium of pulling together dozens of data sources is now

just background noise. Expect timelines of days not weeks,
with simpler data sources integrated within 1-3 days.

It’s a far cry from the expansive data engineering initiatives

that likely still haunt your dreams.

5
®
 Real-time Insights
For AI to impact the customer experience, insights need to be
conveyed in the moment and through the customer’s chosen
touchpoint. Integrating with these touchpoints is the key to
effective, in-the-moment engagement.

Most leading SaaS platforms have APIs and consider 3rd-

party integrations to be a critical component of their value
proposition.

The truth is that, in addition to elegant SaaS data streams,

most enterprises must rely on myriad on-site, home-grown
and legacy touchpoint data sources such as product interfaces,
payment platforms, point-of-sale systems, customer care
systems and many others. This reality creates a challenge for
delivering real-time insights and are still very much a custom
affair.

Customer journey analytics platforms are now filling this gap to

deliver comprehensive, real-time touchpoint integration with
minimal investment.

6
®
Business Context
For a simple, isolated interaction, AI is able to in shaping customer behavior. That requires
deliver results by simply knowing that an email is an awareness of both the journey that these
an email and a campaign is a campaign. Our web touchpoints helped to shape and the KPIs which
analytics and CRM platforms take advantage of this were subsequently impacted by that customer
inherent luxury. behavior—whether related to revenue, profitability,
customer lifetime value, customer satisfaction
But in holistic, cross-channel journey analytics, or other factors driving high-level business
the assumption that touchpoints will be the same performance.
across enterprises and customers is an antiquated
notion. Armed with that information, AI systems can do
more than find the “next best action” or the
Customer journeys are as unique to individual optimal audience.
businesses as fingerprints. Every company has their
own set of touchpoints and a distinct method for With proper business context, AI can
employing those engagements in their customer find touchpoints and tactics
experience. which actually shape the
customer behaviors
For AI to deliver value, it must be given some For AI to deliver
behind the business’s
context. Context means more than simply primary measures of value, it must be given
designating a certain interaction as an “inbound performance. the context or the
call” and another as “order fulfillment.”
significance of the
The AI must know the significance of these events interaction in shaping
customer behavior.

7
®
How AI Is Being Applied
to Improve CX
1. Customer Service Gets A
Gigantic Makeover
AI’s biggest impact undoubtedly will
be to transform customer service
by making it automated, fast and
hassle-free. Salespeople, call center
agents and employees in other
customer service roles cannot be
expected to ingest and understand a
customer’s entire history prior to each
conversation. But, artificial intelligence
is now making it possible to leverage all
this information--and more.
Here’s how AI applications are giving
customer service a makeover:
Chatbots - Chatbots are AI-based
conversation agents that are being
used in many different customer-
®
engagement scenarios.
They are designed to simulate human
interactions and provide immediate,
personalized responses 24*7.
This eliminates frustrating delays
and errors in customer service,
particularly for handling customer
complaints.
Virtual Assistants - Virtual
assistants utilize AI to obey
commands or answer questions.
Online retailer Spring was one of
the first to start using Facebook’s
Messenger Bot to offer a personal
shopping assistant. It helps
shoppers find what they are
looking for by engaging them in
simple conversations.
8
2. Predictive Personalization - Going From
One-Click to Zero-Clicks
Artificial intelligence is helping businesses create experiences that
naturally integrate with consumers’ everyday lives.
Consumers will no longer change their pattern of communication
when interacting with brands in order to satisfy their needs.
Intelligent prediction and customization will make customers feel as
if every product or brand experience was tailored just for them.
Companies will be able to assess individual shopper inventories and
®
consumer behaviors to predict and deliver goods to homes before
they even realize they are running low. Self-driving cars will use
their knowledge of preferred routes and in-vehicle entertainment
drawn from past behavior to optimize daily commutes and long
roadtrips.
Even asking for help will become easier, as AI infused with
emotions will make customer experience interactions smoother and
streamlined across channels.
9
3. AI-enabled Customer Analytics Discovers
High-Impact Customer Insights
Optimal customer experience is achieved when a business Artificial intelligence-enabled customer journey analytics can
remembers a customer and treats them with attention, respect find answers to important CX queries like:
and consideration throughout their unique customer journey.
• Which customer behaviors are early indicators of
Mining insights across billions of unique customer journeys impending outcomes such as churn?
using traditional analytics methods and tools is a laborious and
slow process, which tends to confine it’s usage to a small set of • What CX actions have your team taken that have been

pre-defined problems. successful (or unsuccessful)?

The power of AI-enabled customer journey analytics is • Which customers/prospects should you engage with to

that it can sift through a much, much larger and more maximize the impact of your outreach?

complex data space and thereby uncover many more

business opportunities—even opportunities you didn’t
realize you should look for. As a result, you can spend your
time prioritizing these insights instead of manipulating the
underlying data.

AI-enabled customer journey analytics finds every single

relationship in the data that exists—without expressly
being told to look for it.

It can predict the likelihood of future behaviors

with high accuracy, while simultaneously finding the
drivers and inhibitors of customer performance.

10
®
 CASE STUDY

Black Diamond Uses AI For

Personalized Engagement
SKI-EQUIPMENT RETAILER BLACK DIAMOND
REALIZED THE VALUE OF USING AI FOR
PERSONALIZED ENGAGMENT LONG BEFORE
ITS PEERS.
The company knew that the old-school customer
experience, which required hours of browsing to find
the best product, was not going to cut it anymore.
Skiers often know exactly what equipment they need
to stay safe and compete, such as avalanche airbags.
Black Diamond predicts these needs and pushes the
right items to website visitors, rather than waiting
until they checkout to make suggestions.
They use sophisticated analytics to glean insights
from a customer’s purchasing history, and combine
it with weather conditions and other relevant data
to make product recommendations in real time.
This effort has reaped rewards for Black Diamond,
increasing sales significantly and dropping cart
abandonment rates.

11
®
How to Use AI for CX Measurement
There are two fundamental ways in which artificial intelligence can be used to impact customer experience
measurement. AI can help you to:

• Better Understand Your Customer Experience Data

• Make Your CX Metrics Actionable

12
®
Use AI to Better Understand
Your Customer Experience Data
Customers today interact with
companies in a variety of ways, leaving
a massive trail of experience data in the
form of call recordings, chat transcripts,
comments on websites, and more. They
even produce data on social platforms
like reviews, posts and images.
With this rich amount of experience
data, you would think that CX
professionals would be digging through
all of it to measure customer experience.
However, that is largely not the case.
Most customer experience
measurement programs are still heavily
dependent on customer surveys as a
single source of customer experience
measurement.
The most impactful uses of artificial
intelligence are therefore in understanding
the different types of customer data
gathered and making better sense of it.

13
®
1. Employ AI-based Text Analytics
to Analyze Customer Feedback

A large quantity of unstructured text-

TEXT ANALYTICS
based customer feedback today goes
unanalyzed because it is tedious to mine Multiple Text Sources Provide Rich Customer Insights
text data. While a traditional rules-based
text analytics is currently used by most
text analytics platforms, it is not very
efficient as it requires considerable time
Efficient way of
and skilled resources. SOCIAL CALL analyzing
Moreover, these rules need to change as MEDIA CENTER unstructured data
the subject or language changes and often
companies need to maintain one rule or Adds context & color
model per data source.
to information
Rules need to be manually enhanced all received from CX
the time and the system can sometimes metrics
become so complex that the rules start to
break down.
SALES SURVEY Enables you to
NOTES COMMENTS respond quickly to
service issues

14
®
1. Employ AI-based Text Analytics
to Analyze Customer Feedback (con’t)
Text analytics adds context and color to the information
you receive through your customer experience metrics.
Take, for example, the Net Promoter Score, which is
a popular CX metric that captures your customers’
happiness by asking how likely they are to recommend
your product or company to others.
Simply knowing your overall Net Promoter Score won’t
tell you why you are receiving it or, more importantly,
how to improve it. The ‘why’ comes from customer
comments, social media posts and online reviews—all
of which are quite difficult and labor intensive to mine
without AI.
The use of artificial intelligence in text analytics is based
on algorithms that learn to understand language without
being explicitly programmed to do so.
While it’s difficult to accurately determine sentiment
and intent using rules-based text analytics approaches,
AI-based text analytics platforms perform much
better. Sentiment and intent can be particularly useful
for a number of use cases, such as determining why
customers churn.
Recent developments in the field of deep learning hold
promise when it comes to the more difficult aspects of
sentiment analysis, such as detecting sarcasm.
“Airline X never responded to my
complaint. I love being ignored.”
Traditionally, a machine would have a hard time
interpreting this statement as one intended to express
the negative sentiment of sarcasm.
However, researchers at the Indian Institute of
Technology in Bombay, for example, have recently
developed deep learning algorithms that do the hard
task of detecting sarcasm in text.

15
®
2. Speech Analytics with Auditory Cues
Today, the utilization of speech data is largely confined to call
center recordings or transcripts. These transcripts only capture
what was said, missing entirely the auditory cues that indicate
how it was said.
For instance, did the customer raise his voice? Was there an
angry tone or an emotional breakdown? Speech contains
valuable insights into customer sentiment and behavior that
are lost if the call is not recorded or only a transcript is made
available.
®
Deep learning algorithms are bringing a revolutionary change
in how speech is transcribed to text. These approaches are
much more accurate for understanding emotions, intent,
relevancy and topics addressed. They are also able to process
significantly larger amounts of data much more quickly.
These algorithms provide all the auditory cues that you need
to reveal valuable insights from customer feedback, so you can
take action to improve customer experience throughout the
customer journey.
16
3. Emotion AI

“By 2022, your personal In customer experience, this can

make all the difference. Let’s
device will know more say a machine learning program
about your emotional can detect that you are stressed
state than your own out and plug in a call-center rep
faster, reducing your wait time.
family.” — Gartner
The increase in empathy this
The ability to understand and would generate could stop you
accurately predict your customers’ from churning or possibly lead to
emotions is precious to you as a additional business by way of an
customer experience professional. upsell or cross-sell.
Until recently, that was only
possible if the customer told you
how she felt. But with the advent
of what is now being called
artificial emotional intelligence or
Emotion AI, machines can detect
emotions from multiple channels—
just the way humans do.

17
®
3. Emotion AI (con’t)
Sensors Turn Emotional Experiences Into Objective Data
When it comes to customer feedback, emotional signals
can provide valuable insights based on changes in facial
expressions, tone and pitch of voice, body language, and even
neurophysiological activity conveyed through biometric markers.
®
mPath, an MIT Media Lab spin out, can wirelessly measure
changes in skin conductance (subtle electrical changes across the
skin). These signals can indicate emotions such as excitement,
stress, frustration, engagement or confusion. mPath aims to
provide AI-based technology to scientifically measure customers’
experiences even when they don’t describe it themselves.
VIEWERS EMOTIONALLY REACT TO CELEBRITIES. WHEN
LEONARDO DICAPRIO FIRST APPEARS ON SCREEN IN ‘THE
DEPARTED’ SENSORS REGISTER A SPIKE IN VIEWER’S SKIN
CONDUCTANCE. IMAGE SOURCE: WWW.BUILDEMPATHY.COM
18
4. Transform CX Surveys Into an Instrument
for Real-time Customer Engagement
A recent trend among CX
professionals is to make customer
surveys shorter, more robust
and more efficient. The typical
customer survey is a one-sided
static information sheet that leaves
no room for customization or
conversation. It is not able to adapt
based on where the customer is in
their journey.
Artificial intelligence has the
ability to transform the customer
feedback survey into a context-
aware instrument for customer
engagement. You could, for
example, design the survey to let
users upload audio, video or images.
®
AI could help you mine that data
in real time to detect sentiment.
Customer service teams could then
use it during a customer call to ask
follow-up questions, resolve any
complaints, accept compliments,
thank customers or offer sincere
apologies, as the case may be.
AI has the ability to
transform the customer
feedback survey
into a context-aware
instrument for customer
engagment
19
Use AI to Make Your CX
Metrics Actionable
Most organizations struggle to show how the customer
experience metrics they collect impact business
performance or how they are using it to improve
customer experience.
This is because they are unable to distill the data
they collect into actionable insights. In the following
sections, we show how AI can make a real difference by
making customer experience metrics actionable.

20

20
®
1. Find Insights Across Customer Journeys
Customer experience professionals
need to measure customer feedback
gathered across end-to-end customer
journeys from multiple sources like
customer surveys, social media platforms,
call center recordings, etc. Often they
need to provide this feedback to other
departments, such as operations, finance,
and others.
However, most of this data resides
in organizational silos and customer
experience teams are not equipped to
extract it, much less find insights from it.
®
AI-based customer journey analytics tools
can be used to rapidly and easily integrate
customer data from a variety of sources to
achieve a single customer view. This view
reveals actionable insights from customer
experience data that enables you to
take direct actions that will maximize
benefits for your organization, improve
your customers’ experiences, take your
customer experience measurement
program to the next level, and make your
organization more customer-centric.
2121
2. Detect Emerging Customer
Experience Issues
Customer Experience teams using
traditional analytics methods often fail
to detect small and emerging customer
experience problems. This may happen
because the issue may fall outside the
radar of the customer experience metrics
AI-enabled customer journey analytics
can find every single relationship in the
data that exists (without expressly being
told to look for it).
It can predict the likelihood of future

they are monitoring. Sometimes, an behaviors with high accuracy and find

anomaly may occur that represents an the inhibitors of current customer

entirely new and unexpected pattern of performance. As a result, you can spend

behavior, so the customer experience your time sharing and prioritizing actions

team won’t know to look for it. based on these insights instead of
manipulating the underlying data.
The power of using an AI-based customer
journey analytics tool for customer
experience measurement is that it can sift
through a much larger and more complex
data space to uncover unanticipated
issues or anomalies.

22
®
3. Train Employees Utilizing CX Metrics
Customer feedback offers rich data to train customer
service employees. However, this feedback is typically
utilized long after it’s given and without much context.
When the training is sporadic, it tends to lose much of its
effectiveness.
Using real-time analytics through an AI-based tool,
customer experience teams can effectively train employees
on how to handle customer complaints in a way that
satisfies customers and helps retain them.

Artificial Intelligence can help here too by utilizing the

insights gleaned from customer feedback—often in real
time.

23
®
 CASE

Humana Uses AI to Improve Customer

Service & Train Employees
Health insurance provider Humana has thousands of customer service employees handling daily
customer complaint calls. Humana knows that every call is an opportunity to create a favorable
impression with a customer and generate valuable feedback for employee training.
Humana’s customer experience Despite all this, they acknowledge the So Wilson tried an AI-based real-time
measurement program garners a method has shortcomings. conversation analysis tool that gives
significant investment of money and real-time prompts for employees and
effort. They measure CX metrics like Says Geeta Wilson, the Vice president notifications on how to change their
NPS, CSAT and VOC through emails of Customer Experience, “Every human behavior.
and focus groups. assessment is always going to have
some margin of error. Even if you’re The results for Humana included a
Calls to their contact center are really good at that as a company, you’ll significant increase in both NPS and
recorded and randomly assessed for always be off.” issue resolution.
quality.

24
®
4. Enable Users to Query Data from Interactive
Dashboards Using Natural Language
AI can help you increase the scope, scale and visibility
of your customer experience measurement program by
presenting your insights in a visual, interactive dashboard.
This will keep your stakeholders and employees engaged
and ensure that the customer experience measurement
program is poised for growth and success.
An AI-based customer journey analytics tool, for instance, can
help create a consolidated visual interactive dashboard that
presents all your customer experience metrics in real time
and monitors them over time. It also links these metrics to key
customer journeys.
But your job isn’t done after creating a dashboard. How
many times have you provided an executive with access to
a dashboard, only to have them ask for further analysis or
explanation by a member of the analytics or CX team?
Artificial intelligence can help here, as well. AI-based tools
are now being developed that enable users to find CX
insights using natural language processing. This enables
users to get answers much more rapidly, so that they can
resolve them faster.
For example, let’s say you are a customer experience
manager for a restaurant and you know your food ordering
app went down for a few hours. Instead of struggling to find
the appropriate data, if you could simply ask, ‘How many
customers were affected by the app outage today between
11 a.m. to 1 p.m.?’ and get the right answer back, you could
then deal with the issue more rapidly.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could ask a question and the

dashboard could answer? After all, it does contain all the
insights!

25
®
Tips to Implement AI for Customer
Experience Measurement
Utilize Multichannel Customer Data From
All Possible Sources
Before you begin collecting and analyzing customer data, have a
plan in place for where you will be getting that data from. Make
sure you are utilizing all possible sources of customer data in all
its forms—text, speech, images, videos and emotions.
It is also crucial to collect customer experience data throughout
the end-to-end customer journey and not just at the time of
onboarding a new customer.
In this way, AI-based customer journey analytics can help you
rapidly integrate multichannel data and present a complete
picture of your customer
Analyze CX Metrics Regularly
Many companies make the mistake of looking at customer
experience metrics on a monthly or quarterly basis. Historically,
this may have been because unstructured feedback is difficult to
analyze. But this infrequent analysis also means that problems
®
are harder to detect and more difficult to control before it’s
too late. With AI, analyzing unstructured data is far easier.
Therefore, make it a habit to monitor your customer experience
metrics on a regular basis through interactive dashboards.
Measure the Impact of AI on CX
Measurement
Once you start using the artificial intelligence methods
previously described, it is important to track the results in terms
of their impact on customer experience measurement.
It will take time to see the results, as a lot of these processes
have traditionally been black boxes and some, like employee
training, are hard to quantify. Tracking, measuring and providing
feedback is crucial, so that the algorithms can be trained to
provide better insights.
26
 Contact Us
321 Summer Street
Boston, MA 02210
1-888-MYJRNYS (1-888-695-7697)
Discover and Optimize Your info@pointillist.com
Customers’ Journeys
Pointillist makes it easy for CX professionals to uncover and
optimize the journeys that matter to your customers, so you can
improve customer experience results and impact the KPIs that
matter most to your business.

• Quickly understand customer behavior across all touch-points

& channels over time

• Uncover and predict high-impact customer journeys

• Drive personalized, multi-channel customer experiences

Unlike other journey analytics solutions, Pointillist lets you connect

the dots between customer interactions and business goals in
seconds, rather than days or weeks. By using artificial intelligence
to reveal high-impact journeys and predict likely behavior,
Pointillist is like having a personal data scientist that’s always on
call.

SCHEDULE MY DEMO

© 2018 Altisource. All rights reserved.