As machine learning gets more and more sophisticated with every passing year, it’s wise for people in all industries to begin paying attention to the ways it will and won’t be impactful. Customer service is just one of many departments that advances in machine learning will transform before we know it, for better or for worse.
According to an article on The Next Web, millennials are driving a shift toward “hyper-personal sophisticated experiences” in all areas of customer service. Fall behind, and companies will find their customers bored, turned off, or even upset. That’s where machine learning comes into the equation: it can help them keep their finger on the pulse of customer needs, and adapt their services accordingly.
The new marketer, then, can’t just be a person: technology needs to be involved, and it needs to be smart.
“Instead of having to manually identify customer groups and which offers a valuable opportunity, these can now be automatically identified and prioritized using a combination of predictive analytics and machine learning technology,” author Graham Cooke writes for The Next Web. “This technology can then feed these opportunities back, listed according to which ones offer the largest untapped revenue opportunity.”
By measuring who wants what, when, and how they feel about it every step of the way, machine learning technologies offer companies what the article calls “empirical empathy.” This can be used to target specialized user experiences to the people that want it most, and generate revenue as a result.
This will transform not only customer service, but the entire face of digital commerce, Cooke predicts. In order to keep up, the threshold is high: businesses not only have to have great products to succeed, but a fundamental understanding of each segment of customer, and the ability to deliver meaningful experiences in an effort to both connect and drive sales.
This should be great for customers, who are actively driving this demand until it’s met. If companies can harness machine-learning to do so, the benefits are huge. The future is still uncertain, but one thing is clear: refusing to leverage new technology in customer service would be a big mistake. Huge.