Why Technology Must Personalize Your Customer Service

Customer service expert Shep Hyken heads to the LCT Technology Summit on May 1 in Miami Beach. Best-selling books here. (photo: Shep Hyken)

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — The biggest threat to the luxury transportation business lies in the impulse of a customer hitting a button.

If customer service interactions don’t match the quality and high level of service offered, then prospective clients will go elsewhere where it’s easiest, such as Uber or Lyft.

“Every customer has a choice,” said Shep Hyken, a customer service and experience expert and bestselling author. “For a relationship, any service we create and want to deliver should feel personalized and customized.”

Hyken will present “Artificial Intelligence And The Customer Service Revolution” on Tuesday, April 1 during the LCT Technology Summit at The Miami Beach Edition Hotel.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has evolved to the point where it can handle lower level, routine interactions in a friendly, accessible way, both inside and outside an organization. It is best deployed when it speeds up customer interactions and creates data-based “personas” that enable employees to recognize and service clients as individuals while also grouping them into specific, targeted marketing segments more likely to elicit business.

“You have data already, and need a system to use the data,” Hyken said in a pre-Summit interview with LCT. “Personalization is tied to AI because it can interpret the history of customers and compare them to others. If you have a big enough database and can spot certain customers similar to others, you can group them into 'personas' or 'buckets.'"

Research has found, for example, that live chat bots get higher returns on customer satisfaction surveys than static emailed survey forms, Hyken said.

Companies that implement A.I. are simply freeing their agents up to have better conversations at higher levels of issues, he said. “Many companies that implement A.I. don’t reduce staff. They use staff for better relationship building.”

In a ground transportation market disrupted by TNCs, the success of luxury service depends even more heavily on the quality of customer service communication and interactions. People like doing business with those who know them, listen to them, and appreciate them.

“It’s incumbent upon us to work on relationships, manage interactions, and make sure we give people reasons to come back.”

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