Four ways generative AI can improve your customer experience

Rapid digitisation has helped businesses significantly lift their customer service game. Now, the adoption of generative AI is raising the bar even further.

David Walsh, Head of Digital, CX and Marketing at the B2B payment-and-rewards platform pay.com.au, explains how the startup uses AI to do more with less.

A four-pronged approach

Walsh and his team use AI to level up their customer service offerings in the following ways:

• Streamline the creation of support content, such as tutorial videos and how-to articles;
• Analyse customer behaviour and preferences for more personalised and tailored communications;
• Provide predictive insights for proactive engagement and payment reminders;
• And facilitate accurate and efficient problem-solving via real-time insights and recommendations.

Embracing the technology has both improved the customer experience and enhanced employee capabilities, Walsh says, dramatically boosting output where “we just wouldn’t have had the manpower otherwise”.

For example, historically, in-house content creation would have been long and labour-intensive, Walsh says. Now, our team can simply record videos on the spot and then use AI to transcribe the audio and spit out quick “how-to” articles written to company templates.

“The biggest benefit is allowing us to punch above our weight,” Walsh says. “When it comes to creating content from marketing and support materials through to staff-enablement content and code, it’s just the great enabler.”

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Empowering staff with AI insights

AI’s real-time insights, recommendations and prompts empower the entire pay.com.au team to deliver consistently exceptional service when interacting with customers and responding to queries.

“The approach that we’re taking is that AI is an additive tool to our people,” Walsh says. “So, if it can help our support staff and our account management team, our sales team, and anyone that’s interacting with a customer to find an answer to that customer’s query and guide them on what some responses or support content could be for that customer, then that’s a win both from the customer’s perspective, but also a massive win from our perspective.

“Because A) we’re making sure the customer has a fantastic experience and B) we’re also making sure that we’re making good use of our people’s time. And time spent digging up an answer isn’t necessarily their time well spent.”

More personalised interactions

AI takes personalisation to the next level at pay.com.au by analysing customer data to better understand people’s preferences and behaviours. Employees can then use these insights to tailor their communications, marketing, and support interactions accordingly.

By anticipating customer needs and desires, AI also enables them to proactively offer suggestions, experiences and payment reminders that resonate with customers on a deeper level. All of which boosts engagement and improves brand loyalty.

“If we know from our data that the customer has a high propensity to be interested in premium travel using their points that they can generate with pay.com.au, then we’ll have a conversation with them about that,” Walsh explains. “But if they’re more interested in redeeming their points for wine, then that’s the conversation we should be having.”

He notes that education is vital to ensuring his staff uses generative AI correctly and responsibly, adding that “Salesforce has a lot of good, free training materials on its Trailhead platform.” 

Looking ahead: the future of AI in customer service

Walsh envisions an AI-driven landscape where customers interact seamlessly with AI for their self-service needs. However, the human touch will remain essential for more complex interactions, he says, and to ensure a balanced and personalised customer journey.

Ultimately, his goal is to provide customers with a choice, allowing them to engage with the business in ways that suit their preferences and needs.

“We are bolstering up the view of our data with Salesforce and using Salesforce’s tools to have better conversations with our customers on the back of AI,” he says. “And I think the critical thing for us is to build it so that the customer’s not necessarily even aware that they’re interacting with AI.

“Our vision is that customers will be able to have a fantastic experience on the platform without needing to talk to a person. So many of the projects we have in the pipeline are really about driving that self-service and volume of content to customers and using AI to deliver that in the right way at the right time.”

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