25 years of positive economic growth has meant Australian companies have had it pretty good. This context created a couple of generations of order takers and glorified customer service agents instead of proactive active business developers and account managers.
And what about retail and customer service? During pre-Covid conditions, customers didn’t have to wrestle with purchase decisions like they do now. They’d buy in spite of poor customer engagement – yet sales staff mistakenly believed that they were the reason they hit their targets. When sales are good, leaders don’t look under the hood to see what’s really going on. Covid made us online shoppers too. Can AI help improve engagement in person?
Post-Covid customer service centres now have less student workers than they did resulting in higher wait times, customer dissatisfaction and workforce pressure. AI seemed to offer a lifeline to call centres especially, but has it delivered better engagement to customers?
Has AI helped create a better customer experience so far?
After all, AI isn’t new now. Many companies engaging with customers have used AI pilots for a while. Customer Experience (CX) has become a standard, with companies appointing Chief Experience Officers whose whole worlds focus on improving it. They’ve utilised AI to deliver faster, smoother experiences. But it’s not working. According to a Forbes article about a new study, “consumer satisfaction has plummeted over the past year rather than customers reporting better experiences……..a mere 7% of customers believe their service interactions improved recently, while 55% say experiences worsened.”
It could be argued that this is because AI has been seen as a productivity and resourcing tool instead of a customer engagement tool. The truth is we can now have better productivity AND deliver better customer experiences using AI. According to Salesforce Executive VP of Customer Relations Management Bill Patterson the key is agentic AI which can receive instructions, create a plan and use tooling to complete tasks, and produce results. And it answers the shortage of qualified labour to a point. A Gartner article believes that “By 2028, 33% of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI, up from less than 1% in 2024, enabling 15% of day-to-day work decisions to be made autonomously.” That’s a lot. Salesforce is leading the way in agentic AI improving the customer experience. “Pacific Smiles, one of Australia’s fastest-growing dentist service organisations, has deployed AI-powered service agents to help patients to book an appointment in as little as 1.5 minutes, an estimated 80% reduction in enquiry-heavy booking times, ensuring faster access to care.”
These are great improvements to the experience through efficiencies gained, but what about engagement?
The solution to better customer engagement is not just better AI. It’s better engagement.
Australian customers think they know what’s required. According to the Australian Service Index: “two-thirds of Australians think training is important in delivering good customer service. Australians also feel that customer service staff should be rewarded, with over 50% of Australians stating that it’s important to reward staff for good customer service.
And because 62% of are more likely to leave good reviews, they seem to want their service providers to know what they think. Having an Australian based contact centre is what 90% of Australians deem as important when it comes to choosing a new provider. Three factors stood out to them as predictors of good customer service:
1. Local (ie. Australian) call centre (more than 50%)
2. Good online reviews (41%)
3. Recommendation by a friend or family member (36%)
All of these suggest Australians are crying out for the human element. Because Agentic AI is able to look for leads, send prospects emails saving hours, how can salespeople transform gains into better engagement?
That’s where AI comes in
Companies like SalesGrid are getting it right. By mining CRM data, meeting notes, meeting recordings to pre-empt next actions, make suggestions for follow up emails, pre-populating proposal templates and supporting business cases, salespeople can redirect their time and effort into better quality conversations, expediting sales meetings and the sales process for the benefit of both parties. By helping salespeople to utilise all of the information available to them, AI acts like a sales administrator or sales support function.
Those people who are now freed up thanks to agentic AI must build a deeper skillset.
Human connection and influencing skills like EQ, rapport building, negotiation, and overcoming objections will be in higher demand. When we combine these human factors with agentic AI with an intention for a better level of engagement, there is hope: for us and for our customers.
This article was written by Ingrid Maynard, founder of The Sales Doctor and host of The Sales Revolution Podcast.