Integrating virtual assistants into your customer service to deliver better customer experience.

Every organization, in today’s highly competitive business environment, seek to increase their customer retention rate. With increasing customer expectations, this process has become even more complex as they expect companies to leverage the latest technologies and engage at every possible touchpoint. This means organizations need to imply an omnichannel engagement strategy that can help create seamless experiences and benefit both a brand and its consumers.

Beyond a human customer service representative and increasing use of social media platforms to lure various types of audiences, recent years have seen the extensive proliferation of chatbots and virtual assistants. In fact, it is expected that 15 percent of all customer service interactions worldwide will be handled entirely by AI or virtual assistants, which is up 400 percent from 2017.

There is no wonder that businesses are increasingly optimistic about the possibilities such technologies bring with full of excitement. Chatbots and virtual assistants have the potential to deliver substantial advantages to the customer service centers, such as greater capability and scale, faster chat speed and better exchange of communication.

For instance, Nina, the Nuance Intelligent Virtual Assistant, which is designed to deliver an intuitive, automated experience for all businesses’ digital channels by engaging their customers using voice or text. The virtual assistant enables an intelligent, human-like dialogue between consumers and a brand, offering consistent customer experience. The ability to comprehend complex inquiries, ask clarifying questions and personalize responses, Nina assists companies to deliver a better customer self‑service experience.

Reasons to Connect a Virtual Assistant to the CRM Strategy

Virtual assistants nowadays are capable of performing various business tasks. They can even work as a specialist who takes care of end-to-end CRM functions. Apart from handling frequent customer requests, strategizing accordingly and closing deals in real-time, VAs as a CRM specialist can perform various complex tasks.

• Taking responsibility of the entire CRM system
• Integrating different reports and create a clear analytical detail
• Closing communication gaps between sales and marketing
• Maintaining CRM systems
• Keeping CRM systems error free by continuous detection

Virtual assistants can also train others who are handling the CRM platform. As they understand natural language and recognize customers’ needs and preferences, VAs perform the heavy-lifting by resolving routine issues or gleaning information automatically.

For startups, CRM platforms typically aimed at evading complexities, offering an array of advantages such as finding customers, effectively managing fundraising processes, improving chances of getting much coverage, managing contacts and conversations as well as partnerships. Capitalizing on virtual assistants for their CRM strategy, startups can make their customers happy with immediate answers. VAs can also identify sales or carry out real-time up-selling actions for small businesses. Most startups business leaders realize the benefit of investing in a virtual assistant as it can be a personal assistant, executive assistant, project managers or lend a hand on team projects.

Obviously, consumer-grade virtual assistants will revolutionize the way contact centers engage their customers in the near future. They will have a profound impact on customer-brand interactions, automating cognitive tasks and promising monumental advantages.