Technology and the Human Factor for Enhancing Conversational Experience

The relationship between brands and users in recent years has changed profoundly.

The path of the potential buyer of a product or service – or customer journey – , which until a few years ago was predictable and standardizable, now encompasses a variety of physical and digital moments of interaction(touchpoints) with the supplying company, and it is likely to think that the funnel metaphor is no longer representative of the new marketing model, which is instead identified as a multitude of possible steps in which the customer and the brand can come into contact with each other and relate.

Today more than ever, customer experience is a strategic and differentiating factor for companies.

Suffice it to say that an analysis conducted by ^SAS1 shows that on average, one in three consumers in Europe is willing to terminate relationships with a company after just one negative experience.

To support the implementation of a customer experience strategy, technology offers cutting-edge and gradually evolving solutions that facilitate dialogue between parties, with the result that today interacting with software that simulates human conversations(chatbots) or through instant messaging platforms has become simple and intuitive.

The conversational experience has thus become a clear business strategy, necessarily multichannel, fluid(seamless) and fully customer centric.

Messaging is the primary way customers want to communicate with a brand. In fact, according to the State of Social Conversational Commerce2022 Report(SPECTRM 2022), 60 percent of consumers prefer messaging to e-mails or phone calls. The reason? It’s fast and convenient.

Chatbots also generate real-time interactions: functional for users, they find application at different stages of the research, purchase and customer service journey.

Even more advanced is the technology of Artificial Humans, which, equipped with features of great utility and social impact, allow, for example, sign language to be understood and reproduced in real time, so as to converse on the Web with the deaf community.

It would seem that technology is somehow making interaction with people unnecessary. Not so: people increasingly want to connect with people.

Also according to the State of Social Conversational Commerce 2022 ^Report2, more than 41 percent of consumers in Europe say they only want to interact with humans and not chatbots. Among the main reasons are a lack of customer adoption of “self-service” channels, longer time to handle requests, and an increased demand for emotional intelligence from phone operators.

A study conducted by ^CMSWIRE3 tells us that conversational channels with a human voice will remain consumers’ favorite, preferring them over e-mail, mobile apps and social media.

^Gartner4 even predicts that by 2026, 75% of consumers will turn to human-voice-guided support services due to a growing sense of loneliness (“epidemic loneliness“), whereby people satisfy the need for social interaction through business relationships with vendors, caregivers, and online consumer communities.

Despite the development of new human-to-machine technologies, the importance of the human component in the business-customer interaction process is likely to increase, and new skills are required of those called upon to interact with consumers.

One above all is compassion: a term that is difficult to translate into Italian, it is an extension of the concept of empathy and refers to the ability to be ready and willing to concretely help and support people in meeting their needs.

In a customer service or support environment, compassion (“I’m here to help”) is a key factor. Empathy will always serve to identify problems, but the ability to help people solve them will make the difference.

We need to be adept at using empathic language as we create dialogue. Instilling the right level of empathy and compassion appropriate to each context and tailored to each individual client is very difficult.

Robots can support and accompany customers at every stage as their goal is to help them complete a task, but there will always be situations where human interaction will be needed with people equipped not only with skills such as timeliness or digital mindset, but with new skills that can guide behaviors and experiences through emotions and a predisposition to be helpful to others.