You’ve invested in best-in-class automation tools but they’re not delivering the results or ROI you were expecting. Sound familiar? It’s frustrating to watch customers (and money) slip away because your automation efforts miss the mark.
To ensure the resources you’re devoting to AI and automation pay off, you need to make sure your brand not only has the right technology in hand, but that you’re using it at the right times and in the right ways to reach your customers.
How can you do that? By understanding customer intent – the purpose or reason behind a customer’s actions or behaviors towards a brand. Intent goes beyond superficial factors, such as what customers are requesting or where they are requesting it, and instead focuses on their true goals for the interaction.
Once you understand the why behind your customer interactions, you’ll be better able to devise automated solutions that make sense.
Know what’s motivating your customers
There are many benefits to understanding customer intent – not just delivering a better customer experience, but also making employees’ jobs easier and boosting your bottom line.
When you have clarity about what a customer really wants to accomplish, it can illuminate upsell opportunities, provide chances to deepen the customer relationship, and increase retention. Customer intent is powerful, and it should be informing which parts of your customer journey are automated.
Invest the time and effort to dive into your company’s data and uncover your top customer intents, because even the best automation tools won’t deliver the results you need if you’re not using them correctly.
Here are just some of the customer intents that intelligent automation can serve:
- Request a refund
- Check order status
- Product comparisons
- Request product specifications
- Purchase a product
- Make a payment
- Billing inquiries
Seek outside help when you need it
While it’s important to understand customer intent, many businesses don’t have that expertise in-house. If that’s the case, working with a CX partner is a great way to gauge what’s really driving customer behavior. With that information in hand, you can approach automation more thoughtfully and use it to enhance your customer journey where it makes sense.
For more trends shaping the future of automation in 2023 and beyond, check out our trends report, “Top 3 trends for elevating CX with automation in 2023.”
